Talking About the Writer’s Strike
Original airdate: December 7, 2007
On November 5th, 2007 the Writers Guild of America officially put down their pens and picked up their picket signs. Since that day, the cinematic scribes have shut down Hollywood, put the late night talk shows into repeats, stopped a presidential debate and kept every syndicated radio show hypothesizing about its outcome for five weeks. But what is it really all about? 
In the 80’s the Writer’s Guild of America accepted a token residual for the re-release of their work on home video. The digital future holds billions in potential revenue for the studio owning conglomerates but where do the writers fall in this category? The producers say that the future of downloading video is too tentative to sign any type of official agreement. The once burnt writers are crying, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.â€
My guest this week, Richard Fine, is a Professor of English and former chair of the English Department at VCU, where he has taught since 1979. He was educated at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. He routinely teaches courses in 20th century American literature as well as courses in film and film history. He is the author of “West of Eden: Writers in Hollywood, 1928-1940″ and “James M. Cain and the American Authors Authority,” an account of the controversial attempt to organize American writers nationwide in the late 1940s.
On this show we discuss the long history of writers versus producers and why what they do is so unique and difficult. At the end of the show, Mr. Fine gives a stunning speech on the necessity of good writers and why they will always be “at a premium.â€
Richard Fine is also the founding director of VCU’s innovative Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop, a month-long program held at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland every other summer, and has been a visiting professor at two different French universities. He is currently at work on two quite varied projects, one about the doctrine of moral rights as it relates to intellectual property law in France and the United States, and the other a study of how the American press related to the military during the Second World War.
Thanks for tuning in.
LizÂ
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