Listen up- my Academy Awards party was not canceled. That was a stupid rumor. The only person who bothered to show up was Cuba Gooding Jr and you can imagine how that went. Thanks for the support, jerks. Don't count on getting an invitation next year.

Eric Stangel

PS Oh, and we had onion dip and everything. 

by Steve Young

Signs A Nintendo Wii Owner Has Been Reading Too Much deadlinehollywooddaily.com

NikkiFinke's current high score in bowling is 206.

As reported here last week after talking with my sources in the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, Kosovo's parliament officially declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and democratic state" backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Kosovo will still be having upfronts, but the date is to be determined

-Eric Stangel 

IN the next few days we'll be offering some quality LateShowWritersOnStrike.com material that we didn't get a chance to post. Some might seem dated, but hey it's free!

And then there's this!

Everybody in New York City is doing their part to show support for the writers. I took a cab today, and I was pretty sure my driver hadn't showered since November 4.

Both by Bill Scheft. The strike's over, but he will forever be the Late Show Strike Captain

The blog will continue...

by Steve Young
 
I voted by proxy today in the vote on whether or not to end the strike.  Only after I'd filled out and sent my proxy off with Strike Captain Bill Scheft did I take a close look at the fine print.  What I read disturbed me:
 
PROXY-- In accordance with the Constitution and By-Laws, Article VII, Sec. 4(c): “Any member having a right to vote at a meeting pursuant to the provisions of this Section, who is absent from such meeting may vote by giving a written proxy to any other member who is entitled to vote and who will be present at such meeting, provided that a proxy may only be given to be voted at a particular meeting, the date of which is to be specified in such proxy. Any proxy purporting to authorize its holder to vote at more than one meeting is null and void.  By submitting a proxy vote, member agrees that WGA East President Michael Winship may at his discretion make love to their spouse or significant other, at a time and place deemed convenient by Guild leadership.”
 
Oh well, at least the strike might be over soon.

By Late Show Strike Captain Bill Scheft

I have been waiting to write this report for about 95 days. Saturday afternoon, I had the honor of attending the WGAE membership meeting, where we were presented with the terms of our tentative agreement with the AMPTP. The meeting was held in the Broadway Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel and there wasn't an open seat in the house. 800-1000 people. This is significant, but many of the Late Show writers were in the same location on the evening of Day 3. Only that time, there were maybe 200 people in the ballroom and we faced a dais made up of members of the negotiating committee, who spent an uncomfortable two hours defending their decision to call a strike and trying to convince us that they had at most a plan and at least a clue.
 
Same hotel, same ballroom, same people on the dais. But this time, they were not defensive. They were confident, proud and yet realistic. They presented the deal points to us unabashedly and spoke of what we gained and what we lost, as is the very nature of a serious labor negotiation, something this had not been until two weeks ago. They did not, as some members believed would happen, ram the deal down our throats. But they were frank. This was clearly a limited offer by the producers, and they believed our leverage (the Oscars, the rest of the current TV season, the end of the pilot season) was never stronger. To continue the strike to get a better deal without leverage until the SAG contract was up June 30 was risky, even reckless. No, the deal wasn't perfect, but as WGAE President Michael Winship misquoted Bill Clinton (it's actually Voltaire) "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
 
Many people had reservations and concerns about actual language and numbers. They were not shouted down. Their questions were answered respectfully. In many instances (like about the notion of sympathy strikes) people needed to be educated (like the fact that sympathy strikes no longer exist). But the majority of people who got up behind the three microphones set up in the ballroom did so to express their gratitude and admiration for what had been won.
 
An informal poll was taken over whether or not to abide by the recommendation of the executive board and negotiating committee and end the strike Monday or wait 48 hours for a vote of the membership. Overwhelmingly, members want to end the strike and go back to work Monday. (Out West, they decided to wait 48 hours. So, it looks like Wednesday.
If you had 100 days in the strike pool, congratulations!!! Collect at your local Writers Guild office, or any participating AutoZone....)
 
Since I stopped gambling 12 and a half years ago, I am no longer a numbers guy. I never cared about the specifics of the new contract. All I wanted was a system in place for a piece of New Media profits that could grow as the technology grew. Not something as in the past, the producers either ignored, stalled or equivocated away. As negotiating committee member Melissa Salmons (one of the unsung heroes in securing the interim agreement that allowed the Late Show writers to return January 2) said, "I lived in dread that the hated DVD formula (4 cents for every $29 DVD) would follow us my whole life. No more. This is a deal with movement in it."
 
I'll be honest. I was shocked. I went to the Crowne Plaza (accompanied by Thurber Award winner Alan Zweibel) pit of my stomach petrified that I would be in for five hours of rancor broken up by fits of righteous victimization. But it was just under three hours. Not one chair thrown. No scalding coffee in anyone's eyes. And we call ourselves a union?
 
Yes, we do. Ten minutes into the meeting, Terry George, the negotiating committee's bare knuckles Irishman, crystallized the journey that began as a Quixotic venture eight months ago and 98 days ago became a historic pursuit. "With this deal, we have defeated a tradition of rollbacks that began with the air traffic controllers." That was all I needed to hear about how far we had come.
 
I am a writer, which means my very nature is to be a self-obsessed isolator whose most free exchanges are among the voices in my head. If this is indeed over, the end is even more humbling than the hours spent walking in circles toward it. The best definition of success I ever heard was service plus faith. By our actions and the belief in our actions, we have taken care of ourselves and the generations of self-obsessed isolators who will follow us.
 
Enough. Grateful.    

by Steve Young

Just as at the November meeting, they had those hard candies with the jelly centers.  I especially enjoyed the pineapple flavor.  Ice water was also available.

more to come... 

FACTBOX: Provisions of screenwriters' labor deal
Sat Feb 9, 2008 9:21pm EST
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The following is a summary of key provisions in the tentative contract deal between the Writers Guild of America and major studios, stipulating how writers will be paid for work distributed over the Internet.

DIGITAL DOWNLOADS

The pact doubles the rate for reuse fees, or "residuals," paid for TV shows and films sold as Internet downloads, from about 0.3 percent of a distributor's gross revenues to roughly 0.7 percent. But the higher rates would kick in only after the first 50,000 downloads of a film or the first 100,000 downloads of a TV show.

This is essentially the same deal secured by the Directors Guild of America for its members last month. The Writers Guild originally had sought download residuals of 2.5 percent of distributor's gross, about eight times the current rate.

PRIME-TIME TV STREAMING

The deal establishes a new residual fee structure for advertising-supported online streaming of network prime-time television shows.

For a one-hour prime-time drama, the new residual would amount to about $650 per episode for 26 weeks of streaming, or $1,300 for a full year's worth of streaming.

But those fees would only be paid after an initial "promotional" window of up to 24 days of free streaming. A year after the initial window, the residual fee would jump from a fixed sum to 2 percent of distributor's gross revenues.

In the third year of the WGA contract, the favored rate of 2 percent of distributor's gross would kick in immediately after the promotional window ended, rather than a year later.

But the contract contains one further caveat to this benefit. It sets an "imputed" value for the 2 percent residual at a fixed sum of $800 for each 26 weeks of streaming in the first year after the window, unless the network's exclusive license for the show expires before then.

OTHER TV STREAMING

Cable TV shows are excluded from provisions that pay streaming residuals as a percentage of distributors' gross. Instead, writers earn a fixed sum, similar to those established for the first year of streaming broadcast network series.

But ad-supported streaming of "library" shows produced after 1977 are payable at 2 percent of distributor's gross receipts.

A union summary of the proposal did not clearly define what constitutes a "library" show.

MADE-FOR-INTERNET JURISDICTION

The agreement requires studios to hire union writers when producing made-for-the-Internet content, whether it be original Web-based TV shows or "derivative" material adopted from existing programs.

But the contract exempts low-budget original shows in which production costs are less than $15,000 per minute, $300,000 per program or $500,000 per series -- whichever is lowest.

According to leading TV producer and past WGA West President John Wells, the popular Web-based drama series "Quarterlife" is being produced for three times that much.

'SEPARATED' RIGHTS FOR NEW MEDIA

The deal preserves for creators of Internet content the concept of "separated rights" that already exist for creators of film and TV material -- retaining for them the rights to adapt that material for a stage play or novel. They also retain rights to characters they create for the Web.

TRANSPARENCY

The WGA is guaranteed full access to new-media deals, financial data and distribution statements to allow the union to evaluate and enforce the contract's revenue-based residual formulas for the Internet.

New media residuals based on transactions between related parties are subject to a test of "reasonableness" when compared to transactions between unrelated parties. The idea is to prevent the value of residuals from being manipulated through sweetheart deals.

Reuters/Nielsen

BY BILL SCHEFT 
     Promising stories published by the New York Times and the Associated Press Saturday indicated that we may be nearing the end of strike, thanks to the development of "creative solutions" to the most contentious sticking points between the Writers Guild and the AMPTP.
 
     Not only are the solutions creative, but scientific. Very simply, if Nikki Finke's phlegm turns green, the deal is a go. Brown, it's el paso.

Here's the complete color chart-

Nikki Finke Phlegm Color            Proposed Deal
 
Green                                        Go (or Good)
Brown                                        Shitty (or Bad)
Yellow                                       Proceed with caution
White                                        Strike ends Memorial Day Weekend  

By Eric Stangel

The writers strike has been going on for 89 days. To illustrate how long it has been, you’ll be amazed by how the world has changed since November 5^th

When the strike started on November 5^th…

…A gallon of gasoline was just $3.13

…Britney Spears did not speak with an unusual fake British accent 

…There was no such thing as “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinsky”

…Dennis Kucinich still thought he had a chance to win the Presidency… or even a Primary 

…Jessica Simpson was just an airhead, not an airhead bad luck charm for the Dallas Cowboys 

…I was not friends with Justine Bateman

…Jamie Lynn Spears was considered “The Normal One” 

…We all thought Hulk Hogan and his wife Linda had the perfect marriage

…There were no mysterious deaths which had anything to do with Mary-Kate Olsen 

We were so innocent then. If only we knew then what we know now (Justine, call me)