Rhetoric draws on . . . scripts, of course

Today the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers convene for the third consecutive day to re-parse their complicated contract proposals after three weeks of cinched purse strings, imploding productions, staff firings, barbed rhetoric and monotonous picketing. With both sides honoring a media blackout, little is known about how substantive progress has been since Monday, but spirits, for the moment at least, generally seem more upbeat.

Enthusiasm was certainly the mood Nov. 20, when the guild rode out to Thanksgiving break with its labor solidarity march, which was buoyed by its collective purpose and a new hope for the restart of talks with the studios and networks. The Hollywood Boulevard rally was impressive for its turnout (3,000 to 4,000 people), breadth of supporters (actors, musicians, janitors, nurses, teachers, service employees, steelworkers) and circus atmosphere (a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like miming next to a brass band playing “Hooray for Hollywood”).

It was also notable for some of its peculiar oratory, as several speakers rallied the crowd from a raised platform surrounded by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hooters and a gaggle of rotund, perplexed tourists.

Actress Sandra Oh and guild negotiating Chairman John F. Bowman get high marks for impassioned, articulate speeches, with the latter throwing out the instant classic, “Show us some soul and we’ll show you some flexibility.” (Which followed his less elegant but more forceful, “Pay us and we’ll shut up and go back to work.”)

But I question the wisdom of Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind”) building his speech around the theme that everyone in his life, from middle through grad school, suggested that he stop writing because he wasn’t any good. Clearly, that he refused to stop until the eve of the strike was meant to communicate his dedication to the cause. But the fact that “Angels & Demons,” his most recent script, was the first planned studio tentpole to get torpedoed during the strike because the screenplay wasn’t ready may have sent a more consistent message.

Then Teamster Local 399 secretary-treasurer Leo Reed capped his jagged two-fisted speech with, “If they don’t give you what you want, you take it -- that’s how the Teamsters do it.” I fully expected Reed to continue: “They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue -- that’s the Chicago way.” (to paraphrase “The Untouchables” dialogue of David Mamet, who, come to think of it, should be invited to speak at the next rally.)

One guild negotiating committee member, speaking as the rally broke up, took a more conciliatory stance with regard to the impending meetings with the AMPTP. “They’re about to find out how reasonable we are,” he said, noting that for the first time there would be third-party referees in the room. “They never had the opportunity before because they were never really negotiating.”

“Reasonable” has been the most common adjective used by the guild to describe its contract demands. Which is why WGAw President Patric M. Verrone’s rally closer was such a head-scratcher.

Verrone, usually an adept and funny speaker, closed the event by quoting Robert Towne’s “Chinatown” script, which, given its immortal stature, should have been a spirited clincher. But the line he chose, in response to the rhetorical question “What do we want?” was: “The future, Mr. Gittes, the future.”

While sensible in the contemporary context of digital revenue sharing, it cast the WGA in the role of the incestuous, megalomaniacal, greedy murderer played to such skin-crawling perfection by John Huston -- and not the witty, cynical, truth-seeking antihero played by Jack Nicholson. Not that anyone asks for my input, but it seems to me that a more effective choice would have been to paraphrase a line by a desperate J.J. Gittes: “They’re rich! Do you understand? They think they can get away with anything!”

Lumet pens original screenplay

For Hollywood’s greatest artists, ambition never dims, it broadens and brightens as it seeks new means of expression. Exhibit A: Directing icon Sidney Lumet (“12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network”), who after 50 years of crafting taut, penetrating cinema finally wrote his first truly original screenplay this year at the tender age of 82. “Well, I’ve been busy,” he says and chuckles.

“Getting Out” originated from a newspaper article Lumet said he read 30 or 40 years ago about a prison psychologist accused of trying to persuade an incarcerated client up for parole to do “something nefarious” for him on the outside.

From that germ of an idea, Lumet fleshed out a pressurized psychological thriller about the two men’s relationship and compounded it with a mysterious femme fatale.

Lumet, now a jaunty 83, says he wrote the script as a way to keep himself occupied during the eight weeks he waited for the sound mix to be completed on his latest just-released directorial effort, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” written by Kelly Masterson (just nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best first screenplay). He’s casting “Getting Out” for a potential January shoot as the first of a new two-picture deal for “Devil” producers Paul Parmar and Michael Cerenzie.

Lumet has been nominated for an Oscar four times as a director and once as a screenwriter, for co-adapting “Prince of the City” with Jay Presson Allen. (He was handed an honorary award by the academy in 2005.) He has also written or co-written “Q&A;,” “Night Falls on Manhattan” and “Find Me Guilty”; all were book adaptations or substantially based on real-life source material.

“It’s very easy for me to talk about New York cops, because I know them well,” Lumet says. “I don’t write about Louis XIV, let’s put it that way. This is a little tentative step out into slightly more adventuresome dramatic writing for me, and I’ll be delighted if it works.”

And if it doesn’t, well, that’s where having five decades of experience comes in handy.

“As you know, the Chinese honor their older people; we put them out on an ice floe like the Eskimos,” he says and laughs. “And with global warming that ice floe doesn’t last very long. I mean, what’s anybody gonna say? ‘He failed.’ And as painful as that is, I’ve failed enough times to know that it passes. So go ahead, do your work and stop worrying about it.”

What a time for a breakthrough

In the earliest stages of a Hollywood career, it’s a necessity to exploit any chance to increase your public stature among industry players. So if you’re a young writer-director who’s somehow managed to make a movie that will get a theatrical release, however limited, capitalizing on that moment is key to advancing your filmmaking ambitions. So what do you do if your little debut film hits when the entire industry is distracted and hamstrung by the most impactful talent strike in 19 years?

This is the reality that 26-year-old writer-director Miles Brandman is facing with his tiny drama, “Sex and Breakfast,” based on a short film he made at Emerson College a few years ago. Brandman scraped together $400,000 and over 15 days last summer shot his ensemble story about two struggling couples that experiment with group sex. And the producers have managed to secure a weeklong local theatrical run starting Friday at the Laemmle Sunset 5.

Since Brandman has yet to acquire an agent or manager, this showing should be the perfect window through which to catapult himself to the next phase of his career. But those potential meetings and new assignments (not to mention guild membership) may be frustratingly inaccessible given the limitations of the strike.

“I like to think that maybe agencies and studios would be more interested if it was a marketable time in the industry,” Brandman says. “But I support the WGA strike completely. I’ve got a lot more that I’d like to say and do, so if this is the sacrifice that’s made at this time then maybe that’s OK. And when this is over, maybe I’ll be able to figure out how to do it again.”

Scriptland is a weekly feature on the work and professional lives of screenwriters. Please e-mail any tips or comments to fernandez_jay@hotmail.com.