May 9, 2023 • 15 mins
Hollywood has grinded to a halt as another writers' strike starts to have an impact. We talk to a striking writer to see what it's like to writer for King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead, Just Shoot Me (and tons more) during the strike. Also, what is the life of a writer like in general? What's it like to work on these shows that so many people watch? Michael Jamin fills us in on everything.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Three best friends diving into the deepend of internet culture. This is the
news, joking by the action,and Hollywood grinds into a halts. There's
(00:22):
a writer's strike on for the firsttime at quite some time. That means
all those late night shows are justdoing nothing right now. I couldn't do
Saturday Night Live last weekend. Andthere's a lot more implications across the industry.
And I was watching some stuff yesterdayon this and I saw some of
the actual writers out there, andI thought, let's get the perspective of
(00:43):
somebody who is one of these writersin Hollywood, and somebody who is out
there protesting to try and get somechanges pushed through and work with the Writer's
Guild to make some things change,an update with the entertainment landscape as we
know it now. And so Isaw one of the most prominent folks out
there, this writer by the nameof Michael jam and we've got him with
(01:04):
us. Michael, can you hearus? Yeah? Hi, there you
are. I saw you out thereon the line doing your thing. Have
you been out there every day protesting? Yep? Every day. I try
to choose a different studio to mixit up. Yeah. Variety get some
new scenery in. And you aresomebody who's done a lot of work on
some shows that people definitely know.Michael has been a writer for King of
(01:29):
the Hill. You might have heardof that, Beavis and butt Head,
Marion Wilfred just shoot me Rules ofEngagement to cod dude. Rules of Engagement
was such a great show on andon. You're somebody who's been very successful
at this, and you even teachothers to get in the world of screenwriting.
Why did you fall in love withthis job? You know, when
(01:51):
I was a kid, like allI wanted to do is be I wanted
to be a writer on Cheers.I thought that would be like the best
job ever. And then I aftercollege, I moved out to the Way
to try to, you know,make it in and years later I wound
up getting a job that was onthe on the Paramount lot where Cheers was
shot on the same exact stage,and I was like, damn, I
made it. I just got heretoo late. Yeah, right there.
(02:13):
And you landed on these huge showsyou're writing. It's got to be when
you're doing something like King of theHill, for God's sake, is there
a lot of pressure doing this?Job. I want to good people to
get a sense of what what youwriters actually do. Is there a lot
of stress with saying I don't wantto screw this up, I want to
write a great episode. Well,yeah, but that's that's kind of any
(02:34):
job. In King of the Hill, you know, you could do some
long hours. It's not uncommon towork I don't know, twelve fourteen and
even longer days that are even longer. I remember. I think the hardest
part on King of the Hill isthat we were writing nine to eleven and
so you know, the planes hit, hit the towers, and in that
day that no one went to work, And the next day we all had
(02:54):
to go to work and we hadto right jokes and we had to write
funny stories, and no one wasin the mood for months to do any
of that. Yeah, yeah,I remember that anyway, I remember,
and all this stand up after thatwas really kind of odd to get back
into you after a while. Yeah. So, I mean, based on
the list of shows that Sean justrattled off, and the fact that you
(03:15):
were talking about writing right around nineto eleven hundred of the day after you
were then involved in the first writerstrike or at least the most recent one
in two thousand and seven, twothousand and eight. Yeah, how what's
what's the difference so far? Youknow, in looking back on that and
the writer strike of today, Ithink the writers today feel like, and
(03:38):
not just the writers, other unionmembers feel like this is more of an
existential threat and that we really needto draw a line in this sand now.
If not, we're kind of signingour own death warrants. So this
is important. Yeah, let methrow out a word TIA, and you
tell me what you feel about thisword chat GPT. How does that make
(03:59):
you feel? Well? You know, I've played around with it right now.
AI cannot write anything close to whatwe do. It's not they want
to try doing it now, it'llbe just terrible. Go ahead, AI.
It's not funny. AI is notfunny at all, not funny at
all. Yeah, in five orten years, could it be? I
don't know, but you know it'spossible. And this is part of what
(04:19):
we're striking over. It's odd becauseyou know, AI it's a plagiarist tool.
It scrapes the Internet for public domaincontent and also stuff that's copywritten,
and it just steals. And thenyou know, puts it together and slaps
it up. I'm although surprised thatthe studios are exposing themselves to this kind
of liability because I think that's whatbut apparently they feel like there's so much
(04:41):
money to be made by firing somany writers willing to risk it. Yeah,
I mean, I think you're right. There's so many hurdles that are
ahead of them here. You're right, it's not there in terms of being
able to write to the level ofan actual TV writer and accomplish one like
yourself, Michael. And it's alsosomething where there's huge copyright question marks and
(05:02):
they don't know if they had chatGPT write a script for some of the
stuff you've done, like Beavis andbutt Head or whatever, would they even
own that, you know? Andthat's a huge thing for the studios right
now. They want to own absolutelyone hundred percent of everything that they're involved
in before we get to some ofthe things that you want to see change,
and the writers in Hollywood want tosee change before you can get back
(05:25):
to work. Here, walk methrough, Like what is a day like
for somebody who is a writer fortelevision shows? What goes on in your
day every day is different, whichis that's what makes it so exciting.
But basically, you come to workand you generate ideas and you pitch them
to the showrunner who's the head writer, and the showrunn decides what stories are
going to be told and how they'regoing to be told, and then you
(05:46):
start figuring out on a whiteboard likethat, you start breaking it. We
call it where you figure out whatthe act breaks are, but the scenes
are how the scenes unfold, whatthe storylines are. And it could take
a week just to break a story, and then a writer will go off
and write an outline that get notes, a first draft, get notes,
second draft, get It's very collaborative. Yeah, so you sort of block
it out, like if you weredoing an episode of The King of the
Hill. You'd say, and inthe first act, this is going to
(06:09):
happen to Bobby, and then youknow Hank is going to do this in
the second one, and then fromthere you piece together all the actual words
in the script you have to write. Absolutely, a writer would never be
sent off to write a draft withoutdoing all that hard work first. God,
I feel like I would just stareat the computer screen in front of
me. Yeah, what do Igot here. So now we find ourselves
(06:30):
in a position where I think alot of people have a wrong view of
the life of a writer, whichis why I wanted to kind of talk
to you, Michael about your background. And for those of you listen,
it's Michael Jaman is a writer someof the biggest shows on television. He's
part of this writer's strike obviously that'sgoing on right now. I think a
lot of people have this false visionof a TV writer where you get involved
(06:51):
with some big projects and then youjust get that sweet, sweet mailbox money
and you live in your beautiful homein the Hollywood Hills and you guys are
actually made even overpaid. What's itactually like, Yeah, that's not Most
writers are middle class and there's nojob security, which is fine, and
we sign up for that, weknow that, but as you're basically you're
(07:12):
always struggling for your next gig.Well, we can tell you stole a
parking meter back there. Oh yeah, that's if someone wants to sit in
my chair, I need the quarter. Yeah yeah. So it's not this
situation where everybody is like so well, often the Hollywood vision that people see,
no, and that's what the strikeis really over. It's about most
(07:33):
so that most writers can afford tobe writers, because the way it is
right now, it's getting very hardto to sustain a career. So,
like you asked about the two thousandand eighth strike, the studio's leverage over
that was like, well, canyou really afford to be out of work
for three months or six months?And that's what scared the writers, Like,
I don't know if I can.But now, the way the shows
(07:55):
are structured because of streaming, mostwriters already are out of work for three
to six months or even nine monthsout of the year. So what difference
does it make if you're on strike? Yeah, yeah, tell me how
that works. What is the differencewhen you're somebody who's a writer in Hollywood
and you're writing for like a networkshow versus writing for one of the streamers,
(08:16):
Because I know that's one of thepoints of contention, that the payment
model is just different for working fora company like Netflix then it would be
if you were working for let's say, like CBS or something. Yeah,
it's a complicated discussion, but I'lltry to make it this kind of simple.
Oversimplify it a little bit. Butso back when I was doing network
television. If you were on ahit show, you might do twenty two
or even twenty four episodes a season, and that would have been like ten
(08:39):
months out of worth of work.That's a good chunk of work. Then
take a short hiatus and to doit again. And most writers get paid
per episode produced. But now ifyou're on a hitch streaming show, you
might only do eight shows a season, right, so eight verses twenty four,
and you're only getting paid for thoseeight And to make matters worse,
often they don't want to pay theentire run of the show. They only
(09:01):
pay you to be in pre production. So now you're really take you're making
much less money because the orders areshorter, and also you don't and they
kind of tie you up contractually.So yeah, it doesn't seem fair.
Honestly, I think a lot ofpeople agree with that. It seems like
what happened was the model changed andthe big corporations behind the new model saw
(09:22):
a moment to take advantage of thingswhere they wouldn't have to compensate the people
who created the content that we allget to sit on our fat asses and
enjoy, and they enjoy paying alower amount than they would otherwise. Yeah.
Yeah, And so over the pastten years, the average writer's salary
has gone down four percent, butover the pet over that same period of
(09:45):
time, studio profits are are upthirty nine percent. Yeah. Not to
mention the cost of everything else hasgone way up, and we've seen,
you know, think get more andmore expensive. Let's say we were talking
to you about two months ago beforeany of this strike stuff started coming up,
and you, on the same daygot two offers. One was for
a Netflix show and one was forone that was on NBC. Which one
would you see yourself in a betterposition taking if you told me I had
(10:09):
two offers in the same day,I'd tell you you're lying. I mean,
very hypothetical. Honestly, you probablymake more money on a network show.
Um, you might have a littlemore creative freedom on a streaming show,
but the money is definitely better onnetwork. Yeah. Is there anything
that you through the years you've beenwriting since the nineties for these TV shows,
(10:31):
writing episodes that people fall in lovewith and that mean a lot to
people, for shows like King ofthe Hill and Just Shoot Me and all
the rest. And is there evera show that you've you've looked at you.
We're like, oh, I woulddie to write a couple episodes of
not listening to the Cheers after,you know, post Cheers World. Well,
you know, I remember I workedon a couple of shows where the
(10:52):
other writers were all you know,had been Cheers writers, and I remember
sitting side by side with them ina writing room and thinking, man,
I have made it. I'm I'mwith them on one of them now.
But sure, there's so many greatshows. I mean, you know,
Side and Fellow, Arrested Development,There's so many. There's so many wonderful
shows that I just like, Ah, you know, I'd love I'm a
(11:13):
big fan of science fiction show likeSeverance I love. I don't think i'd
be a good writer on it,but it's interesting. So there's shows that
you watch that you you get intoyourself, but you're like, this is
not in my wheelhouse. Oh yeah, Black Mirror, I can't think.
I don't think like that. Andso I'm a comedy writer. That's what
I'm really good at. That's mylane. And if someone wants to hire
a comedy or a comedy writer,they can do what they hire me.
(11:35):
But if they wanted science fiction thatyou know too someone else. When the
union goes on strike like this,do they are they very clear? Like
do they send out to all theunion members like here are the dudes and
the donuts as of from this dayforward? Or do they just kind of
go, hey, let's not cutyou working, get out there all right?
Get out there? Are they senda list of things, things that
(11:56):
we can and can't do, andthey're pretty clear of it. I mean
there's not they don't come to ourhouse and you know, beat us,
but we're all The writers are acommunity. If you want to look at
the writers, you know, thepeople on the line, it's very cordial
and people kind of uh, thesepeople who work with Michael. Are there
any scabs out there? Are thereany people who are still writing despite the
writer's strike being underway? There's asI think a lot of people think,
(12:20):
well, I can be a scab. I can break in as a scab.
They don't want to hire you,no one. The studios don't want
to hire someone who hasn't done itbefore. These shows, like a low
budget show might be a million dollarsper episode. They're not going to trust
that kind of money to someone whohasn't done who doesn't have a long track
record of doing it. Yeah,so you're not going to break in as
a scab? Are there some writerswho are who are breaking the line now?
(12:41):
Not that I know of. Actually, yeah, it looks like everybody's
kind of coming together on this.It seems pretty sensible to me, honestly.
But how long do you think thisis going to last? For the
last one was a couple hundred daysor something like one hundred days. I
don't we don't know, We haveno idea. Yeah, you know,
and from what I've seen, themost frustrating thing for you must be And
perhaps I'm wrong here, but whenyou I read a couple of articles in
(13:03):
Hollywood Reporter and some other outlets wherethey were outlining how the negotiations were going,
and you would see how like thewriter's Guild would say, here's what
we're looking for, and then therepresentative for all the big multimedia entertainment companies
would say, you know, wehave nothing to talk about with you right
now. And it's like, seemslike the negotiations in the lack of understanding
(13:28):
of if any progress is going tobe made is tough when you're just waiting
to write your next TV show.Oh yeah, I mean none of us
want to be on strike, butwe also don't want to write ourselves out
of a career. Yeah, right, of course, I don't blame it,
do you. I mean, Iwould wouldn't think this would be disallowed.
But do writers take the time duringthe strike, when they're not picketing,
to like just have a whole boatloadof jokes in the notebook, like
(13:52):
on the back burner, especially onthe comedy side at least. Well,
no, not jokes, because thoseare always, you know, dependent on
the situation and in the show you'reon. But you're certainly a writer can
work on a pilot idea or ascreenplay idea on their own, and they
can even write it. You justcan't try to sell it. Write me
agent or a producer or studio exactlywhat you're doing at home. You can
(14:13):
do whatever you want. Yeah,well, good luck to you and your
fellow writers out there. Michael jamand jam I n writer on Instagram.
You could see everything he's up to. He's out there on the front lines
and got a bunch of his friendsalong with and we wish you the best
of luck. Man. Thank youso much for having me appreciate it.
That was fun talking to you.Man. There he goes Michael jam and
he's written for some of the biggestshows like King of the Hill, Beavis
(14:35):
and butt Head, and on andon on. Look at his IMDb.
It's lit up with this stuff.But none of that is happening right now.
It even shows that we're in production, Like what do we say yesterday
stranger things they shut down production?Yeah, because I got to do things
like rewrites. It's a whole situationright now. I had a weird,
stupid IMDb moment yesterday because I waslooking up somebody and next to their name
it said Strike and I was like, oh wow, is this is IMDb
(14:56):
dB like keeping up with everybody who'scurrently part of it. No, it
was a show called Stress. It'ssomething I've never heard of it. It's
like, oh, all right,quick, bright, when we come back,
we're gonna hear from you. Seewhat you have to think? Send
us a dispatch. Go to thenews junkie dot com to record yours right now.
Three best friends diving into the deepend of internet culture. This is the
news, joking by the action,and Hollywood grinds into a halts. There's
(00:22):
a writer's strike on for the firsttime at quite some time. That means
all those late night shows are justdoing nothing right now. I couldn't do
Saturday Night Live last weekend. Andthere's a lot more implications across the industry.
And I was watching some stuff yesterdayon this and I saw some of
the actual writers out there, andI thought, let's get the perspective of
(00:43):
somebody who is one of these writersin Hollywood, and somebody who is out
there protesting to try and get somechanges pushed through and work with the Writer's
Guild to make some things change,an update with the entertainment landscape as we
know it now. And so Isaw one of the most prominent folks out
there, this writer by the nameof Michael jam and we've got him with
(01:04):
us. Michael, can you hearus? Yeah? Hi, there you
are. I saw you out thereon the line doing your thing. Have
you been out there every day protesting? Yep? Every day. I try
to choose a different studio to mixit up. Yeah. Variety get some
new scenery in. And you aresomebody who's done a lot of work on
some shows that people definitely know.Michael has been a writer for King of
(01:29):
the Hill. You might have heardof that, Beavis and butt Head,
Marion Wilfred just shoot me Rules ofEngagement to cod dude. Rules of Engagement
was such a great show on andon. You're somebody who's been very successful
at this, and you even teachothers to get in the world of screenwriting.
Why did you fall in love withthis job? You know, when
(01:51):
I was a kid, like allI wanted to do is be I wanted
to be a writer on Cheers.I thought that would be like the best
job ever. And then I aftercollege, I moved out to the Way
to try to, you know,make it in and years later I wound
up getting a job that was onthe on the Paramount lot where Cheers was
shot on the same exact stage,and I was like, damn, I
made it. I just got heretoo late. Yeah, right there.
(02:13):
And you landed on these huge showsyou're writing. It's got to be when
you're doing something like King of theHill, for God's sake, is there
a lot of pressure doing this?Job. I want to good people to
get a sense of what what youwriters actually do. Is there a lot
of stress with saying I don't wantto screw this up, I want to
write a great episode. Well,yeah, but that's that's kind of any
(02:34):
job. In King of the Hill, you know, you could do some
long hours. It's not uncommon towork I don't know, twelve fourteen and
even longer days that are even longer. I remember. I think the hardest
part on King of the Hill isthat we were writing nine to eleven and
so you know, the planes hit, hit the towers, and in that
day that no one went to work, And the next day we all had
(02:54):
to go to work and we hadto right jokes and we had to write
funny stories, and no one wasin the mood for months to do any
of that. Yeah, yeah,I remember that anyway, I remember,
and all this stand up after thatwas really kind of odd to get back
into you after a while. Yeah. So, I mean, based on
the list of shows that Sean justrattled off, and the fact that you
(03:15):
were talking about writing right around nineto eleven hundred of the day after you
were then involved in the first writerstrike or at least the most recent one
in two thousand and seven, twothousand and eight. Yeah, how what's
what's the difference so far? Youknow, in looking back on that and
the writer strike of today, Ithink the writers today feel like, and
(03:38):
not just the writers, other unionmembers feel like this is more of an
existential threat and that we really needto draw a line in this sand now.
If not, we're kind of signingour own death warrants. So this
is important. Yeah, let methrow out a word TIA, and you
tell me what you feel about thisword chat GPT. How does that make
(03:59):
you feel? Well? You know, I've played around with it right now.
AI cannot write anything close to whatwe do. It's not they want
to try doing it now, it'llbe just terrible. Go ahead, AI.
It's not funny. AI is notfunny at all, not funny at
all. Yeah, in five orten years, could it be? I
don't know, but you know it'spossible. And this is part of what
(04:19):
we're striking over. It's odd becauseyou know, AI it's a plagiarist tool.
It scrapes the Internet for public domaincontent and also stuff that's copywritten,
and it just steals. And thenyou know, puts it together and slaps
it up. I'm although surprised thatthe studios are exposing themselves to this kind
of liability because I think that's whatbut apparently they feel like there's so much
(04:41):
money to be made by firing somany writers willing to risk it. Yeah,
I mean, I think you're right. There's so many hurdles that are
ahead of them here. You're right, it's not there in terms of being
able to write to the level ofan actual TV writer and accomplish one like
yourself, Michael. And it's alsosomething where there's huge copyright question marks and
(05:02):
they don't know if they had chatGPT write a script for some of the
stuff you've done, like Beavis andbutt Head or whatever, would they even
own that, you know? Andthat's a huge thing for the studios right
now. They want to own absolutelyone hundred percent of everything that they're involved
in before we get to some ofthe things that you want to see change,
and the writers in Hollywood want tosee change before you can get back
(05:25):
to work. Here, walk methrough, Like what is a day like
for somebody who is a writer fortelevision shows? What goes on in your
day every day is different, whichis that's what makes it so exciting.
But basically, you come to workand you generate ideas and you pitch them
to the showrunner who's the head writer, and the showrunn decides what stories are
going to be told and how they'regoing to be told, and then you
(05:46):
start figuring out on a whiteboard likethat, you start breaking it. We
call it where you figure out whatthe act breaks are, but the scenes
are how the scenes unfold, whatthe storylines are. And it could take
a week just to break a story, and then a writer will go off
and write an outline that get notes, a first draft, get notes,
second draft, get It's very collaborative. Yeah, so you sort of block
it out, like if you weredoing an episode of The King of the
Hill. You'd say, and inthe first act, this is going to
(06:09):
happen to Bobby, and then youknow Hank is going to do this in
the second one, and then fromthere you piece together all the actual words
in the script you have to write. Absolutely, a writer would never be
sent off to write a draft withoutdoing all that hard work first. God,
I feel like I would just stareat the computer screen in front of
me. Yeah, what do Igot here. So now we find ourselves
(06:30):
in a position where I think alot of people have a wrong view of
the life of a writer, whichis why I wanted to kind of talk
to you, Michael about your background. And for those of you listen,
it's Michael Jaman is a writer someof the biggest shows on television. He's
part of this writer's strike obviously that'sgoing on right now. I think a
lot of people have this false visionof a TV writer where you get involved
(06:51):
with some big projects and then youjust get that sweet, sweet mailbox money
and you live in your beautiful homein the Hollywood Hills and you guys are
actually made even overpaid. What's itactually like, Yeah, that's not Most
writers are middle class and there's nojob security, which is fine, and
we sign up for that, weknow that, but as you're basically you're
(07:12):
always struggling for your next gig.Well, we can tell you stole a
parking meter back there. Oh yeah, that's if someone wants to sit in
my chair, I need the quarter. Yeah yeah. So it's not this
situation where everybody is like so well, often the Hollywood vision that people see,
no, and that's what the strikeis really over. It's about most
(07:33):
so that most writers can afford tobe writers, because the way it is
right now, it's getting very hardto to sustain a career. So,
like you asked about the two thousandand eighth strike, the studio's leverage over
that was like, well, canyou really afford to be out of work
for three months or six months?And that's what scared the writers, Like,
I don't know if I can.But now, the way the shows
(07:55):
are structured because of streaming, mostwriters already are out of work for three
to six months or even nine monthsout of the year. So what difference
does it make if you're on strike? Yeah, yeah, tell me how
that works. What is the differencewhen you're somebody who's a writer in Hollywood
and you're writing for like a networkshow versus writing for one of the streamers,
(08:16):
Because I know that's one of thepoints of contention, that the payment
model is just different for working fora company like Netflix then it would be
if you were working for let's say, like CBS or something. Yeah,
it's a complicated discussion, but I'lltry to make it this kind of simple.
Oversimplify it a little bit. Butso back when I was doing network
television. If you were on ahit show, you might do twenty two
or even twenty four episodes a season, and that would have been like ten
(08:39):
months out of worth of work.That's a good chunk of work. Then
take a short hiatus and to doit again. And most writers get paid
per episode produced. But now ifyou're on a hitch streaming show, you
might only do eight shows a season, right, so eight verses twenty four,
and you're only getting paid for thoseeight And to make matters worse,
often they don't want to pay theentire run of the show. They only
(09:01):
pay you to be in pre production. So now you're really take you're making
much less money because the orders areshorter, and also you don't and they
kind of tie you up contractually.So yeah, it doesn't seem fair.
Honestly, I think a lot ofpeople agree with that. It seems like
what happened was the model changed andthe big corporations behind the new model saw
(09:22):
a moment to take advantage of thingswhere they wouldn't have to compensate the people
who created the content that we allget to sit on our fat asses and
enjoy, and they enjoy paying alower amount than they would otherwise. Yeah.
Yeah, And so over the pastten years, the average writer's salary
has gone down four percent, butover the pet over that same period of
(09:45):
time, studio profits are are upthirty nine percent. Yeah. Not to
mention the cost of everything else hasgone way up, and we've seen,
you know, think get more andmore expensive. Let's say we were talking
to you about two months ago beforeany of this strike stuff started coming up,
and you, on the same daygot two offers. One was for
a Netflix show and one was forone that was on NBC. Which one
would you see yourself in a betterposition taking if you told me I had
(10:09):
two offers in the same day,I'd tell you you're lying. I mean,
very hypothetical. Honestly, you probablymake more money on a network show.
Um, you might have a littlemore creative freedom on a streaming show,
but the money is definitely better onnetwork. Yeah. Is there anything
that you through the years you've beenwriting since the nineties for these TV shows,
(10:31):
writing episodes that people fall in lovewith and that mean a lot to
people, for shows like King ofthe Hill and Just Shoot Me and all
the rest. And is there evera show that you've you've looked at you.
We're like, oh, I woulddie to write a couple episodes of
not listening to the Cheers after,you know, post Cheers World. Well,
you know, I remember I workedon a couple of shows where the
(10:52):
other writers were all you know,had been Cheers writers, and I remember
sitting side by side with them ina writing room and thinking, man,
I have made it. I'm I'mwith them on one of them now.
But sure, there's so many greatshows. I mean, you know,
Side and Fellow, Arrested Development,There's so many. There's so many wonderful
shows that I just like, Ah, you know, I'd love I'm a
(11:13):
big fan of science fiction show likeSeverance I love. I don't think i'd
be a good writer on it,but it's interesting. So there's shows that
you watch that you you get intoyourself, but you're like, this is
not in my wheelhouse. Oh yeah, Black Mirror, I can't think.
I don't think like that. Andso I'm a comedy writer. That's what
I'm really good at. That's mylane. And if someone wants to hire
a comedy or a comedy writer,they can do what they hire me.
(11:35):
But if they wanted science fiction thatyou know too someone else. When the
union goes on strike like this,do they are they very clear? Like
do they send out to all theunion members like here are the dudes and
the donuts as of from this dayforward? Or do they just kind of
go, hey, let's not cutyou working, get out there all right?
Get out there? Are they senda list of things, things that
(11:56):
we can and can't do, andthey're pretty clear of it. I mean
there's not they don't come to ourhouse and you know, beat us,
but we're all The writers are acommunity. If you want to look at
the writers, you know, thepeople on the line, it's very cordial
and people kind of uh, thesepeople who work with Michael. Are there
any scabs out there? Are thereany people who are still writing despite the
writer's strike being underway? There's asI think a lot of people think,
(12:20):
well, I can be a scab. I can break in as a scab.
They don't want to hire you,no one. The studios don't want
to hire someone who hasn't done itbefore. These shows, like a low
budget show might be a million dollarsper episode. They're not going to trust
that kind of money to someone whohasn't done who doesn't have a long track
record of doing it. Yeah,so you're not going to break in as
a scab? Are there some writerswho are who are breaking the line now?
(12:41):
Not that I know of. Actually, yeah, it looks like everybody's
kind of coming together on this.It seems pretty sensible to me, honestly.
But how long do you think thisis going to last? For the
last one was a couple hundred daysor something like one hundred days. I
don't we don't know, We haveno idea. Yeah, you know,
and from what I've seen, themost frustrating thing for you must be And
perhaps I'm wrong here, but whenyou I read a couple of articles in
(13:03):
Hollywood Reporter and some other outlets wherethey were outlining how the negotiations were going,
and you would see how like thewriter's Guild would say, here's what
we're looking for, and then therepresentative for all the big multimedia entertainment companies
would say, you know, wehave nothing to talk about with you right
now. And it's like, seemslike the negotiations in the lack of understanding
(13:28):
of if any progress is going tobe made is tough when you're just waiting
to write your next TV show.Oh yeah, I mean none of us
want to be on strike, butwe also don't want to write ourselves out
of a career. Yeah, right, of course, I don't blame it,
do you. I mean, Iwould wouldn't think this would be disallowed.
But do writers take the time duringthe strike, when they're not picketing,
to like just have a whole boatloadof jokes in the notebook, like
(13:52):
on the back burner, especially onthe comedy side at least. Well,
no, not jokes, because thoseare always, you know, dependent on
the situation and in the show you'reon. But you're certainly a writer can
work on a pilot idea or ascreenplay idea on their own, and they
can even write it. You justcan't try to sell it. Write me
agent or a producer or studio exactlywhat you're doing at home. You can
(14:13):
do whatever you want. Yeah,well, good luck to you and your
fellow writers out there. Michael jamand jam I n writer on Instagram.
You could see everything he's up to. He's out there on the front lines
and got a bunch of his friendsalong with and we wish you the best
of luck. Man. Thank youso much for having me appreciate it.
That was fun talking to you.Man. There he goes Michael jam and
he's written for some of the biggestshows like King of the Hill, Beavis
(14:35):
and butt Head, and on andon on. Look at his IMDb.
It's lit up with this stuff.But none of that is happening right now.
It even shows that we're in production, Like what do we say yesterday
stranger things they shut down production?Yeah, because I got to do things
like rewrites. It's a whole situationright now. I had a weird,
stupid IMDb moment yesterday because I waslooking up somebody and next to their name
it said Strike and I was like, oh wow, is this is IMDb
(14:56):
dB like keeping up with everybody who'scurrently part of it. No, it
was a show called Stress. It'ssomething I've never heard of it. It's
like, oh, all right,quick, bright, when we come back,
we're gonna hear from you. Seewhat you have to think? Send
us a dispatch. Go to thenews junkie dot com to record yours right now.
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