by John Ridley

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Striking writers picket outside Universal Studios in Burbank, Calif. Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty I
Charley Gallay/Getty Images

Striking writers picket outside Universal Studios in Burbank, Calif., after contract talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down this week.

There's a Jimi Hendrix song, "Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead." Well, I woke up the other morning and found myself unemployed. The Hollywood writers are on strike. Now, I'm guessing for most of the NPR audience, you're mildly interested in this labor dispute, but until somebody cuts off the flow of Ken Burns docs, you're not going to lose it.

But here in Los Angeles, we're learning to live in the new normal: a house divided. One exec, who's a friend outside of work, wondered if it was legal for us to even have a conversation. The fear being the talk might touch on creative endeavors, an area of discussion now banned between studio types and writers. And believe me, in Hollywood, where all we ever talk about is entertainment, taking that topic off the table leaves a lot of people just sitting around staring at each other over sushi.

But if we can't talk, we writers can certainly advocate, and do so with high spirits. Another friend told me he was going to base his decision about where to picket on which location was closest to his favorite bar. Now that's a writer! And with every writer expected to man the lines 20 hours a week, each and every week, it's good thinking, too. By the way, 20 hours — that's more time than I actually, physically spend writing.

But even in these heady first days before the pain of trench warfare sets in, there are realities of this new normal to be dealt with. Realities like Strike Rule No. 8, or as it is euphemistically referred to, the Script Validation Program.

The SVP run by our union, the Writers Guild of America, requires writers to submit copies of all literary material in progress to the guild at the outset of a strike. It supposedly ensures that no further work is surreptitiously done. Writers are given four days from the start of the strike to comply or face penalties. Wednesday would be day three.

And like many in the working membership of the WGA, I got a pleasant, nicely worded but very legalistic letter from a production company I have a deal with — cc'd to my lawyer — reminding me the scripts I'm working on are the property of that company and cannot be disseminated to a third party without prior permission.

Rock. Hard place.

Now, seriously, the Script Validation Program — which is just a tad Orwellian for my taste — is also at the heart the eternal question of who owns intellectual property: the production entity that pays for it or the guild that takes it upon itself to protect the writer.

What's most interesting to me is that neither side seems to feel the writers as individuals can protect their own creative property when it is in their possession.

Now this is a question I vow to ponder for the remainder of the strike at my favorite bar ... in Las Vegas.