The Hollywood Writer's Strike! Strike Two! Strike Three! Strike Four?

When I heard the Writer's Guild of America was going on strike, I admittedly didn't know what to think.

I was just finishing up film school at the time, and many of my friends had come out in support of them. They would picket, petition, and blog along side the brave souls that had brought us such beauty as "Lost, Season 3" and "The Sarah Silverman Show." They would not write a word until the evil corporations would stop pillaging the honest, hard-working bohemians of the visual arts! They would join in protest and resistance until the all-encompassing-evil that is "The Studios" (lightning, evil music) gave the true auteurs what they rightfully deserved!

And of course, I just kind of stared at them with disbelief.

Let me first explain that I am a hobby-writer at best. I write to tell stories I want to tell, and not because I feel I am an artist by any stretch of the imagination. So when a group of writers felt their work was being abused, I supported their plight but still went about my day normally. I didn't go "pencils down" and stop writing, because I do all my writing on a laptop and pencils are pointy and scare me. But I still felt the WGA and all those poor, exploited, Dickenson-esque screenwriters were in the right for fighting back!

Then the weeks wore on, and things seemed at a very stale stalemate.

Now it almost seems like they are saying: "Pencils down! We will not write another word for the evil corporations! Except for late night TV. And the Daily Show. And some daytime shows."

Wait, weren't you striking a moment ago? Isn't making any kind of exception in essence "crossing the picket line?"

Maybe I'm the only one who saw the movie "Newsies," (and if you haven't seen it, go see it now!) but I was under the impression that the whole point of a strike was to bring management to its knees by not providing some necessary aspect of it's product. If writers are writing some shows and not others, then aren't the undermining themselves by making exceptions?

Yes, the writers deserve a standardized compensation for internet work, and yes artists have a right to compensation if someone else is profiting from their ideas, but all in all I have to say that the WGA is coming out less as the underdog and more so as a bratty teenager demanding that curfew be lifted by going hard-line in some places and lax in others.

So far the only "kill" on the striker's wall has been the Golden Globes, which was a sort of summer-camp staff award ceremony to begin with. If killing the Golden Globes was a striker's victory, then me spilling my coffee on a newspaper is contemporary art.

At the onset of the strike, the WGA and other film-groups sounded like they were going to bring the entire Film-TV-Industrial-Complex to a grinding halt by not writing anymore. And while we have seen the hiatus of shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Heroes," the networks still seem more than able to fill their time-slots. And the more "special arrangements" the writers make with shows, the less leverage they're going to have in the end!

It's almost as if they've worn themselves down by this point. TV and movies seem to have gone back to business-as-usual, and the strikers are still walking in circles with their signs. Jack Kelly would be ashamed of them (and if you don't get that reference, go out and watch Newsies already!)

As much as it seems that progress has been made and some kind of agreement might be reached soon, I can't help but feel like the whole strike went from self-righteous commitment to petty nitpicking rather quickly. But what makes me sad the most is the feeling that when it's all said and done, the viewing public will not notice a difference in the quality of our shows and movies after the strike has been settled.

And if it's just going to be more of the same, then what was the strike all about anyway?