What I did during the strike

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Credits include "True Believer" and "Cape Fear" and the novel "Out There in the Dark."
What did I do during the strike? Well, kids, I picketed Paramount. I marched and I chanted.

"When I say 'union' you say power ... . "

The iPhone rang. My agent. "Are you working on a spec script?"

"Can't talk now." I hung up — they'd released the dogs. Phil Alden Robinson cried out: "Run!" We sprinted past the Windsor gate, heard them snapping at our heels. One lunged for Phil, but I beat it back with my WGA placard. Another block down Melrose, and we took refuge in Lucy's El Adobe. We were scared, demoralized. Susannah Grant led us in a song. I think it came from the end credits of "Erin Brockovich." We reemerged, formed an orderly line. Marched back en masse toward Bronson: "What are we doing at this gate? We got screwed in '88."

The iPhone rang again. My lawyer. "What about that project you're just supposed to direct?"

"Can't, I'm a hyphenate," I said. They brought out the hoses then. High pressure. Tom Schulman nearly floated away, north on Gower. I held out my picket sign so he could grab it, pull himself upright.

Marching resumed. Four abreast. Proud. United. The iPhone rang. My wife, your mother. "Could you stop at Ralph's on the way home for milk and lettuce?"

I said I could, racing toward my parked Prius, enveloped in a tear-gas cloud.

And that was just day one, kids. I'll tell you the rest when you're older.

Writer for "MASH," "Cheers" and "Frasier" who blogs at kenlevine.blogspot.com.

The great American novel that I started four strikes ago is almost done. I figure one more strike, two at the most, and I'll be ready to send it to my editor (who I hope is still alive; I haven't heard from him since 1985). So I've got a target date of 2014, but I'm close. Really close. I can feel it.

TV writer whose credits include "The Drew Carey Show," "Almost Perfect" and "Who's the Boss?"

Taking one's convictions to the streets requires a constitution not associated with indoorsy writer-types like me.

The first day, my picket sign gave me splinters, which led to an infection. Worse, before half my shift was over, I was dying for a massage. Turns out that four hours of shuffling in front of CBS Television City is hard on the back.