FOR an industry at war over competing visions of the digital-age future, the sight this week of thousands of Writers Guild members whipping out their bluntest, most antiquated weapon -- picketing -- was, well, striking. Especially for a professional group typically wary of physical movement and potential exposure to sunlight.
"I think it's the least effective form of protest known to man," said one writer, who wished to remain anonymous because he has no plans to join his WGA comrades in front of the studios. "It has no efficacy whatsoever. I think it's indicative, just from a larger standpoint, of a stale view of things. Like, 'Let's go and get writers and give them wood signs and walk around.' We're not dealing with blue-collar personalities here, so it's a little odd.
"Look," he adds. "We're in a creative community here. Why don't we come up with a better alternative?"
Having stood in the midst of the spirited mayhem earlier this week, I think picketing's lack of originality is exactly what gives it the immediacy of its link to history. Yes, the WGA may be going to the mat over the jurisdiction and compensation of digital downloads and other new media content (among other things). But it takes no real leap of imagination to connect that these same sidewalks were trod by creative ancestors in previous union actions dating to the early 1930s meetings of the reconstituted Screen Writers Guild. With the ultimate outcome ever in doubt, the presence of that legacy carries a lot of weight.
Additionally, with passing cars and trucks and taxis honking their horns in support (some even as they pull into the lot), and writers using their voices and shoe leather instead of keypads to express their emotions, the picket line is appealingly active, verbal, public and communal -- four adjectives generally missing from the screenwriter's typically isolated life.
The scene was certainly set properly. Symbolically resonant, the cold, gray and misty atmosphere surrounding the start of the first walkout by TV and film writers in a generation seemed to portend its unvarnished truth: Even if both sides of the contract debate somehow eventually find bearable common ground, the preceding weeks and months will be financially, socially and creatively grim.
A swing by Sony Pictures, Culver Studios and Fox during the guild membership's first few shifts revealed dozens of writers fortified by skim lattes and purpose as they streamed back and forth across the variety of lot gates.
