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" The Tragedy [ By MARC NORMAN, cowriter of Shakespeare in Love] See, there&amp;#039;s this family, the Joads--they&amp;#039;re all writers and they&amp;#039;re out of work. Tom&amp;#039;s good-looking, a movie writer (I&amp;#039;m thinking Matt Damon), Ma and Pa are earthy TV writers (say, Jimmy Gandolfini and Chris Baranski), and there&amp;#039;s Rosasharn, who&amp;#039;s kind of celestial (Angelina Jolie?), and she&amp;#039;s pregnant with this big novel. They&amp;#039;re all traveling west on Route 66 for California with Grandma and Grandpa (retired poets--maybe Jack Lemmon and Debbie Reynolds), along with these millions of other writers, because they&amp;#039;ve heard there&amp;#039;s gud work out in Hollywood and the sun shines every day. In Arizona, they pick up this other writer, Jim Casey (Bruce Willis?), who writes religious documentaries for the Christian Network, and he and Tom become buddies. But now they start meeting cars coming back the other way. People are shouting, &amp;quot;Go back, give it up. They&amp;#039;s a big strike going on. The whole durn town of Hollywood&amp;#039;s shut down.&amp;quot; But the Joads keep going. They have to--it&amp;#039;s sort of this life-or-death situation. At the border, things are even worse. The California Highway Patrol is block-ing the road; they&amp;#039;re not letting anyone into the state without a signed six-figure studio contract. So the Joads wait until night, and they sneak around the bulls and cross the desert. When they get near Los Angeles, they&amp;#039;re cold and tired, so they pull into this Dillerville, which is kind of this shantytown of sticks and cardboard for unemployed writers. The next morning, the Joads wake up and find themselves in the middle of this big labor thing. There&amp;#039;s a studio executive in a pinstripe suit, and he&amp;#039;s promising &amp;quot;work&amp;quot; to any writer who wants it. He&amp;#039;s being drowned out by this picket line of writers held back by a bunch of deputies. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s an exploiter, a fascist, a capitalist running dog,&amp;quot; they&amp;#039;re shouting. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t take his scab wages!&amp;quot;  This old-timer leans over to Tom. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t you believe that one,&amp;quot; he spits. &amp;quot;They ain&amp;#039;t no DVD residuals, and the bastids ain&amp;#039;t even talking about the Internet.&amp;quot; The shoving gets worse, and there&amp;#039;s this riot. A big deputy grabs Tom by the neck. Tom clobbers him with his laptop. &amp;quot;Run!&amp;quot; Ma gasps. Tom lights out, along with Jim Casey. Days pass. Ma and Pa stay in the Dillerville with Grandma and Grandpa, worrying about Tom. They find a few days&amp;#039; work--writing party invitations, one-liners for cocktail napkins--but pretty soon the money runs out and Rosasharn is starting to get really huge. So they have no choice--they take a studio meeting. They get driven to meet this head of production out at his Brentwood estate. He&amp;#039;s waiting on this big yacht, floating in his pool. Development executives row Ma and Pa out in a dinghy to meet him. Mr. Big (De Niro--who else?) is frazzled. &amp;quot;Not just money--now it&amp;#039;s creative rights!&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;s shouting. &amp;quot;My ass! When I came to this town, you had to shoot Indians to get to work. What do you pinkos want next? Two and a half cents a word, take it or leave it. You don&amp;#039;t like it, I&amp;#039;ll get Mexicans.&amp;quot;  Ma and Pa take it. Mr. Big tosses them some scripts. &amp;quot;Take your pick. Change them or something. Whatever you people do.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, Tom and Jim Casey are hiding in the brush up on Mulholland, watching the sun rise over the city. &amp;quot;Wherever some big-time director is trying to mickey a &amp;#039;film by&amp;#039; credit,&amp;quot; Tom vows, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll be there.&amp;quot; Back at the Dillerville, there&amp;#039;s a big rainstorm, and Rosasharn takes shelter in an abandoned boxcar. This TV producer crawls in through the door--he&amp;#039;s beat up, his clothes are in rags, and he&amp;#039;s starving, thanks to the months-long strike. He begs her for something to eat, in this pitiful voice. All Rosasharn has is her milk. She unbuttons her dress and offers her breast. Sucking, he options her novel. The Cop Show [By TOM FONTANA, cocreator of Homicide and Oz ] Nick Fanelli is a Federal Negotiator. He&amp;#039;s tough, he&amp;#039;s smart, and--due to the demographics--he&amp;#039;s handsome, white, and twenty years old. Each week, Fanelli kicks ass, dragging the forces of labor and management back to the bargaining table, fighting for truth, justice, and an equitable compromise. But tonight, Fanelli faces his greatest challenge yet. Or at least that&amp;#039;s what the promos will say. His gruff but lovable boss, Barney Grant--a cross between Barney Miller and Lou Grant--calls Fanelli&amp;#039;s cell phone, interrupting Fanelli, who is making time with a Baywatch-like babe. &amp;quot;Get here fast!&amp;quot; says Grant, gruffly but lovably. Fanelli jumps into his Carrera GT and, in several adrenaline-pumped driving shots, races through D. C., finally reaching the Federal Negotiator&amp;#039;s office, right near the White House. &amp;quot;The Writers Guild is close to a full-blown strike,&amp;quot; says Grant. &amp;quot;Only you can stop it!&amp;quot; Fanelli nods. He knows Grant is right, but he&amp;#039;s just too damn modest to say so. A man of action, Fanelli immediately books a flight to Hollywood and schedules a meeting with the WGA. Trudy Philips represents the writers. She is sensitive, vulnerable, and big breasted. She tells Fanelli about the abuse that writers have received from producers and studios for the past eight decades. &amp;quot;And,&amp;quot; she purrs softly, &amp;quot;we&amp;#039;ve got a lousy foreign-and-cable residual package.&amp;quot; Fanelli nods knowingly. Next, Fanelli heads over to the Alliance of Motion Picture &amp;amp;amp; Television Producers and talks to Leon Wiseman, a network honcho. He&amp;#039;s coldhearted, all business: &amp;quot;The money is the money, but these quote-unquote creative rights, there&amp;#039;s nothing I can do about them.&amp;quot; Fanelli nods--it&amp;#039;s what he does best. Yancy Carlson, the Directors Guild president, is in the middle of shooting Air Force One II. He doesn&amp;#039;t have the time to treat the writers&amp;#039; demands seriously. &amp;quot;Fuck &amp;#039;em! We&amp;#039;ve got enough film scripts stockpiled for the next millennium. And TV, they don&amp;#039;t even need writers anymore--they&amp;#039;ve got reality shows!&amp;quot; That night, Fanelli flies home and goes to his favorite bar--a dive in Georgetown where they play hot jazz and don&amp;#039;t water the drinks. He slides onto the barstool, depressed. Diane, the barmaid, smiles at him. They&amp;#039;ve never slept together, thereby creating incredible sexual tension each episode. &amp;quot;You look sad, Fanelli,&amp;quot; Diane says. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s eating you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t explain why the Fox network pays less than CBS, ABC, or NBC. I can&amp;#039;t explain why some neophyte director gets the same possessory credit that Stanley Kubrick got. I can&amp;#039;t explain why there will be three versions of Law &amp;amp;amp; Order next season. . . .&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Baby, you&amp;#039;re a Federal Negotiator. For the big answers, you&amp;#039;ve gotta turn to the ultimate Fed, the only man in America who knows everything--the president of the United States!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;George Dubya?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, idiot, Martin Sheen!&amp;quot; Fanelli travels back to L. A., driving nonstop to the set of The West Wing. He tries to approach Sheen, but the ADs keep giving him the runaround: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s in hair, he&amp;#039;s in makeup, he&amp;#039;s on the phone with Emilio.&amp;quot; But Fanelli&amp;#039;s no dummy. He knows a brush-off when he hears one. So he climbs out a window, walking along a dangerously thin ledge, until he gets to the room where Sheen sits. Fanelli bursts in and begs Sheen to tell him how to solve the strike. But Sheen says nothing. It&amp;#039;s not that he won&amp;#039;t speak. He can&amp;#039;t. Aaron Sorkin hasn&amp;#039;t written him anything to say. Fanelli leaves, devastated. He walks the streets for hours, running into famous TV characters--Tony Soprano, Frasier Crane, Homer Simpson--all of them speechless. Fanelli suddenly realizes, &amp;quot;Goddammit, we do need writers. They are the most important people in Hollywood!&amp;quot; Fanelli gets everyone into one room at Spago--the WGA, the Alliance, the DGA, SAG--and tells them that the writers deserve everything they&amp;#039;re asking for. Fanelli&amp;#039;s speech is so eloquent, so moving, that the others, in tears, agree. Roma Downey suddenly appears in full angel regalia and blesses them all. Then she deep-tongues Nick Fanelli. He is, after all, our hero. And this is, after all, television. The Sci-fi Flick [By WES CRAVEN, director of Scream] The year is 2001. We open on a prestrike negotiation in a conference room somewhere in L. A. Things are getting heated. Everyone&amp;#039;s shouting, pointing fingers, using words like &amp;quot;force majeure.&amp;quot; Suddenly, without warning, a nuclear bomb detonates. We don&amp;#039;t know who set it off--a vengeful writer? a frustrated studio head? an embittered former child actor?--but the blast reduces L. A. to a postapocalyptic wasteland.  Flash forward six months. The town has been transformed into a set of warring tribes. The Actor Tribe inhabits Hollywood, where it practices bizarre pagan rituals, most notably reenacting the pastry scene from American Pie. The Director Tribe lives in the hills, where its members spend their days hunting down scraps of camera equipment and unused film. The Writer Tribe lives in caves, scrawling snippets of Mamet dialogue on the walls. And finally, the Studio Head Tribe lives in Beverly Hills, protected by hundred-foot walls of unreadable spec scripts. The Studio Heads have hired a squadron of apes as bodyguards (played by WWF members). The apes all have scripts they&amp;#039;re trying to sell.  Enter Maggie, one of the leaders of the Studio Head Tribe. Beautiful, toned, good at giving notes. One day, she wanders into the forbidden zone outside Beverly Hills, where she meets and falls in love with Scott, a fiery member of a small, obscure tribe, the Auteur Tribe, which can write and direct. This could be the key: no more pesky disputes over who gets the &amp;quot;film by&amp;quot; credit. Maggie brokers a rapprochement between the Auteurs and the Studio Heads. Filmmaking can begin again!  Except . . . a faction of the Studio Head Tribe hates the Auteur Tribe and feels threatened by the latter&amp;#039;s commitment to quality. They want to get back to making unmitigated schlock. So one night, the renegade Studio Heads wipe out the Auteur Tribe by poisoning its well of designer water. Maggie and Scott barely escape in their 1998 Jaguar convertible. They drive along the beach until they come to the now-dilapidated Shrine Auditorium. They stop, the reality of the situation suddenly dawning. &amp;quot;Damn us!&amp;quot; screams Maggie. The camera pans to a huge Oscar statue, half buried in the rubble. &amp;quot;We did it! We screwed ourselves out of half a billion dollars in revenue!&amp;quot; FADE OUT. The Sitcom [By JOHN MARKUS, producer of The Larry Sanders Show and creator of Kristin] They were the perfect young sitcom-writing team. Hansen and Pollock. Hansen, the Wasp, all single malts and tweed, was good at lobbing the deft bon mot. Pollock, the sputtering Yid, was funny 24/7 with the jokes and shtick. In their third season of the Fox hit Crotch!, the team was cleaning up. They even had a piece of Crotch!  Then Hansen drops a bomb on Pollock. Weekends, solo, he&amp;#039;s been penning a dark dramatic screenplay. Miramax, after a sneak peek, was pissing its pants. The script was absolutely perfect for Gwyneth and Ben, or Gwyneth and Matt, or, with a tiny rewrite, Ben and Matt. Hansen dumped Pollock. Then the writers&amp;#039; strike hit. Poor Pollock. With no income, two kids with cell phones, and a wife who shopped Rodeo Drive like a Kuwaiti, the man went belly-upsky in just two weeks. He had no choice but to call his old partner and beg him to take in his family.  Hansen, still guilt-ridden over their split, couldn&amp;#039;t refuse. And so he and his wife, the childless Wasps, welcomed the colorful Yids into their home. Think The Brady Bunch meets The Odd Couple. But smart, with heart.  And did it get wacky. Like when the Pollock kids, armed with Magic Markers, broke into the liquor cabinet and drew uncircumcised penises on the labels of every rare single malt. Or when Hansen&amp;#039;s wife, a Harvard-educated botanist, developed an all-natural herbal breast enlarger, and Pollock tried to partner up with her by pitching names for the remedy: Breast In-Plants, Nature&amp;#039;s Rack, and the more playful Chitty Titty Bang Bang. It was on the picket line, however, that the ex-partners tugged our heartstrings. At first, Hansen, affirming his new career, marched solo. Like everyone else, however, he couldn&amp;#039;t help but be charmed by Pollock&amp;#039;s indefatigable shtickery. Like the time he showed up with a picket sign that read CONTINENTAL AIRLINES UNFAIR, or when he wore nothing but a barrel emblazoned with HERE&amp;#039;S YOUR REALITY SHOW! You hadda love the lug.  So when Pollock asked, Hansen again couldn&amp;#039;t refuse. As soon as the strike ended, they&amp;#039;d pitch one last project as a team. In Hansen and Pollock, an episode of the show within the show within the show, the reunited team pitched to CBS The Brady Bunch meets The Odd Couple. And the day after Hansen and Pollock sold it, they were fired and Davenport and Lipschitz were brought in to write the pilot. The Soap Opera [ By KAREN LEWIS, writer on Port Charles and former writer on All My Children] We&amp;#039;re in the office of Buck Van Loften, square-jawed president of Mega Broadcasting. A bunch of lackeys await his word. &amp;quot;Good news, people,&amp;quot; Buck intones. &amp;quot;The writers have struck. Impress me.&amp;quot; Flop sweat flows like faux champagne at a soap wedding. Finally, one flunky, Tad, speaks up: He&amp;#039;s got an idea for a solution--but it requires a field trip to Port Chester General Hospital. Meanwhile, cut to the cluttered apartment of on-strike soap-opera writer Jancee and her sexy but innocent daughter, Hayley. Jancee&amp;#039;s been on a downward spiral since she was dumped by Hayley&amp;#039;s father, who happens to be Buck--a fact that she&amp;#039;s never told Hayley--after she caught Buck sleeping with a square-jawed male soap writer and tried to set his Rolls on fire. But at least Jancee had her career. Now she doesn&amp;#039;t have that. &amp;quot;Your father was a son of a bitch,&amp;quot; says Jancee. &amp;quot;Never trust management.&amp;quot; She then pops a bunch of painkillers and slips into a coma as she clutches her daytime Emmy to her chest. Hayley looks into the mirror--allowing viewers a window into her thoughts--and swears, &amp;quot;By all that is holy, I&amp;#039;ll find the man who ruined Mama&amp;#039;s life.&amp;quot;  Cut to Buck and Tad, who are at the office of square-jawed Dr. Milton Tetenoir, dermatologist for the Writers Guild HMO. Tetenoir reveals his research diabolique: He&amp;#039;s saved every mole from every writer who&amp;#039;s come to him for a biopsy. Then, a bit of Web surfing in the area of cloning, et voil\u00C3 --a squad of duplicate writers! The hollow-eyed writers emerge from a secret door, muttering words like &amp;quot;evil twin&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;amnesia.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You cloned soap writers?&amp;quot; Buck says incredulously. &amp;quot;Why didn&amp;#039;t you clone David E. Kelley, for crissakes?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;First, he has his own dermatologist,&amp;quot; Tetenoir replies. &amp;quot;Second, these people are good. They know how to write five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.&amp;quot; Buck shakes his head, leaves in disgust. Tetenoir falls to his knees, a ruined man. The duplicate writers have drunk him into the poorhouse. Seeking revenge, he shoves Tad into the writers&amp;#039; room, screaming, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s Michael Logan from TV Guide!&amp;quot; Anguished screams off-camera as Tad is eaten alive. Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of As the Strike Drags On. The Feel-Good Movie [ By JOHN HAMBURG, cowriter of Meet the Parents] In the tradition of Billy Elliot, Aaron Kaufman is the moving story of a father fighting for his very livelihood and a son who dares to dream.  Hollywood, spring 2001. The Writers Guild strike has spread through the town like the Ebola virus. In a modest eight-bedroom house in Brentwood, we meet one victim, Harry Kaufman, a screenwriter who&amp;#039;s had to trade in his Lexus for a 3-series BMW. But poverty&amp;#039;s not his only problem. His fifteen-year-old son, Aaron, has a secret: He wants to be a key grip on movies. Harry is shocked. &amp;quot;Why would you want some sissy manual-labor job?&amp;quot; he asks. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s wrong with the family business?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t wanna be a writer!&amp;quot; says Aaron. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to watch some twenty-one-year-old director whose only other gig was an &amp;#039;N Sync video get a &amp;#039;film by&amp;#039; credit on a movie I wrote!&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Hey, that connection paid off. Didn&amp;#039;t I get &amp;#039;N Sync to play at your bar mitzvah?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;So what? I want a job where I&amp;#039;m allowed on the set.&amp;quot;  This hits Harry in his gut. Though the combined grosses of his movies top a billion bucks, he&amp;#039;s never been invited on set.  &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what we&amp;#039;re striking for, Aaron. It&amp;#039;s why we had to cut back on Herv\u00C3\u00A9 the gardener&amp;#039;s hours.&amp;quot; But the stubborn Aaron won&amp;#039;t back down. Reluctantly, Harry gives in and drives Aaron to the studio to get him a job on the new David Arquette movie. As they pass the picket line, other writers pelt Harry&amp;#039;s Beemer with Peking-duck pizzas. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not a scab,&amp;quot; protests Harry. &amp;quot;My son&amp;#039;s the new key grip!&amp;quot;  On the set, Aaron straps on his tool belt and says, &amp;quot;Thanks, Pop. I&amp;#039;ll never forget what you did.&amp;quot; They hug. As he turns away, Harry wheels around and yells, &amp;quot;Grip, Aaron, grip!&amp;quot; after which he is escorted off the lot by studio security. We DISSOLVE TO:  TEN YEARS LATER ON A MOVIE SET--Key grip Aaron is now potbellied and suffering a slipped disc. As he lays down dolly track, he looks up and sees . . . Harry, standing next to the director. &amp;quot;What are you doing here, Pop? This is a movie set.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I know, Aaron. But we finally won the strike. From now on, writers are permitted on movie sets. . . . We&amp;#039;re even allowed to yell &amp;#039;Action!&amp;#039; once every two hundred takes.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s great, Dad,&amp;quot; Aaron replies. &amp;quot;Oh, and, hey, when you get a chance, can you take a look at this spec script I wrote? Being a key grip sucks.&amp;quot;  Harry and Aaron chuckle, then both spontaneously leap into the air, we FREEZE-FRAME on them in midflight, and . . . FADE TO BLACK. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a1224/esq0501-may-strike-rev/>