Unfortunate lessons of a writers strike

THE real lesson of the 1988 Writers Guild strike, contrary to former Fox exec Garth Ancier’s assertions [“Will There Be a Sequel?,” by Lynn Smith and Matea Gold, Oct. 29], was that the networks could hire industry wannabes, from on-camera talent to behind-the-scenes staff, pay them a pittance, treat their workers like so much dirt, and still make a lot of money. And they realized that viewers could be fed absolute crap and still tune in by the millions.

Sure, it changed television. It just didn’t change it for the better.

Marvin J. Wolf

Mar Vista Heights

I have to say how disappointed I was at the focus of Patrick Goldstein’s Oct. 30 column [“Labor Vitriol’s an Old Story”]. While it is true that screenwriters can be contentious, mercurial and abrasive, they are nothing compared to directors, actors and (most of all) producers and studio execs. To cast the writers in this light and not the producers is disingenuous.

Put it in a different perspective. Imagine that the Los Angeles Times actually started making money hand over fist and then demanded that its writers take a 40% salary cut. Forever.

During the golden era of the studio system, there were eight principal players. Today, there are five-and-a-half, and they are richer, more powerful and more dominant than ever. Do the world a favor. Please tell the whole story.

Michael Lewis

Los Angeles

I am charmed by Patrick Goldstein’s portrayal of my father, Herman Mankiewicz, as a labor activist. But, to my regret, he was, in fact, firmly anti-union in word and deed, a vigorous opponent of the Screen Writers Guild (he believed, among other things, that it needed an apostrophe) and an officer (and one of the few members) of Screen Playwrights Incorporated, a professional association formed to prevent recognition of the SWG.

While he was admittedly an enthusiastic drinker, I am unaware of the “many drunken escapades” to which Goldstein refers, though I know he was involved, when slightly buzzed, in a fender bender on Benedict Canyon Drive, leading to his only arrest and, presumably, to the acerbic encounter with the policeman Goldstein describes.

Don M. Mankiewicz

Monrovia

IT is a pity that the other major unions within the film industry did not coordinate their efforts with the writers and completely shut down Hollywood to trump the producers and studios over their greed.

The simple fact is, the financial pie has grown larger with new revenue sources such as DVDs, video games, online downloading, etc. The share of profits for the writers and all talent should be growing.

Instead, the writers are told something else needs to be taken away. This has been the case in the U.S. economy since at least the mid-1980s, as larger corporations have engineered our trade laws to pit the workers of the world against each other and drive down overall wages and benefits while making obscene profits themselves.

Jeff Softley

Los Angeles