Long ass thread about why I'm NOT voting YES on the WGA SAV.
I've been poor my entire life. I moved to LA with no financial support system, ended up living in my car for two months, before finally landing an assistant job on a long-running show (CSI).
STRIKE DISCOUNT THREAD (if you hear of discounts for WGA members, let me know or post here)
So far:
ROADSIDE TACO (right by Universal) is offering 25% off w/ membership card.
BLUE COLLAR (on Fairfax by WGA) is doing $8 old fashioneds w/ card.
When the Strike Authorization Vote percentages are announced, I hope everyone realizes that for every YES vote counted, there's probably another out of work writer like me who whole-heartedly supports this campaign even though we don't have a voice in it.
So now, if you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I'm not voting YES. Because I'm not eligible to vote in this campaign. Because I haven't made enough MBA covered earnings in the last 6 years. Because the jobs are too scarce.
Not to be petty and make this about me, but back in April, a week before the strike was called, an editor from the
@nytimes
approached me to write a guest essay for the opinion section. (quick 🧵)
How could they when every week of employment needs to be stretched to last?
The studios have the money to pay us, they just don't want to. We're not a priority. They're diminishing the role writers play, even though without us, these characters and shows would not exist.
INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT PICKETING INFORMATION
If we end up striking, and you're looking for love, be sure to identify yourself on the picket lines accordingly:
BLUE = interested in men
PINK = interested in women
BLUE/PINK COMBO = interested in whatevs
Tell your single friends!
Minimum room size isn't just about having bigger writers' rooms. It's about securing our health and pension. It's about training the next generation of showrunners so we can even have TV shows a decade from now. I don't understand why anyone is still confused by this.
That is no longer true. Almost all of my low and mid-level writer friends are out of work right now. Many of them have never been to set. Most of them have side-hustles. NONE of them own houses or send their kids to private school.
In this impossible-to-break-into industry, we were once promised that if we did the impossible, if we got ourselves in, then there was a path, a more or less fair path to success.
I made so much money THAT year. And it was during the pandemic so I was barely spending anything. But it was 27 weeks of income that has now had to last me another two and a half years. This is UNSUSTAINABLE.
I have great reps. My agent and my manager are both fucking awesome. Whenever I ask them about a show I'm interested in, 9 times out of 10 they tell me they're only reading ULs or, "It's a mini-room, they're hiring people they've worked with before." Every. Single. Time.
BIG ADD to the grid today: HONDA OF NORTH HOLLYWOOD is offering a FREE OIL CHANGE to WGA and SAG-AFTRA members (regardless of your vehicle's make/model). Offer expires on 9/30 though. (thanks
@IreneMegan
for the tip!)
I went 3.5 years before my next job. That great year of income? It had to last 4. I started driving for Postmates. I offered script notes/proofreading. I started entering more contests. One of those contest wins actually led me to my next job. Yay!!!
Now some of you might be saying, "Sounds like Deanna sucks and no one wants to hire her." Maybe. The thought keeps me up at night. But I've also been developing multiple projects (free work) with my last boss, so I'm telling myself that I can't be THAT horrible.
For anyone feeling the creatives are losing steam in this fight, every single person I passed this morning on my 15 min walk to WB (a woman w/ her dog, a jogger, a construction worker, and a security guard) all STOPPED ME to express their support. That’s on day 91.
#wgastrong
It's important to remember -- even when it seems like the mainstream media is on the laborers' side, they're not (which is nuts because I've spoken to a few reporters during all this who are experiencing similar abuses). I guess everyone's answering to their own greedy CEOs.
I was staffed immediately out of the program. Yay! I made so much money that year. It was awesome. But then when the next season rolled around, all the program writers were replaced with NEW program writers. (Meaning they wanted us only when we were free.)
The entire time I was there, I looked at those writers, who all had money to buy houses and go to concerts and send their children to private school and eat all the fucking avocado toast they wanted to, and I thought, "one day, that'll be me."
Proofread your scripts, people! I’m a reader for a script competition, and I’m astounded with the number of GLARING errors. I just counted 33 typos in the first 5 pages of this script (and that’s letting some capitalization issues slide). What’s worse? It was written by a team!🧐
But then CSI was cancelled and I was unemployed. I scrambled to figure out another path to that future I had been given a glimpse of. I applied to contests and ended up getting into the WB Writers' Workshop, which I knew was basically a golden ticket to a writing career.
Now, the super paranoid part of me can't help but wonder if they decided not to run my piece back in April because a writer with maxed out credit cards and apartment windows that won't shut is more sympathetic than one who thinks $250K a year isn't enough.
CSI was great. I worked there for 8 (mostly 22-episode) seasons. (The first year was during the 2007 strike, so that season and our last season were cut short.) It was a steady job and I worked my way up from Post PA to Writers' Assistant and wrote 2 freelance episodes.
Showrunners! If you're looking for a Co-EP in your drama/dramedy room, I don't have the experience, title, or skillset, but after Captaining the shit out of Deadline's
#1
picket location during this epic labor movement, I've got the rizz to pretend I do. Also avail for LL work.
Where's the article about Ellen Stutzman who found herself unexpectedly thrust into this role and is absolutely killing it? Or Chris Keyser who has a cultish fanbase (myself included) because of his articulate and moving speeches?
A glowing puff piece about her reign of labor peace? PLEASE. A reign that has seen entertainment workers driven below the poverty line, working multiple jobs to continue to do the work they love. That's nothing to be proud of.
Since quite a few of you are asking, I'm going to link to the final draft of my essay (which was tweaked after we started striking bc they claimed they'd still run it the following week 😏). Keep in mind, it's old and everything in it's already been said.
I was bummed, but let it go because them's the breaks. As a lower level writer, I'm used to losing opportunities to upper level writers. But the irony of the situation wasn't lost on me -- what I'd written about happening to me in the TV industry had happened to me again.
At the time, I just wrote it off -- I mean, I complained about it on the picket line to anyone who would listen, but otherwise, I let it go. BUT NOW, with this Carol Lombardini article, The NY Times has gotten under my skin AGAIN.
To be clear, I'd be thrilled to be averaging that. No offense to that writer (who I'm a fan of and who made plenty of cogent points), but this felt a little tone-deaf to me, and completely refuted what the editor had told me the intent of the piece was.
But when the Bigger Name's essay was published, I was floored to read a paragraph where he complained that the average WGA writer makes $250,000 a year.
When
@1daring1
told us we were gonna end the season with a Stephanie/Adam wedding, I shrieked with delight. When it comes to Stephanie's love life, homegirl has had a rough go of it these past 7 seasons, and I’m glad we got to at least end
#GoodWitch
with her locking it down. 👰🏼♀️
If I have one life goal, it’s to get everyone to stop putting apostrophes in their scripts when introducing a character’s age. It’s 20s, not 20’s. Willing to fight you on this.
One last
#GoodWitch
thing before I go cry myself to sleep:
@KatBarrell
and
@KyanaTeresa
really knocked it out of the park. I’m so honored and grateful to have been a small part of this huge step forward by
@hallmarkchannel
. I hope the network continues to strive for inclusivity.
We had a lengthy discussion about what they wanted out of the piece, and the biggest takeaway was that they wanted to show the struggles of working class writers. The career had once been branded as lucrative, and they wanted to illustrate how infrequently that is the case now.
So SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters, AFM, and various international writers guilds have all pledged their support (I know I’m missing some).
#WGAstrong
AMPTP, tell me you’re a supervillain without telling me you’re a supervillain.
@theMalekHaneen
But I think you're missing the point. I'm not having fancy dinners or buying houses. I have to save every dollar I make for rent and my car payment and my insurance because I have no idea when my next paycheck is coming. I don't have any expendable income to invest in myself.
I wanna apologize in advance to my new followers. You thought you were following a WGA activist but this is really just a Tell Me Lies stan account with an agenda to nix apostrophes from ages in scripts
✅ DEANNA (30s, attention-seeking)
❌ DEANNA (30’s, unemployed and unkempt)
146 days and 1,662,109 steps later, we have a (tentative) deal. I hope it's a good one, because I'm not tired.
But also, I am very, very tired.
#wgastrong
For those following along at home, I finally crossed paths with
@johnaugust
on the picket line today (we picketed together a bunch at Paramount back in 2007 when I was preWGA).
These sick assholes thinking 5 months of no income is gonna break us just proves they haven’t been listening. I’ve been out of work 2.5 years, and this isn’t even my longest stretch of unemployment. They’re in for a rude awakening.
#wgastrong
@msdanifernandez
I will say, I was ecstatic to see Jennifer Coolidge on the line at WB today. And she hasn't even posted about it (don't know if she will eventually) but kinda nice to see that she was there, not for the photo op, but just to show up. 🥰
Writing on
#GoodWitch
has been the best job I’ve ever had. While I was only here for one season, I think it’s safe to say… I got just a teensy bit obsessed with Middleton and the Merriwicks. IYKYK.
#Goodies
WRITER TWITTER (particularly showrunners, but curious how everyone feels): if there's a project you're sooooo right for, is it tacky/cringey to reach out to the SR directly to make a case for yourself instead of going the agent route? Afraid of getting lost in a pile of scripts.
Next week's episode of
#GoodWitch
is my favorite of the entire series so far. In my (completely biased) opinion, it's more magical and more emotional than anything the show has done before. Can't wait to see if y'all agree!
#Goodies
🧵🧵Taking a page out of my friend Jackie's book, and decided to make a thread with some of the more unique perspectives I bring to a writers' room:🧵🧵
1/13
Thank you all for the support and for sharing your own stories with me. It's terrible that my path was not a unique one, and I really hope we can make some impactful changes in this contract negotiation.
#WGAStrong
@GoodWitchPosts
She donated her favorite flannel. Sean got it. We had a whole season 8 storyline planned where Zoey's on a mission to get it back for her. 😊
@TheJulieBenson
Not sure what you did for your original application, but when I did mine, I attached a PDF with a freakin' essay about my financial (and emotional) situation. Sometimes numbers don't tell the full story.
Minimum staff size. I keep getting asked about it. I myself didn’t entirely understand until the Showrunner Meeting. Even then, it took three people asking the same question until the pieces locked together for many of us.
It is literally for the survival of our union. Why?
Exciting news!
@kristinehuntley
and I are hosting another VALLEY WRITERS MIXER on May 4. Let's all get drunk and discuss the staffing meetings we did or didn't get. Please RSVP on the evite so we can give the venue an accurate headcount! xoxo
#WGAValleyMix
I'm so excited that this renewal has officially been announced so I can finally tell y'all what I've been up to all pandemic: having an absolute blast writing on this sweet and charming show. More magic is on the way!
Hey
@DrewBarrymoreTV
-- you probably think you're doing the right thing by giving your crew jobs to go back to during this rough time, but you're probably actually prolonging the strike and keeping THOUSANDS of people unemployed for longer. We're so close. Please reconsider.
The
@DrewBarrymoreTV
Show is a WGA covered, struck show that is planning to return without its writers. The Guild has, and will continue to, picket struck shows that are in production during the strike. Any writing on “The Drew Barrymore Show” is in violation of WGA strike rules.
@laynemorgan
I like to write something as my main character. It's an exercise, but occasionally ends up being something I use. If my main character is a musician, I write a song. If they're a politician, I write a speech. It puts me in their head, but even better, helps me identify theme.
Thank you everyone on the
#GoodWitch
team for an amazing intro episode. Thank you
@hallmarkchannel
for showing diversity & inclusion on screen. Thank you
@KatBarrell
for being a perfect scene partner. Thank you
#Goodies
for the love. We will not let you down. 🏳️🌈❤️
#loveislove
Timehop says this was only 8 years ago. Feels like another lifetime… but I will remember the feeling(s) I had when this script was distributed for the rest of mine.
When your favorite G-rated bakery deems your congratulatory sentiments “inappropriate” instead tell them you’re a local restaurant owner celebrating a new chef hire. Follow me for more life hacks.
#chefyuka
My girl just sent me a video from this day last year. We were sharing a (masked/socially distanced) bottle of champagne in her backyard to celebrate my new job on Good Witch. And now exactly a year later (in 1 minute) we premiere! 🥰🥰🥰
@bricoastal
@BethStelling
I watched her special last year, then immediately went out and bought a pair of black overalls that I've still never worn. If that's not influence, I don't know what is.
@GoodWitchPosts
The red haloed moon is doin a number on all the Merriwicks. Cassie's feeling guilt over the role her powers played in her parents' deaths. It's not that she doesn't wanna help people- she'd help people even without her powers, it's who she is. She's just exhausted and afraid.
As WGA wrapped up our negotiations, I knew I would still be a presence on the picket line for as long as
@TerryWilkerson
had to be. What I wasn’t counting on was the rest of the WB Captains and Regs feeling the exact same way. 🥹
A heartfelt thank you to our incredible Los Angeles
#SagAftraMembers
for joining us on the picket lines today. Your presence strengthens our movement and sends a powerful message! 🎭💪
#SagAftraStrong