Letters to the Editor: How Hollywood writers can turn struggles into art and solidarity

To the editor: Stacy Perman’s excellent piece on Hollywood writers cites the travails of many of the most famous names who came from literature and the stage.

It should be noted, however, that many of those same writers, at least for posterity, had the last laugh. Their Hollywood ordeals served as grist for some of their finest fiction, including Christopher Isherwood (“Prater Violet”), Aldous Huxley (“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”), Clifford Odets “(The Big Knife”), F. Scott Fitzgerald (the unfinished “The Last Tycoon”) and Nathanael West (“The Day of the Locust”).

Peter Rainer, former L.A. Times film critic, Santa Monica

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To the editor: All screenwriters can relate to Quentin Tarantino’s experience on “Natural Born Killers,” where the director rewrote his script and then blamed him for the movie’s critical failure. I wish Tarantino would extend the same empathy to his colleagues and join the Writers Guild of America. Then he could truly stand with and speak for us.

J.B. White, Writers Guild of America West member, Ojai