New Plot Twists in the Writers’ Strike : Growing Debts and Despair Are the Marks Left on Many Lives

The economic impact of the 19 1/2-week-old Hollywood writers strike is difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure with any accuracy.

Chuck Slocum, director of industry analysis for the Writers Guild of America, estimates that the loss of 22 TV episodes last season cost the TV networks, studios and independent production companies $33 million in revenues. Revenues from next season’s TV programming can still be recovered, he says.

“We are just now to the point where production is being hit for the fall,” he says. If the strike is settled soon, Slocum figures, the net loss to the industry will be minimal.

But even rough estimates like that do not take into account the loss of revenues by businesses that depend on Hollywood customers, such as restaurants, retail stores and photo labs. Nor do they acknowledge the economic hardships now faced by the writers and other Hollywood workers now unemployed.

Catherine R. Stribling, branch manager for the Bank of Los Angeles in West Hollywood and a member of that city’s business license commission, predicts that dozens of marginal businesses, and some individuals, will declare bankruptcy by year-end if the strike does not end soon.

“They never cut back soon enough,” she says.

What follows are descriptions of six lives that have been deeply affected by the writers strike. Their stories suggest that people and businesses that were financially healthy going into the strike will muddle through. But those who were barely able to pay their bills or were loaded with debt when the picket signs went out on March 7 face much tougher times.

Robert Carrington

The man from the collection agency is trying to be as patient as he can about Robert Carrington’s $6,659 American Express bill.

“I’m certainly trying to pay it,” Carrington says into the phone. “But I’m in the 20th week of a national strike, and that makes it very hard.”

“S-o-o-o?” the collection man interrupts. “Do you have any news about the strike?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that we march around with picket signs. . . . But I can tell you that I will start making payments of $400 to $500 a month as soon as the strike is over.”

“OK, Mr. Carrington,” the collection man says wearily at the end of a 15-minute conversation, “what you’ve said will go right here on the computer screen.”

Money problems are nothing new to Carrington, a 59-year-old film and TV writer whose credits include “Kaleidoscope” and “Wait Until Dark.”

He estimates his average yearly income at more than $100,000. As with other Hollywood writers, though, that can fluctuate wildly from year to year--and his earnings during dry periods haven’t supported the life style he set for himself during lucrative times.

Carrington admits to an innate inability to manage money. Last summer, he says, his finances deteriorated further after a costly financial settlement with his ex-wife.

All of which is why Carrington was counting on a $60,000 check for writing an initial script for a “Mike Hammer” miniseries at CBS.

“That money would have just brought me out of debt,” Carrington says.

But the writers went on strike, the project--and his check--were put on hold, and Carrington was left standing in his half-completed Malibu house answering phone calls from collection agencies. (Actually, it feels more like a tent than a house, since Carrington can’t afford the $750 needed to replace the plastic sheets on his windows with plexiglass.)

Still, Carrington remains loyal to the writers guild and the strike. For years, the guild has been good to Carrington--its health plan once paid out $4,500 to treat the dyslexia of his 8-year-old daughter, Daisy, and his guild membership has ensured him at least one protected asset, his union pension.

Carrington believes that conceding to the producers would be a serious strategic mistake, permanently weakening the guild. Both sides, he says, “know these are not money issues anymore.”

But if Carrington continues to lend his support, he’s also a bit more anxious for a settlement than some of his colleagues. At one recent picket, he and his dog Zeb attempted to lie down in the street in front of oncoming traffic before the police stopped him.

“It was the 19th week of the strike,” he says. “It hurts! How can everyone be so damn courteous?”

Susan Johannesson

Barbara’s Place is one of Hollywood’s more demure fixtures, two anonymous stories of brick and concrete slab along a commercial strip of Santa Monica Boulevard.

But for two decades, this typesetting/print shop has been a crucial pit stop for TV and film scripts on their way to studios. In these gritty production rooms were typed the barbs Jack Nicholson would utter in “Prizzi’s Honor,” the Reaganite observations of Michael J. Fox on “Family Ties” and the quirky humor of Tim Reid on “Frank’s Place.”

Now Susan Johannesson, who owns Barbara’s Place with her husband, George, wonders whether the shop will be around to type the TV scripts for the fall season--assuming there is a fall season. Business has ground to a standstill, 20 of the company’s 36 employees have been laid off, and those who remain are being paid for about one-third the hours they normally work.

“If there’s nothing on the shelves, they go home,” Susan Johannesson says of her remaining staff. “It breaks my heart.”

The assignment board sits empty, a row of oak desks are clear except for occasional ashtrays filled with cigarette butts; four copying machines--on a $10,000-a-month lease--sit idle. Only one employee seems busy, and he’s binding manuals for a cable TV conference.

Ironically, the Johannessons bought Barbara’s Place during the last big writers strike in 1981. The company was hurting then, too, and they were able to pick it up at what they thought was a bargain price. So they left behind their modest lives in New York and headed for Hollywood.

Now Susan Johannesson is having second thoughts about their move.

“I’m totally disillusioned with the movie industry,” she says, “the ups and downs, the uncertainty.”

Johannesson doesn’t know what the future holds. She was able to meet payroll last week because a tenant, subleasing space in the building, prepaid the year’s rent in an effort to help out.

“My insurance agent is paying our workman’s compensation out of his own pocket,” she says.

“We’ve poured a lot of money into this business. Now we have to make a decision: Do we refinance our house so we can put even more money into it, or do we just walk away?”

Paul Hanley

A sharply dressed Paul Hanley looks up from the work schedule he is preparing late one afternoon at the Columbia Bar & Grill. The schedule is a little lighter these days, he concedes. Business, while still strong, is not as brisk as it was in pre-strike days.

“Face it,” says Hanley, the restaurant’s general manager, “this is a one-industry town, and the steel mill is shut down.”

That’s the bad news. The good news, says Hanley, is that the customers who do come in are spending a lot more time and money.

“They’re ordering that extra cappuccino, that extra dessert,” he says. The average bill is higher, and, he adds, “credit card sales are way up.”

Columbia Bar & Grill is in the heart of Hollywood, drawing production crews on dinner break as well as the town’s usual fare of actors and deal-making producers. But these days there are fewer breaks to take.

At the Sunset Gower studios, which shares the block with the restaurant, daytime soap operas such as “Days of Our Lives” and “General Hospital” are still filming--apparently relying on non-union writers for scripts. But production on other shows--ABC’s “Who’s the Boss?” and Fox’s “Married . . . With Children” among them--is shut down. Moreover, independent production houses in the same neighborhood have had to lay off dozens of workers.

Gary Singleman

One of those laid off was 34-year-old Gary Singleman, formerly an audio engineer at Complete Post, which is right across the street from Columbia Bar & Grill.

Production houses such as Complete Post put the finishing touches on TV shows and movies after they are filmed. Since they are at the end of the production process, they were the last to feel the effects of the strike.

Complete Post officials declined to discuss the strike for this story. But Singleman estimates that about 20 of the firm’s 120 employees were laid off.

“I have to say Complete Post was real good about it,” Singleman says. “They held off to the very last minute. But they were left no choice.”

Now Singleman spends his days on the phone in his three-bedroom Canoga Park home, sending out word that he’s back in the job market.

“You can let the whole thing knock the wind out of you, but I immediately got on the phone,” he says. “There’s a little bit of work out there. It comes down to who is going to be the most aggressive finding it.”

Singleman doesn’t have a family to support, he doesn’t have credit card bills outstanding, and he has paid off his Jeep. His main concern is the monthly mortgage payment he must make on his house. “Luckily, I approached things in such a manner that I’ve got a little bit of money,” he says.

He is also a semiprofessional photographer. If he can’t find production work and his savings dwindle, he can at least bring in a little money by selling some of his photographs.

But Singleman’s ability to survive the strike financially hasn’t tempered his anger about the writers guild’s position.

“The writers have got the industry by the throat right now,” he says.

Catherine Stribling

From her loft office above the West Hollywood branch of the Bank of Los Angeles, Catherine Stribling tries to feed her customers a healthy dose of reality.

“People keep thinking a settlement is right over the horizon,” says Stribling, who dabbles in screenplay writing when she’s not managing her bank branch.

“They’re not preparing themselves. A lot of people who have not been financially astute are going to crumble by the end of the summer.”

Stribling watched her customers muddle through the last big writers strike in 1981.

“You do a lot of hand holding,” she says.

For individuals, that means counseling three things: Apply for unemployment; try to pay something, however little, to creditors as a sign of good faith; and, if things get really bad, figure out which assets to sell--a car, a boat, a house.

“A lot of people are cashing out their pension funds and loading up their credit cards,” she says. “People are having to mortgage their houses.”

The bank, she says, tries to accommodate its entertainment customers. In at least one case, the bank permitted a writer to pay back only the interest on an equity loan for the duration of the strike.

But for most of those in the entertainment industry feeling the pinch, commercial banks can’t do much to help--especially if they don’t have adequate collateral to begin with.

“They can’t just borrow on air,” says Stribling.

John Gay

Eventually the writers who need to “borrow on air” land on the doorstep of the Writers Guild, where John Gay and his colleagues on the strike fund loan committee dole out no-interest loans--due 90 days after the strike ends--and grants that cover the interest on outstanding bank loans.

Before the pickets went up, the guild’s strike fund had $2.5 million in its coffers. More than 600 loans later, the fund has about $1.5 million left--enough to hold out substantially longer.

Several days a week, a three-member team from the committee offers cookies and sweet rolls to loan applicants as they describe their economic plight. The sessions sound a bit like James Stewart’s reaction to a depositor run in “It’s a Wonderful Life”: Often, after an applicant asks for a large sum, the guild reviewers ask, “How much do you really need to make it through the next month?”

“We want to see them through their immediate needs,” says Gay. If they want more money, they are asked to come back the next month.

The applicants request money for everything from child care and tuition to rent and alimony payments. Robert Carrington even asked for a $505 loan to pay for the costs of surgically removing a splinter from his dog’s eye; the guild, knowing the dog Zeb from his regular appearances on picket lines, sent a check out the same day.

Gay, who has written feature films as well as major TV miniseries and movies, acknowledges that he probably wouldn’t make a very good loan officer. (The committee, for example, doesn’t ask applicants to cut back on their life style.)

But for now, Gay is being treated to some strange new insights on the human condition.

“It’s amazing how much single people vary on the amount they eat,” he says, not a little stunned.