Writers Wait Out Negotiations to See How This Story Ends

As negotiations to avert a writers’ strike dragged on Wednesday, the union’s rank and file waited it out in a familiar place: the figurative dark, given the news blackout that has surrounded the proceedings since April 17.

Some watched the late local news Tuesday night, expecting an agreement announcement. A few writers went down to the Writers Guild of America’s headquarters at Fairfax and 3rd Street, across from the Farmer’s Market. But no word.

And on it went into Wednesday, without much hint of growing militancy. Instead, writers were being writers. Many are unemployed--nearly half of the WGA’s members, in fact--so this entailed continuing to worry about finding work in a business that is cruel and fickle at best. Working writers planned vacations. Others, such as Dawn Prestwich, a writer and co-executive producer of CBS’ “Judging Amy” who was going over scripts in her office, went about their business.

Writers on “The Simpsons” did what writers on “The Simpsons” always do--sit around in a room and procrastinate as much as humanly possible.

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what will happen” in the negotiations, said Tim Long, a writer on the Fox series, one of the few TV shows currently in production. “It’s always most interesting to discuss doomsday scenarios. But there’s just a real vacuum of information.”

In place of real information, writers found themselves asking anyone and everyone for clues as to the direction of talks--their agents, fellow writers, and producers who presumably are sitting on the other side of the labor fence. For many, the prospect of a strike is an abstraction at best. Many are in their 20s and 30s and are new to a union and were still in high school when the WGA last struck in the summer of 1988.

But as a deal was rumored to be imminent Wednesday, most writers reasserted what the union has expressed all along: that the gains they are requesting, including a modest bump in residual payments when writers’ work appears on cable television and overseas, are hardly outlandish. Given this, few questioned the tactics of WGA negotiators--or the insistence that writers themselves be kept out of the loop for now.

“The feeling is that if anything remotely resembling a reasonable offer is made, everyone would [accept it],” said Bruce Eric Kaplan, a writer on the forthcoming HBO series “Six Feet Under.” Kaplan pointed to the writers’ request that the Fox television network pay residuals at the same rate as the competing broadcast networks.

While word began to spread that the economic gains for writers would be modest at best, some writers privately questioned whether averting a strike would be cause for celebration. Others wondered, too, if a multiplicity of issues ultimately undermined negotiations.

Nonworking writers, it has long been felt, could be counted on to vote in favor of a strike since they wouldn’t be losing jobs anyway. But among working writers, some issues are of more pressing concern than others.

For TV writers, cable residuals have the most immediate economic impact, given that many prime-time dramas and sitcoms will live on in perpetuity on the increasing number of cable networks looking for programming. Screenwriters, meanwhile, have reason to want a bigger piece of the pie from video-cassette and DVD sales of their movies. Also of importance to screenwriters: so-called “creative rights” issues, such as allowing access to writers on movie sets and the routine awarding of “A film by” credits to first-time directors.

Still, writers sought to stride a delicate line--maintaining on the one hand that the studios can afford a modest 3% increase in the writers’ minimum pay scale but on the other hand fearing the ramifications of a protracted walkout.

“I’m pleased that we seem to be coming to an agreement. I felt all along that it was possible. It wasn’t like our demands were so outrageous,” said Valerie Woods, a staff writer on “Any Day Now,” a drama on cable’s Lifetime network.

“I’m at a point where I have painters and cabinet makers coming in and out of my house every day,” said Andy Robin, 32, a former writer on “Seinfeld” who purchased a home six months ago. “ ... Everything is theoretical and abstract until you get a mortgage.”

As someone who has written for “Seinfeld,” a series sure to be sold into syndication many times over, Robin was naturally concerned about what increase in cable and overseas residuals the WGA could get. But as for less tangible markets, including the Internet, Robin said: “The Internet stuff doesn’t really hold water for me. I don’t really care about setting up frameworks right now, because I just think it’s embryonic.”

Expecting some type of an announcement, seven writers who had been working on the Fox comedy “Undeclared,” a new series slated for fall, left work and showed up at the WGA headquarters at about 11:15 p.m. They shuffled into the makeshift media center to see what was happening. Alarmed by the sudden swarm of somewhat scraggly scribes, three WGA staff members chased them down and escorted the small group out of the room.

“I guess we can’t even watch our own press conference,” said Judd Apatow, the show’s executive producer, as he was shooed out of the glass building. “We just heard that people were going to come down here at midnight. We just wanted to hear what’s going on.”

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Times staff writers Greg Braxton, Lorenza Munoz and Meg James contributed to this report.