Star power fuels striking writers
By Rene Lynch and Los Angeles Times
Hollywood's film and television writers fanned out across Los Angeles early Monday, setting up picket lines outside the industry's major studios -- Warner Bros., Fox and Disney among them -- and said they were prepared to settle in for what could be a long and costly strike.
The striking began in earnest in New York, with 30 Rock writer and star Tina Fey and others picketing outside Rockefeller Center on a frigid morning. In California, hundreds of writers took to picket lines throughout the area. More than a hundred gathered outside Disney in Burbank, many dressed in red Writers Guild of America T-shirts. The writers were handed lyrics to several pro-union chants, including, "Network bosses, rich and rude, We don't like your attitude!"
While many of the picket lines conjured up a jovial, party atmosphere as writers let loose their frustrations with negotiations that broke down at the eleventh hour on Sunday night, there were smatterings of ugliness: A picketing writer was struck and injured by a car outside the Sunset-Gower Studios parking lot, allegedly by a driver who witnesses said threatened to run over the strikers if they didn't move out of his way.
There was plenty of star power to go around. Talk-show host Jay Leno, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Oscar-winning Terms of Endearment writer-director James L. Brooks were among those lending their support on the picket lines.
"I've been working with these people for 20 years," Leno said of the writers he relies upon. "Without them, I'm not funny. I'm a dead man without them. There are a lot of misconceptions about how much these people make. Most of them are not highly paid. . . . I'm out here to support the writers. I'm on the writers' side."