The strike has been fun

• email this story
• read comments (5)
• post a comment
• 
  
  

When the WGA strike ends early next month a lot of creatives are going to look back on this brief turbulence as one of the warmest and happiest community periods of their lives. Because suddenly there won't be a picket line to go to or a march to attend, and it'll be back to struggle and loneliness before a flat screen for writers and budget meetings and power lunches and getting their car detailed by their favorite detail guy for producers.

Strikers won't be laughing, lobbing quips at visiting reporters, shooting YouTube videos and making each other feel cared for and mutually supported and, hey, even important...the joy will be gone. Because left to its own devices, L.A. is a lonely town. It's not some social-cultural cyclone like New York or Paris or London...it's about people sitting inside their homes and apartments sweating it out and, okay, now and then instant messaging or e-mailing or texting each other. But almost always in solitude.

"Striking in Hollywood -- at least short term -- is not that bad," N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes wrote today. "A lot of strikers say they are enjoying networking, taping YouTube videos, organizing theme days and dreaming up placard slogans.

"The studios think we are having a horrible time out here," Richard Potter, a screenwriter who made Strike Dancing, a YouTube video showing pickets bebopping in formation to "Play That Funky Music, White Boy," tells Barnes. What's actually happening, he said, is "we're having a great time."