WHIPPERSNAPPERS SNAP BACK

“This is a town in which every success story is lauded as singular and unique but in which failure travels in packs of hackneyed categories of complaint. I wish only that you might have seen fit to resist the propagation of this tendency in your article.”

The young network executive was angered by a recent column dealing with charges of age discrimination by a committee of the Writers Guild of America West.

In that column, I repeated anecdotes told to me by several older (post-50) writers who had been treated like old shoes by members of the so-called “diaper brigade” now running many of the network and studio production and story departments.

I received a lot of calls and letters, but the network exec was the only one to write in suggesting that many of the complainers may have been merely “pawning off valid reasons for not getting the job with a generalized harangue about us young whippersnappers.” No doubt, age discrimination serves as a handy defense mechanism for some older writers facing rejection.

But none of the people I interviewed is in that position. They are all well-established and busily employed. They were complaining more about attitude than action.

--A 70ish woman writer had been asked by a young production executive if she thought she could write a love scene.

--A married writing team (the husband is 65, his wife 58) had a TV series idea rejected because they refused to turn it over to a “hot young writer.”

--A male writer in his 60s said that he now takes his daughter to meetings with him and introduces her as his writing partner to put the young executives at ease.

There’s a saying somewhere: You know you’re getting old when your kids start treating you like you’re their baby. For many older writers, that is the way of Hollywood in the ‘80s.

Herb Meadow, who has been writing successfully for television since it began in the 1940s, said he had a recent confrontation with a young producer who became angry when Meadow made a reference to Shakespeare that the producer didn’t understand.

“I used Shakespeare to illustrate a point and he got very upset,” Meadow said. “He said he hadn’t read Shakespeare or any of the classics and he didn’t intend to. He said, ‘No history, no literature, nothing that happened before I was born is relevant to my life today.’ ”

Meadow, whose credits include the conception of “Have Gun, Will Travel,” said he isn’t romanticizing “the good old days.” There were always a few Philistines wolfing down catsup at the banquet. But now they’ve taken over.

“I object to the complete abysmal ignorance of people doing it (running the industry) today,” he said.

Douglas Heller, a reader in Hermosa Beach, asked, “Why is it only writers that the young execs deem to become too old to be in touch? Why not directors, editors, composers, art directors, cameramen, set designers, casting agents or producers?”

Well, the young execs probably would deem the others too old if they had to deal with them. But most of the craft people on TV and film productions are hired by production managers, often at the request or approval of their directors and producers. In those skill positions, at least, experience is still valued.

But the diaper brigade may be just as uncomfortable dealing with older producers and directors. Here’s a note from George Sherman, who has served in both capacities: “Your article--’The Inmates Are Running the Nursery’--is right on target. My associate and I ‘took a meeting’ at (a major production company) re: a concept for a series project with a young lady . . . in the development area. The first thing she said to me (was), ‘Why do you think a network would accept you? I’ve been in the business eight years and I’ve never heard of you.’ She was insulting to the point of embarrassment.”

Yes, she was. Had the executive looked up Sherman’s credits before their meeting, which would have been considerate, or before she opened her mouth, which would have been politic, she would have learned that Sherman has directed more than 100 feature films (“Johnny Dark,” “Comanche,” “Count Three and Pray”) in the last five decades and directed or produced even more TV series and movies, including “Little Mo” and “Man O’ War.”

Finally, there was this letter from a woman production executive who, because she still works in the business, will go unnamed:

“The treatment of the so-called ‘older writers’ in Hollywood is a scandal. I witnessed several episodes while I was a production vice president . . . . .They were so vile as to qualify as the kind of pornography that I ‘know when I see,’ to quote a justice of our Supreme Court.

“Writers are not catchers or quarterbacks. Nor are they, to both raise and lower the level of analogy, even gigolos; the fingers are the last to go.

“Stanley Shapiro just published a wonderful novel called ‘A Time to Remember,’ written from the point of a view of a man of 30. Mr. Shapiro has a daughter in college, but every word, every feeling is believable. It should be required reading for each executive with the power to ‘pass’ on a writer because of the age of his or her credits.”