Captain's Quarters -

Cap'n Ed: What will a writers strike do to the American entertainment industry? It would mean that Hollywood would have to use old scripts that have already been used. They would have to recycle old plot lines and archetype characters. Instead of coming up with new ideas, they would have to rely on rehashes with Roman numerals coming after familiar titles.

In other words, the American consumer shouldn't notice any difference, at least until the actors and directors join them. After that, we'll just get honest reruns.

Don't get me started! Hollywood has millions to spend on special effects and actresses who make up for lack of talent with excess of silicone... but they don't seem to have a friggin' PENNY to spend on good scripts. WTF? I mean, they've made movies out of '60s CARTOONS, fer cryin' out loud. What idiot thought that making a movie version of "The Beverly Hillbillies" was a good idea???

GRRRRRR!!!!

I think that the most likely result will be an strengthening of the result of the last major writers strike: more "reality" television, which is cheaper to produce and relies less on writers.

This would not be a good development for American television.

"In other words, the American consumer shouldn't notice any difference"

I'm not so sure about that Ed. There might be an IMPROVEMENT, based n some of what Hollywood has been spewing for the last decade or so.

Hollywood should seriously be worried about its collective future.

With overseas productions getting better, a significant portion of major releases nothing more then leftwing ego trips, and the increasing ease of intellectual theft the last thing Hollywood needs is a likely decrease in the quality in its already poor scripts.

How will we possibly survive without a new drama series about lawyers, cops, or hospitals? What's the point of living without comedies of yuppies who never work insulting each other, WASP males as situational idiots, and smarta** kids upstaging their ignorant parents?

Yawn. I'll just hookup YouTube to my big screen and watch the creativity of normal folks with some actual novelty fill the space. YouTube "actors" will improve their style and content. Hollywood maxed out some time ago and actually gets worse with age. Maybe if the Guilds incorporated more sex, violence, and profanity, things would improve.

I just have one thing to say about this,...

YAWN........ZZZZZzzzzzzz,......

And this strike will mean what to me? Yawn! As noted above, a strike would be an improvement just by itself. If the strikers are looking for sympathy, I can tell them what two words it's between in the dictionary.

Writers' strike? How come nobody's reporting on the viewers' strike?

Good news from Hollywood.

A long strike could/may be the best thing that could happen.

The moribund self feathering nest they call Hollywood might actually improve if the existing relationships inside Hollywood were turned upside down. Sometimes strikes and the reactions to them can be very helpful.

What would a writer's strike mean? It would mean I could catch up on my reading. That's it. I have so many competing options for entertainment that I could cut out new television and hardly miss it. (I've pretty much already cut out new movies.)

It would be terrible!

What, you think ANYBODY can write the stupid shit that comes out of that swamp?

No, my friends, that is the product of professionals.

If Hollywood brought in replacement writers, we might see an end of third-rate, paranoid anti-Bush scripts. We might get treated to second-rate, paranoid anti-Bush scripts, instead.

Of course, that all comes to an end in 2009 (regardless of who does the writing). Afterwards, the silver screen will fill up with third-rate, paranoid anti-Giuliani scripts. Such is Hollywood's idea of change.

Oh darn, there will be a dearth of anti republican anti american films in the months before the election. What a crying shame. I hope the strike lasts years, but that's too much to hope for. And why are there strikes in the bastion of liberal leftwingdom known as Hollyweird anyway? After all, according to those lefties, if the unions want X then any sensible and MORAL employer would grant them 2X plus one million.

I predict that this strike will go the way of most other strikes lately, nowhere.

This dispute can be illustrated roughly as follows: A sponsor hires an artist to paint a picture, and agrees to pay him a fee, plus one penny of each one-dollar admission ticket to view his finished painting.

The sponsor makes a huge profit thanks to the artist's talent, but shares a small part of the profit with the artist.

Before long, the sponsor finds a way to make 100 dollars on each admission ticket, and raises the artist's residual to 2 pennies.

The sponsor's reaction: "I just DOUBLED your take!" The artist's reaction: "I want to keep my 1% residual!"

The Writers' contract expiresd first, but the Actors Guild is wrestling with the same problem. If the strikes go down, expect the few quality shows on the air to disappear, and the airwaves to be flooded by many more even more infantile reality shows.

Do these people write for the Science Channel, Discovery, History Channel? No? Then I won't notice.

DVDs? Since I own 300-400 of them now, I have no need to worry.

I haven't watched network TV in years. Is it still as bad as ever? Reality shows, game shows, sitcoms, crime shows...help me Rhonda. Couldn't care less.

Yeah, dittos, Capt. Ed.

Who'd ever notice if Hollywood pumps out recycled, tedius cr*p, with the standard silicone T&A vulgarity? Business as usual, eh?

As has been noted by others, maybe part of the anti-Americanism around the world is that many see all this Hollywood garbage and pornography "entertainment" and think this is the real America.

In his books of television criticism, "The Glass Teat" and "The Other Glass Teat", Harlan Ellison labeled Hollywood writers as "creative typists" -- what was true in the seventies is still true today.

Script writers have a union?
You have got to be kidding me.
Well, I guess that explains why the only US movies with plots are from novels. Well, except for Pixar. Maybe.

How far does this corruption go? The actors have a union, too?!

I would say "yay for the scabs," but I think they might actually be illegal here in CA.

Scott said:

"I haven't watched network TV in years. Is it still as bad as ever? Reality shows, game shows, sitcoms, crime shows...help me Rhonda. Couldn't care less."

It's a mixed bag-as far as sitcoms, a truly good one comes down the pike about once every 5 years, and most of those have been on Fox. ABC/CBS/NBC have been extremely limited in turning out decent sitcoms lately-I think the last good one NBC did was "Frasier", and the only inventive one I remember from ABC in the past 15 years would be "Drew Carey". Kelsey "Frasier" Grammar is coming back to sitcoms this fall (on Fox, natch) while Carey just replaced Bob Barker as host of "The Price Is Right".

As for dramas, "24" (on Fox of course) is pretty good. Not much else though.

Thank God and Greyhound for DirecTV!

Other than cable news, Sean, and Glenn Beck I haven't watched sitcoms (pushing their ..... agenda - you fill in the blank) or dramas, (esp Law & Order, can't get through a show without casticating the conservatives - you have to be aware and sure enough it's there) since we got cable. Can't tell you about katie, have never watched her and refuse to. I guess they (the news) read scripts too.
Hope they stay away for years. Refreshing!!!!

Well, they could hire Republican freelancers to break the strike... but that's just crazy talk...

meanwhile, the only TV I watch these days is pretty much Telemundo and Univision. !Orale! !Voy las chicas caliente! !Que ricas!

I'm shocked. After all, Hollywood is the leading purveyor of all things liberalism. Free sex, left wing politics, anti-Republican/conservative TV shows and movies, actors who lecture the great unwashed that is the rest of the nation on all things left of center. If only the nation would adopt their policies then we would all hold hands, sing Kumbaya and live our lives without damaging the planet.
So if their world is such a Utopian place, why is there a strike I wonder?

Wouldn't it be great to see shows that had true family values-Father Knows Best-as an example. Where a family was a working father, mothers with aprons, and kids doing kid things. The family around the supper table. Show all these modern kids and so called families what it should be like. And most importantly, at the end the bad guy got punished.

Capt.

There's not much difference between waht you see from what you see 20-30 yrs. ago. It's just old scripts tweaked here and there.

Scott,

Agree, I would add A & E, TCM and BBC America. The only time I tune into a "network" show is to catch the football games.

I can't count the number of times I've watched, The Maltese Falcon, Gaslight, Citizen Kane etc., never get tired of them......no blood and guts or gratuitous sex.

Hey, any news on the MSM reporter/editor strike? When's that coming? One down, one to go....

Richard,

You SLAY me DADDY! Catch my drift?

Perhaps there will be a percentage decline in anti-US propaganda?

Oh Gee!! The bullshit artists are on strike. Wow!! I should cry- can't. Just finished a rough shift in the ER- Oh, not the "Hollywood ER" but the real ER;tell me, I'm supposed to feel sorry for these guys?

I hope for a long strike, too. I don't watch network or even cable TV shows and I haven't gone to the movies in a very long time (I mainly watch video podcasts and my old DVDs). I think it would be amusing to see what happens.

Ironically, the only worthwhile movie "The Lives of Others" produced in the two decades didn't come from Hollywood but from East Germany.

Several years ago David Mamet called out Hollywood's demise, it lost the art of storytelling by relying upon eye-candy crap to satisify the audience and, as mom always says eventually too much eye-candy makes people sick.

Hollywood is done dead, people are tired of having to barf up their junk after each movie consumed.

Er...does that mean you guys didn't like "Broke Back" ?

Unlike many of you, I think Hollywood's problem isn't that they make SFX-laden schlockfests or rip ideas off, it's that they have a distinct lack of imagination these days.

You can make very good derivative movies, and very good SFX-laden movies. They dont' need to have great acting or great writing or great dialogue or even a great director. They just need to be *neat*. Something to excite the imagination. These days, it seems like every movie has to be *about* some great idea or theme or dire warning or whatnot. A lot of that is insane and lefty, but whether it is or not, it's rarely good film.

Good film just needs to be *fun*, and I think they forget that. Take, say, The Fifth Element. It was cheezy, overacted, and just plain weird. But for all that it was a darn fun movie. Or likewise The Mummy. The films of the last coupla years aren't all bad for sure, and some are very good, but most every one seems to be pretty glum and serious, and not at all fun to go watch.

Anyone who has been to Hollywood/Universal Studios tour, etc., knows just how small these people are. They are small, their ideas are small, and they delude themselves into thinking people actually believe in their Godless nihilism, lack of Patriotism, and anti-military bias.

Britney Spears reflects the old adage "The King has no clothes" only this variation goes one step further; "The Queen has no underwear!" These morons need to stop reading/believing their P.R. McLuhan addressed the electronic age "The medium is the message." Hollywood has perverted that concept by making the message the medium. They aren't the only game in town anymore. The print media is finding this out also.

Hollywood writers to go on strike. That headline is almost as useless as GM, Dodge, and Ford workers going on strike. They would only hurt their own pocketbook. There is enough supply for the demand to outlast their bank account reserve. Let them strike. Stupid people can only learn the hard way. The way it should be.

"There's not much difference between waht you see from what you see 20-30 yrs. ago."

I disagree, Steve. Some of the old stuff was better written.

But the real old stuff (40s-60s) was much better written, that's why I record a lot of stuff off of TCM.

There is a big market, just in the US, that is under-served. And I've read that the "tent-pole" films that do poorly in mid-America, do poorly in other countries as well. Hollywood is mostly insular, parochial, and left-leaning. They make movies for their own, which also appeal to the European elites (same world view). There are a handful of exceptions, Pixar, for one.

Big Deal! The absolute funniest(as in drop dead funny, laugh out loud funny) comedy on American television is from Canada. Check out "Corner Gas" on WGN Chicago, which has just started running there. A sly, witty, well-written, well-shot, no laugh track sitcom about a small town in Saskatchewan and the loveable oddballs that live there is absolutely brilliant and is pretty much G rated! Check it out!

What will a writers strike do to the American entertainment industry? It would mean that Hollywood would have to use old scripts that have already been used. They would have to recycle old plot lines and archetype characters. Instead of coming up with new ideas, they would have to rely on rehashes with Roman numerals coming after familiar titles.

I'm reminded of 2000's Return to the Blue Lagoon, a putative sequel to the 1980 Brooke Shields movie that was actually more like a straight remake of it. Definitely a leading contender for "Most Pointless Movie Ever Made".

If this writers' strike means we're about to not only get a lot more of this sort of thing, but without even so much as the pretense of originality, I'm guessing a lot of people will decide they might as well just buy/rent DVDs of the older, original movies. Ironically, the striking writers won't be seeing nearly as much money from these sales/rentals as they'd like, which of course is one reason why they're striking in the first place. Talk about karma biting you in the nether regions...