Writer's Strike

I hear the television writers are on strike; the joke, of course, has to be something like, “Who can tell?”

It’s not like “King of Queens” or “Cavemen” are Shakespeare, right? And the monkeys who pen the intros for reality shows probably don’t even need an infinite number of typewriters much less an infinite amount of time, do they?

Natch, this is likely sour grapes on my part; I was, for a couple of years in my youth, an aspiring TV writer myself; had I gotten just a bit luckier or if I had a shade more perseverance, I might be walking the picket line next to Tina Fey, herself, right now.

I still have, in a trunk, a dozen or so sitcom scripts I wrote on spec—meaning for free, in hopes of “breaking in” to the biz. And I’ve even got a nice collection of rejection letters that go with them, my favorite being one from that television classic, “The Facts of Life,” the vehicle which propelled none other than George Clooney to fame.

There was a whole ritual involved in finishing and submitting a script back in those days. I’d get two copies made at this place called “Copy and Print” on Sunset Boulevard; (they’d do it behind the counter; this was before the advent of Kinko’s); then I’d take one copy over to the Writer’s Guild building in Beverly Hills and pay something like five bucks to register it, thereby protecting me should some Hollywood shark steal my brilliant idea.

The other copy I would hand-deliver to the studio who produced the show I was spec-ing for. I’d wait a couple weeks before making a phone call and then a couple more before the rejection note would show up if at all.

During that time, I’d try my hand at another show, maybe “The Jeffersons” or “Laverne and Shirley.” It wasn’t exactly like being on strike, but like today’s writers, I wasn’t getting paid, either.