Strike Tears Hollywood Hyphenates Down Middle

They are Hollywood’s hyphenates, on strike against themselves the past four months in something akin to occupational schizophrenia.

One moment they are active rank-and-file members of the Writers Guild of America picketing CBS or Walt Disney. The next they are management, fretting because work has stopped on their productions, furloughing longtime employees and discussing negotiations with the same studio heads and network executives they are striking.

“I have a foot in both camps. It’s a tremendous emotional tug of war,” said Gary David Goldberg, a striking guild member who is executive producer of the sitcom “Family Ties.”

A hyphenate is Hollywood’s way of describing people holding dual jobs whose titles include hyphens: director-writer, writer-producer, producer-director, actor-director. They are nothing new: Jack Webb directed, produced and starred in “Dragnet”; Ozzie Nelson produced and starred in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

Goldberg and another prominent hyphenate with close ties to producers and writers, Stephen J. Cannell (a writer and executive producer of “Hunter,” “Wiseguy” and “21 Jump Street”), have been active during the past week in something of a telephone-shuttle diplomacy between the two sides. The two offered a plan of their own Thursday to the writers, Goldberg confirmed. He declined to elaborate.

“We have reason to believe we are in an area where both sides might have interest,” Goldberg said. But, he added, “everyone is very noncommittal.”

During the 19-week-old strike, it has been the writer-producer who has been caught in the middle. And pressure on the hyphenates is starting to build as the studios begin pushing to produce shows and movies during the strike.

One studio, Lorimar, is ordering all of its executive producers back to work, a move that is expected soon from other production companies. Lorimar has said it won’t ask the producers to write but to get the shows under way, which might mean contracting for non-union scripts. The union has repeatedly vowed to fine or expel members caught writing during the strike.

In addition, the schism between some hyphenates and writers is growing as they question each other’s agendas.

Last month, for example, several of the best-known hyphenates, among them Steven Bochco of “L.A. Law” and Cannell, urged members to ratify an offer from the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers.

Instead, writers overwhelmingly rejected the offer, 2,789 to 933. The rebuke raised questions among many guild members about whether some of the hyphenates are more interested in getting their shows back on the air than in earning an agreement on foreign residuals and other issues.

“If they (certain hyphenates) weren’t conglomerates, they might still think it is a very good deal being offered even though the membership turned it down 3-to-1. In their position, it becomes a question of whether they really have the writers’ interests at heart,” said Burt Prelutsky, chairman of the guild’s disciplinary committee which reviews alleged strike violations.

Last week, relations between the groups were further strained when 21 dissident guild members, including some half-dozen hyphenates, asked the National Labor Relations Board to invalidate guild rules restricting their ability to quit the union.

At the same time, moderate hyphenates argue that a large number of writers who rarely write anything enjoy a disproportionate amount of clout in the guild. Indeed, the guild, citing potential conflicts of interest, limits the influence of hyphenates by prohibiting them from serving on the guild negotiating committee except as “hyphenate-observers” who can’t vote.

No one knows how many hyphenates there are. Guild leaders say that as many as half of their members probably worked as some kind of hyphenate during their careers.

Here is what life has been like during the strike for three of Hollywood’s hyphenates based on interviews with them:

Stephen J. Cannell

At the end of the television programs he produces, Cannell is shown feverishly typing, then tearing the sheet of paper from his typewriter carriage. The message is clear: Cannell, 47, wants to be thought of as a writer more than anything else.

“I do it because I’ve never wanted to be perceived as a suit,” he said.

It’s a message he has largely failed to get across to many strikers. Writers such as Prelutsky say Cannell is more producer than writer because, they say, he earns most of his money that way. And, they note, Cannell’s production company is also a member of the producers’ alliance.

Cannell symbolizes the superstar hyphenate who has emerged in television the past decade. Besides writing scripts, Cannell oversees a $150-million-a-year production operation. Others in the same league include such hyphenates as Bochco and Michael Mann of “Miami Vice.” Cannell said he resents it when people label him as a producer instead of a writer.

“I’ve been a loyal member of the guild for some 20 odd years. I am not 99% a producer. I am a writer first,” he said.

Cannell said his feelings have been hurt by the distrust he has felt from other writers during the strike. Last month, as Cannell spoke to TV cameras outside a guild meeting, several remarks were directed to him from nearby strikers. One asked: “Is that the Canadian?”

The reference is to Cannell’s shipping large quantities of work to Canada over the years, where production costs have been cheaper than in Hollywood. Cannell says the work would have been too expensive to do domestically.

Cannell believes television is in deep trouble with advertising revenues and ratings falling, networks cutting back on the license fees they pay producers and inroads made by cable television.

“This is not the time to strike at an industry that is bleeding to death,” he said.

Still, he is not about to break rank with the guild:

“There is constant suspicion that a writer-studio head such as myself will bolt and start churning out scripts. I should not be branded with that suspicion because I am absolutely innocent.”

Although Cannell said he thinks about his shows, he is not writing out scripts or ideas. He took a vacation to Yugoslavia and is spending time with his 6-year-old daughter, driving the car pool that takes her to her dance classes. He also said he decided during the strike to start writing a novel.

“I’ve been sort of inactive for the first time in my life,” he said.

Gary David Goldberg

For Goldberg, 44, the only visits during the strike to the Paramount Studios set where “Family Ties” is produced have been to play a couple of pickup games of basketball on the court he had built there.

“I had to make a clean break and just say ‘Family Ties’ is shut down for the duration of the strike,” he said.

Goldberg has instead spent his time at home, caring for his 4-year-old daughter and spending hours on the phone using what influence he has to break the deadlock.

In particular, Goldberg and Cannell have been working together to try to use their contacts in the writers guild and among producers to end the strike.

“We may be the only two people who can knock on the doors of both producers and writers and not get shot at. We’re seeking an armistice, not a victory for either side,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg’s behind-the-scenes work Thursday forced him to postpone for a day his flight to New England for the weekend wedding of his “Family Ties” star Michael J. Fox to actress Tracy Pollan.

Like many hyphenates, Goldberg maintains that he is a loyal guild member.

“My heart is with the writers. I’m a writer who produces shows, not a producer who writes shows,” he said.

But at the same time, he feels some loyalty to the producers who have helped make him successful. Even though Goldberg is on strike, he and Frank Mancuso, chairman of Paramount Pictures, chat frequently and were scheduled to have dinner last week before plans were canceled when Mancuso had to attend a meeting of the board of directors of Gulf & Western, Paramount’s parent.

“Paramount Studios has been home to me for the last seven years with a capital H,” Goldberg said. “The loyalty I feel to them as a studio is what I would feel to the writers guild.”

Robert Eisele

A former junior college teacher who wrote plays, Robert Eisele, 40, is a new hyphenate. Only a year ago he graduated from a story editor on “Crime Story” to a producer and writer of “The Equalizer.”

Eisele is still uncomfortable in the quasi-management role of the hyphenate, especially when he has to consider ideas and scripts written by writers who are desperate, as he was a few years ago, to sell their work.

“I get an odd feeling when I am hearing a pitch and there is a quiet desperation. I know the individual needs the work. You are for the moment removed from being a true rank-and-file writer,” Eisele said.

Eisele said one of the advantages to him of being a hyphenate is having control over what he writes, leaving him free of the frustration many writers feel of having their work altered during production. Another is the job security and the money--a hyphenate can make $200,000 to $400,000 a year. Some of the superstar hyphenates make several times that.

Because he is a new hyphenate, Eisele said, he feels a closer bond to writers than he does to producers and is determined to side with the guild throughout. He said he has made it clear to Universal Television that he won’t do production work on “The Equalizer” that might have the effect of helping to weaken the strike.

Most of Eisele’s time during the strike, when not picketing, has been spent caring for his daughter born March 26. He notes with irony that she “is about as old as the strike.”

Eisele’s normal pre-strike day would be working from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., with more work on weekends. Last week, he went backpacking.

He also is writing poetry and plays, but said he is refraining from thinking about the series.

“Ideas do percolate. But I do not sit down and write one line of a story. That is how serious I take this strike,” Eisele said.