Screenwriters

The Writers Guild of America has drawn up a first-of-its-kind standardized contract for screenwriters to use when hired to create programming for the Internet, the union said Wednesday. The move comes about two months after the Directors Guild of America devised a standard single-picture agreement that its members are encouraged to use when signing on to made-for-Internet productions.

On any afternoon at the Insomnia Cafe on Beverly Drive, half the patrons are staring intently at laptop computers while sipping their lattes. They look as if they're working on screenplays. "Everybody in here is," admits Johnny Cho, 27, with a laugh. Hollywood lore had it that everyone in Los Angeles was an actor, that waiters slipped their head shots in with the check and car salesmen tried out monologues on prospective customers.

Robin Swicord could be a heroine in one of her own screenplays: a woman overcoming the odds to triumph--if still rather anonymously. Consider: * She has three films slated for production over the next few months: "Little Women," to star Winona Ryder as Jo, at Columbia; "The Perez Family," starring Marisa Tomei and Anjelica Huston, at Goldwyn; and "Matilda," an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel that she co-scripted with her husband, screenwriter Nick Kazan.

IN L.A., everyone seems to have a screenplay tucked away in a desk drawer. And why not? It is, after all, difficult to live for any length of time in the belly of the beast of the movie biz without feeling its lure -- the sense that you too can be a player. Yet few of these screenplays ever make it to the big screen. The reason: Most stink. Whether it's gaping plot holes, sleep-inducing story lines or cardboard characters, the scripts simply don't work.

Star screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, best known for penning the erotic thriller "Basic Instinct," wowed Hollywood on Thursday with another record-breaking deal. New Line Cinema agreed to pay him $2.5 million cash upfront and additional $1.5 million when cameras roll for four pages of "notes and thoughts" on a love story that he and director Adrian Lyne will " shape into a movie." Additionally, Eszterhas--already one of the highest-paid screenwriters in the business--will receive 2.

It has been almost a year since Steven Spielberg stood at the podium at the 1987 Academy Awards show and said it was time for film makers to rethink their priorities and reacquaint themselves with the value of words. After a decade of special-effects addiction, Spielberg seemed to be swearing off the stuff and offering to lead other traveling-matte, rear-projection and animatronics junkies back to the land of plot, story and character.

The dwindling list of survivors of Hollywood's darkest period--the time of the blacklist--gathered Tuesday to remember a colleague who tried to make sure America never forgets about it. Screenwriter and director Abraham Polonsky, who was 88 when he died Oct. 26, was praised as a person who kept his dignity and a sense of humor about his own banishment from Hollywood after being named in 1951 as a former member of the Communist Party.

For more than two years, no one in Hollywood really knew what had become of Joe Eszterhas. With his trademark biker look--the shoulder-length hair and Grizzly Adams beard--he had risen in the decade between 1985 and 1995 to become Hollywood's hottest screenwriter with his recurring themes of eroticized violence evident in such steamy thrillers as "Jagged Edge," "Basic Instinct," "Sliver" and "Jade."

The message is unmistakable: The all-male, cigar-chomping photo of screenwriters in Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue; the bidding wars that erupt over certain scripts--usually written by a man named Eszterhas or Black; a recent issue of Variety that listed the top 30 "sizzling" screenwriters--only two of whom were women. You'd think "E.T.," "Thelma & Louise" and "Sleepless in Seattle," all of which were written by women, had never happened.

Making fun of Steven Spielberg, Ben Stiller, Tom Cruise, Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal and the president of the Writers Guild of America in mass Hollywood emails might not be the safest strategy for two screenwriters trying to get ahead in show business. But the duo behind the recently launched blog Hollywood & Swine is giving it a shot. Like the satirical news site the Onion, Hollywood & Swine grabs show business headlines and gives them a droll overhaul, lacing its pretend stories with made-up quotes from real industry figures.