Quiet! Script in progress

I didn’t move to L.A. to become a screenwriter; I moved out here for love of a woman.

And because that woman had needs -- needs that could only be fulfilled by 400-thread-count linens and celebrity facialists -- I wrote a script. And then another. And because I discovered that writing for TV and film sure beat what I was doing before that -- writing scary novels and Cosmo articles -- I joined the Writers Guild of America, where, once we’ve sold enough material to become eligible, all good TV and screenwriters go.

And although it’s really a union, we’re writers, so we like to call it a guild, which has a nice Renaissance provenance to it. We don’t wear doublets or anything like that, but we do like to foment rebellion (in today’s parlance, strikes) and engage in all sorts of intrigue. It’s lucky that L.A. has an ordinance against carrying a rapier. By last count, the WGA, West, had about 9,000 members. But if you want to know how many people in L.A. are actually writing screenplays, you’d have to get a full city census, then subtract the comatose -- and that would be your number.

And at this time of the year -- when all kinds of awards, most notably the Oscars, are being handed out -- virtually the whole town is as edgy as Michael Eisner at a Comcast picnic.

Especially because, in many respects, the life of the Hollywood screenwriter is usually so placid. It’s a life lived along a parallel track to normal adulthood. While other men and women are dressing up nice and going to offices, we’re generally getting up late, putting on a shirt that might have been worn the day before, sitting down with a couple of newspapers and “the trades.” The trades are Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, and some super-successful screen and TV writers, I’m told, actually get them delivered right to their homes. The rest of us usually meander down to the nearest Barnes & Noble, where we wait in line to read a copy without having to buy it. Professional courtesy dictates that you try not to leave coffee or cinnamon stains on it.

Spotting us is easy. That’s us there, in the baseball cap and loose-fit Dockers, grinding our teeth as we read about the latest monster script sale -- “Paramount Antes Up $2 Million for Spec Feature by 14-Year-Old Vons Bagger!” Last year alone, the guild registered 50,000 treatments, scripts and ideas -- and 182 movies were produced under guild jurisdiction. You figure the odds.

That’s us over there, too, slumped in a chair behind a laptop, idly drumming our fingertips on the rim of our empty coffee cup. If Starbucks didn’t exist, screenwriters would have had to invent it. Many screenwriters -- particularly the ones who have never sold anything -- don’t like to work at home. They like to be out among the people, where they can be seen, and admired, as they create their masterwork. This is called Screenwriting as Performing Art. The last time I was at the outdoor cafe of the Borders bookstore on the Santa Monica Promenade, the place looked like an Apple showroom, and twice I was shushed by screenwriters so immersed in the creative process that they could brook no disturbance. And going home to work, where they might actually have had privacy and silence, was apparently a nonstarter. (If a script is typed in the forest, and no one is there to see it, can it ever be optioned?)

Another simple, distinguishing mark of the screenwriter is pie. We like it. Show me a pie, and I’ll show you a writer shoveling it in. The great thing about pie is that it’s a time waster and a table holder, all in one. Writers don’t get together to eat, anyway. We get together to whine and moan; if a screenwriter had written the Bill of Rights, the right to complain would be the first one on the list. To that end, we need a place where we can occupy space for the maximum amount of time, for the minimum cash outlay. Go to the Palm and they expect you to order a $32 steak, eat it and get out. But go to Du-Par’s at the Farmers Market, and you can hold down a window table for hours, on the strength of one coconut custard and a decaf.

But what, you may be asking, do we have to complain about? So far this life probably sounds pretty good: work sporadically, be paid inordinately well (when you do work) and drink for years thereafter from a magical spring called residuals. (Residuals arrive, unexpectedly and unpredictably, in any denomination -- some checks are for $10, others are for a thousand times that -- or so I hear.) Just to give you some idea of what’s at stake, in 2003 the guild processed roughly $200 million in residuals payments. Which makes them way better than their closest equivalent -- unemployment insurance -- and a lot more dignified.

And dignity, especially at this awards-crazy time of the year, is never far from a screenwriter’s mind. The Writers Guild Awards were last week, and the Oscars are coming up, so there’s still a bumper crop of bitterness out there waiting to be harvested. When all of those around you are being nominated and celebrated, you just want to say, “Hold on one darn minute here! You want to know what I could have done if I’d (a) been asked, (b) was self-motivated or (c) had talent?” Speaking for myself, I wasn’t up for anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel robbed. The screenwriter’s sense of personal injury is as finely tuned as a bat’s radar.

Other topics we enjoy endlessly revisiting, simply to stoke the fires of our outrage? Ageism (“Just because I got momentarily disoriented in the meeting, and thought everyone was speaking Chinese, they dump me!”), the cutbacks in our once-renowned healthcare program (you get nothing, not a dime, toward your Viagra prescription), the general disrespect.

The one thing we don’t like to talk about is our work; it would be unseemly. If you’re actually employed, on a paying job, your friends don’t want to hear about it. (And for all you know, you’re rewriting the script your lunch mate was fired from the week before.) If you’re not working on anything with a guaranteed return, you’re reduced to talking about your spec (for “speculative”) script as if it is something you’re planning to complete one day. If you want to talk about your novel, that’s OK; every screenwriter believes he’s going to chuck it all at some point and write the novel that’s been itching to get out. These novels appear with all the regularity of the Abominable Snowman.

You can talk about money, too -- but not if your problem is where to invest it. Late payments from the studios, extra drafts for no extra money, DVD royalties that came to 50 cents -- that’s all perfectly OK. A show of misery is always a welcome sight. In fact, if it’s not money we’re carping about, it’s our rep. Indeed, to boost the image of screenwriters in general, the guild launched its 70th anniversary ad campaign, with billboards and all; you might have seen some of them around town. They include a line or two of dialogue from a famous flick (“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”) and an unidentified face (the screenwriter’s, in case you hadn’t guessed). But would you like to know the name of that unfamiliar kisser?

Well, we’re not telling! That’s for you to go to the library and look up! What are you -- lazy? Only a bunch of writers, miffed at their lack of recognition, would be so clever as to wage an expensive ad campaign that still doesn’t mention the writers’ names! Quick -- who coined the phrase “Your own worst enemy”?

And now, there’s also the big question: Who’s going to win what on Sunday night? A decidedly informal poll of the writers I found dining at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Westwood voted this way. Best adapted screenplay? “Mystic River.” A solid piece of work by a veteran pro, Brian Helgeland. Best original screenplay, the big kahuna? “Lost in Translation,” though there was some reluctance to heap any more blessings on Sofia Coppola, a young woman whose life seems too good already. Writers like to rectify, not reinforce, a cosmic imbalance wherever they see it.

Of course, if you want to quibble about these picks, no problem -- we’d be more than happy to kill a few hours debating them with you. You can find us, like the lost boys in Peter Pan, soaking up the sun in the middle of a work day, popping into the movies for a cheap matinee or hailing the waitress for another slice of pie and a coffee refill. If you’re a screenwriter in L.A., and you play your cards right, you never have to grow up.

Michael Jackson may have moved out of Neverland ... but we’re not budging.

Robert Masello, whose credits include “Charmed,” “Sliders” and “Early Edition,” teaches screenwriting at Claremont McKenna College.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The word count

54

Length of shelf space, in feet, devoted to books on screenwriting at Samuel French Inc. in Hollywood

26

Varieties of screenwriting software available from the Writers Store in Westwood

50,000

The approximate number of “intellectual properties” -- scripts, treatments and pitches -- registered last year with the Writers Guild of America, West

46

Number of classes on screenwriting offered by UCLA Extension, Spring 2004 session

$545

Cost for Robert McKee’s three-day “Story Seminar.” (It’s only $325 for “repeater” students.)

$90,000

The average income of the 9,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, West

45

On average, the number of new members admitted to the guild each month

24

Number of students USC admits each fall to the bachelor of fine arts program in writing for screen and television

62%

Percentage of customers (8 out of 13) using laptop computers in Insomnia Cafe at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday

2,130

The number of books, DVDs, software etc. Amazon.com lists in a search for “screenwriting”

7,000

Number of original scripts submitted for each of the first two Project Greenlight contests

17

Number of advertisements for screenplay consultants in the January-February issue of Creative Screenwriting magazine

$7.95

Price for a box of 100 Acco brass fasteners No. 5 (“THE brads used by Hollywood” according to the package) at the Writers Store

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They haven’t written off their day jobs -- yet

Ken Rotcop teaches screenwriting to everyone from detectives to puppeteers. Here are three current students.

STEPHEN PIERSON

Day job: Owner of Deja vu Gallery, an online and catalog retailer of Hollywood memorabilia.

Completed scripts: 4

Currently writing:

A Hitchcockian mystery about a photographer who becomes obsessed with a woman who disappears after he takes her portrait

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LINDA ROCKSTROH

Day job: First assistant director for TV and movies

Completed scripts: 1

Currently writing:

A romantic comedy set among the staff of an outrageous tabloid newspaper

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LYNETTE MORGAN NICHOLS

Day job: Employee relations for Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation

Completed scripts: 2

Currently writing:

A drama about a wealthy man and a temperamental Jamaican woman who travel back in time to prevent a personal tragedy