Writers Strike
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The Life and Death of Hollywood April 16, 2024
In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith went West to Hollywood, like many before her. She arrived to a small apartment in Silver Lake, one block from the Vista Theatre—a single-screen Spanish Colonial Revival building that had opene...
Hollywood Grapples With the Consequences of a Strike October 12, 2023
Why did it take five months?That’s the vexing question that entertainment industry insiders are wrestling with even as they cheer the end of the Writers Guild of America strike. Union leaders said it again and again all summer — that Hollywood’s sy...
The Golden Bachelor and the Novelty of Vulnerability October 09, 2023
“Do you like vaginas?” The host of Naked Attraction—a new British reality series on Max (formerly HBO Max)—puts the question earnestly to a male contestant as the camera pans past six anonymous sets of labia in extreme close-up.With scripted televisi...
Will Hollywood Strike Back? October 02, 2023
In the Fifties, television destroyed radio, many of whose stars were themselves survivors of the death of vaudeville, and persisted through radio and into film: The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields. And many of the first movie stars had come first from the...
Ryan Murphy Threatens to Sue Writers Guild Strike Captain July 07, 2023
Ryan Murphy, in a letter from his attorney to the leadership of the Writers Guild of America, threatened litigation against Warren Leight, an East Coast strike captain and Strike Rules Compliance Committee member who has subsequently forfeited those ...
You Should Pay Attention to the Hollywood Writers’ Strike May 09, 2023
The picketing has begun. After weeks of negotiations, Hollywood screenwriters have decided to strike. According to the Writers Guild of America, the union representing film and television writers, members are gathering in front of the offices of majo...
Writers Like Me Have Shut Down Hollywood May 05, 2023
On Tuesday, the first day of the strike by the members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), a tweet posted by writer Emily St. John Mandel went viral. It featured a photograph of a picket sign bearing a tongue-in-cheek threat: “Pay Your Writers or ...
Inside the Writers Strike May 04, 2023
Matt is joined by writer, TV host, and WGA negotiation committee member Adam Conover to break down what it has been like in the negotiation room from the WGA perspective over the last few months leading up to the strike. They discuss how far apart bo...
As Writers Strike, Will Viewers Notice? May 03, 2023
Hollywood writers are on strike for the first time in 15 years.But the dramatically changed landscape that inspired the walkout — an industry that’s focus-shifted to streaming content — is also going to make it tougher for viewers to even notice thei...
Why Are TV Writers So Miserable? May 01, 2023
Possibly the most famous telegram in Hollywood history was sent in 1925, when Herman J. Mankiewicz, the future co-writer of “Citizen Kane,” urged his newsman friend Ben Hecht to move West and collect three hundred dollars a week from Paramount. “The ...
