Spent some time on the line at Sony Pictures Entertainment this morning in the Heart of Screenland, aka Culver City. Couldn't help but wonder what the legendary lion of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, would've made of all of this. (Don't really have to wonder much. Way, way back in the history of the film colony, in the pre-guild days, Mayer and other moguls thought the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- an org Mayer famously spearheaded -- was a perfectly good entity to represent the interests of creative talent. No kidding.)
The crowd of pickets outside the main entrance off Washington Boulevard at the Madison gate was small-ish but determined and resolute, and offered the kind of contrasts among strikers that only reinforces how broad-based the support is among WGA members for the guild's fight.
Adam Farasati and Ethan Furman are screenwriting partners who just entered the guild this year. The two not too long ago sold a script to Ivan Reitman's Montecito Pictures for a family-type pic, "The Creepy Kid," about the adventures of, well, a geeky kid. And they penned the comedy "Rock Paper Scissors" that might be fast-tracked to start lensing in January.
"The strike is tough -- everything is just on hold for us," Farasati said. "If our first project ('Rock') starts being filmed and we can't be on the set -- that's heartbreaking," Furman said.
But both were just as quick to express their fealty, in all sincerity, to the cause.
"We're also fortunate to have been able to join the guild and to be able to take part this this," Furman said. "We're fighting for our future."
To underscore the point about the need for new media residuals, Furman noted that "on our own picket line we've been watching TV shows on our phones." (He'd just polished off a seg of "Saturday Night Live" before stopping to chat.) "It is the way of the future."
Farasati said he'd been impressed by how consistently the pickets at the Sony gate had shown up and that "spirits are still strong" even in week four of the work stoppage.
On the other end of the career spectrum, but on the same picket detail, was Carol Flint, a veteran scribe ("ER," "The West Wing," "The Unit") and showrunner who went pencils-down on a pilot for Lifetime when the strike began Nov. 5.
"It's authentic," she said of the unanimity among the strikers as she took a brief break from the loop outside the studio gate with friend Barbie Kligman, a "CSI: NY" staffer.
"You could really feel at from the beginning at the (pre-strike guild) meetings. Everybody on a gut level had thought it through, and there was an understanding that we would all have to get behind the guild to get what we need," Flint said. She noted that for herself and many others, the decision to support the strike was the first true gut-check on a moral, do-the-right-thing level that she'd faced in a long time.
"I'm proud of my guild," Flint said.
--Cynthia Littleton
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