how so? you know these writers are going to DESTROY good shows don’t you? and what about other people who work on these shows? without a show they have no job, its all about a bunch of emos who think their worth more than they are.
Not to challenge someone with letters as big as those, but wouldn’t firing them and blacklisting the whole guild be just as, if not more, damaging to the shows?
Have you considered that the writers are the <i>reason</i> the shows are good? It’s not so much that a writers’ strike <i>destroys</i> good shows, as that the <I>writers stop writing</i> good shows.
What would destroy good shows is banning the writers, as you suggested, or ignoring them when they demand better treatment.
what better treatment could you get? they make 30,000 dollars per script, with the money I make I’d be set for 5 years, how can you complain about that?
On $500/month? That’s worse pay than working at a fast food place.
$30,000 a year is okay for an entry level job out of college, but it isn’t going to give you a living wage for five years. That’s absolutely absurd. Do you have any idea what rent, gas, food, electricity, and heat cost? Now imagine that you want a car, so you pay for that, and the insurance. Okay, that isn’t so bad, right? Well, that’s only if you want to live a spartan lifestyle, and with no money to pad you in case anything bad happens (like getting laid off), no money for video games, internet, cable television, any credit card bills you might have, the furniture you’re paying off, college loans. Hell, some people have a lot more than that.
Get back to me when you’ve actually lived on your own, and then maybe you can be allowed to talk.
Waiters at a relatively classy restaurant here in Denver make about 30k a year in tips. I believe 28 is the average at the chinese place I work, and our waiters get lower tips since they split them with bussers and some cooks (all tips from the restaurant are divided evenly). A waiter at a high-end place, like the Brown Palace, makes 36 thousand without tips.
There’s a lot less competition and more security in waiting tables. Given the re-writes and numerous other things, you may actually work less hours as a waiter. If they’re going to get more pay and have better chances at getting/retaining a job at a much less stressful work environment that may also give better benefits, the only reason they’re staying writers is because they love writing. But they can write on their own time, and when it comes down to it, I’m a writer at heart but I’d take living better than day-to-day in exchange for my writing being a personal rather than public matter. Entertaining your whims would be nice, Zhare, but not worth my or my family’s welfare.
GAP is right. In a small house in a not very good part of town, four of us are required to bring in the money we need to live very comfortably, with intertron and stuff. We still just bundle the hell up in winter (that’s because we’re all cheap, though, more than really need to), and we’ve got my boxing money to add to the pool. While we’re also dealing with being fulltime students and thus most of us only part-time workers, the fact that low-wages aren’t as much money as they seem like when you don’t have the expenses associated with living on your own. 12,000 a year seemed like a ton when my expenses were some clothes, my food when I went out on my own, and what luxuries I wanted to buy. It’s not even close to a lot.
Don’t forget kids.
Yeah I don’t know what socialist paradise you’re living in, but it’s not the same place as these writers
I get a disabality check.
Hey, these writers want kids? Let them cradle their scripts.
Originally Posted by Zhare
I get a crazy check.
Maybe you should start using Reality Checks instead. >_<
well its actually just a disability check but I like to call it a crazy check
Your disability is that you’re too fucking stupid to realize what real life is like. People don’t live off 6 thousand dollars a year. They can barely live 1.
You can use the same argument against the companies that don’t want to share the profits from the online sales of the products they writers are responsible for in terms of the DELAYS to the shows.
It’s a sad fact but you really can’t make a living as a writer, because your success depends not on your talent but on catching the public’s fancy. Unless something you create happens to become a hot property (see: Harry Potter) it’s best to have a career in something else and write on the side.
Getting back to the strike, talks started again today. Good, because after the fiasco I mentioned above I was afraid it would take months for the two sides to sit down together again. Here’s hoping they work out something soon.
It’s a sad fact but you really can’t make a living as a writer, because your success depends not on your talent but on catching the public’s fancy. Unless something you create happens to become a hot property (see: Harry Potter) it’s best to have a career in something else and write on the side.
It’s hard to take a writer seriously unless they submit themselves to a hardscrabble life of toil and heartbreak. There are some exceptions, maybe for teachers or people who work in publishing, and for insurance executives. It’s probably best if you come from money and can afford not to work, or find patronage of some sort. The time needed for genius must be paid for by the laboring classes.
If we only counted the writers who submitted themselves to a “hardscrabble life of toil and heartbreak,” then I’m sure that almost all of the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenplays, stage plays, et cetera would be completely gone. Quite honestly, that is a mark of amateurism more than it is the mark of a writer. Almost every single writer who isn’t established has had a “real” job to support themselves until they were able to fully support themselves with their writing. Even then, a lot of them enjoy BOTH jobs, or believe that they are making a difference with both of their jobs. Also, since it is preferable to write from your own experiences, writers having several different other occupations causes writing to be more diverse than if it were just rich people, or those who have patrons to support them. Although the market today is diluted with a lot of junk, and it takes a dedicated reader to dig through the dirt, there is treasure out there (in every genre, mind you [except maybe romances, but I have a personal bias, so please ignore that comment]) (also, forgive me for using a cliché). I think that makes writing a more beautiful profession than if there were only a few books pumped out by a few authors, making them the ONLY things to read.
I think he’s more referring to the hardcore clause of being a writer, where the more ridiculous/awesome things you do, the better writer you will be. For example, Hemingway’s “real jobs” were boxing and being a fuckin’ spy. That’s awesome.
As a counter-example Chekhov was a doc. Awesome too, though.
I don’t give a shit who the fuck does what as long as I get my Conan back
<img src=“http://www.magneticmediafed.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/lnwcob.jpg”>
