Douglas Mangum writes to ask…

There's something I've wondered about a WGA strike. During a strike, does a TV or film writer continue to work on their script, knowing that it will be turned in once the strike is over, or do they set it aside and go no further on it because doing so would go against the spirit of the strike?

Official Answer: We all stop writing on WGA-covered material. We can work on novels, comic books, non-WGA animation, poems, magazine articles and such. But if we're in the middle of an assignment for a WGA-covered project, it's "Pencils down!" and we don't add another comma to it.

Honest Answer: A lot of people will add another comma to it…or even finish the script. But as long as it isn't turned-in until the strike is over, no one seems to complain.

Every time I've been on strike since I joined the Guild — that would be 1981, 1985, 1988 and 2007 — I had some WGA job at the time and I just put it on hold. Stopped in the middle of page 23, which is where I was when the strike was called…resumed in the middle of page 23 when the strike was over. I worked on comic book scripts and also on cartoon shows that were not under WGA jurisdiction, and in '88, I also wrote an episode of the Superboy TV show, which was a WGA show that signed an interim agreement with the Guild to remain in production. But I don't think I wrote a word on the WGA-covered projects until the work stoppage stopped.

In two of those four strikes and also in a strike by the Animation Union, the producer of my interrupted-by-the-strike job called and asked me if I would finish the script and hand it in to them surreptitiously. They suggested I drop it off at their home or said they'd send a messenger or meet me at a restaurant so I wouldn't be seen crossing a picket line or entering the studio. I just said, "Sorry. I can't finish it because I can't write until the strike is over." There was some grumbling but they understood.

When the Animation Union was about to go on strike in '79, I was writing scripts for a then-new cartoon studio called Ruby-Spears, working on what would turn out to be one of the shortest-lived cartoon shows ever, a misfire called Rickety Rocket. Among the many things that went wrong with it is that it had to be produced in much less time than you need for something like that. Here's part of a story that I posted here six years ago…

It was an impossible workload for what was then a new, small studio and everyone was working overtime-plus. Not only were airdates looming (the first episode would be broadcast Saturday, September 22) but there was a decent-sized chance that the Animation Union would go out on strike on August 7. Not wanting to chance that a labor action would disrupt delivery dates, Joe Ruby (co-head of the studio) called me in and said, "If we have to, we can get scripts storyboarded and designed outside the union's jurisdiction but we have to get the scripts done before the strike. Can you write six episodes of Rickety Rocket in three weeks?" Usually, we had two weeks to write one script.

I was young and foolish in those days. I'm still foolish but not foolish enough to say yes to a question like that now…but I was then. I wrote six half-hour scripts in three weeks along with other assignments I had at the time, including a variety show for Sid and Marty Krofft. On August 7, not having slept the night before, I drove the sixth of these scripts out to the Ruby-Spears Studio, all the time hoping the strike was not happening…or at least not happening yet. I had enormous quarrels with that union at the time, some of which ended up before the National Labor Relations Board…but I was not going to cross any picket line. Fortunately, there was none outside the building when I got there at 1:45. What I did find was Mo Gollub — a fine gentleman and artist, as well as the president of the union — outside, pulling picket signs out of the trunk of his car. I asked, "Is the studio on strike?"

He said, "Not yet. We're going out at two."

I said, "Any reason I can't hand in a script now?"

He said, "None whatsoever." So I ran inside, delivered the last Rickety Rocket script and then came out and helped Mo finish unloading the picket signs. By 2:05, I was carrying one.

At the same time, I was writing scripts for another Saturday morn show and one of those wasn't finished when the strike commenced. The producer called up and suggested that it would be nice if he woke up the next morning and found the completed script on the front step of his home. I suggested it would be even nicer if I handed it to him in his office a few days after the strike ended and the picket line was gone.

In fact, he called several times to sweetly pressure me to finish the script and get it to him. That strike only lasted about a week so he had his script when he really needed it…but if that had been a month-long strike, I think things might have gotten a tad nasty.

Something like a decade and a half ago, my pal Neil Gaiman wrote American Gods, which is one of those novels that stays with you a long, long time. It's been at least thirteen years since I read it and I recall how stunned I was by the richness of his prose, his ability to blend dark visions with very funny moments, and with his ability to go to chilling places without making me want to look away from the page.

The book garnered much praise, every bit of it deserved…and I have vivid memory of this: The last time I had jury duty, I was sitting in the jury room not being called, working on a script on my iPad. But my attention kept drifting to a gent seated across from me who was reading a copy of American Gods. Watching subtle body language and subtler facial reactions, I could see the book was having a great deal of impact on him. Even in this noisy jury room with all its distractions, the book had his undivided attention.

Whether he liked it or not, I have no idea. But he sure didn't stop reading it, no matter what.

I am told (and am unsurprised) that Neil has turned down a great many lucrative offers since this book was published to move it from paper to the screen. He waited until he had the right offer from the right people…and now it's a series which debuts April 30 on the Starz Network. Last night, I took my splendid friend Jewel Shepard to a premiere screening of Episode 1 and we saw that Neil had indeed entrusted his book to folks who would do it right. At least, Episode 1 is as right as it could be.

It is a lush, visually-stunning translation that is as powerful and penetrating as Neil's own words, many of which (of course) are heard. Many more are unspoken but evident in the amazing art direction. Helming it as exec producers-writers Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, and great credit should also go to all those who contributed to the imagery and effects, as well as the music.

The only thing I didn't like about it was…well, Neil ended his introduction of it by saying, "Sorry about all the blood." So I can't say I wasn't warned but there was a lot of it, especially in the first five minutes. After that, things got better.

The acting is quite wonderful, making the incredible credible. I don't know about future episodes but Ian McShane sure walked off with the first one. Then again, there's a sex scene in there (not involving Mr. McShane) which I won't tip…but at the end of it, the audience burst into stunned applause. You will not forget that scene, especially if at any time in your life, you've actually had sex.

Oh, and come to think of it, there was one other thing I didn't like last night. The opening was bloody and scary and ghastly and I later felt like I had been plunked down in the midst of it at the after-party. Too many folks were crammed into not-enough restaurant and the noise probably had Tijuana calling to ask, "Can you hold it down?" Trapped at its epicenter, I couldn't move, couldn't sit, couldn't hear and couldn't eat. Yes, couldn't eat. Waiters passed among us with trays of finger food and when I asked, "What's in this?," I literally could not hear the answer and therefore had to pass.

I do not understand why in a party where the crowd alone emits a deafening din, someone feels there also needs to be music playing. That is a problem I've encountered not just last night but at many soirées. It's like the organizer is deathly afraid of a spec of silence or, worse, that someone might actually talk to someone else.

So, bottom line: Great show, great writing, great cast, great everything. I'm sure American Gods will be a monster hit. When it airs, watch the first one and that will enslave you to watch the rest. I just suggest that if there's any sort of after-party, you give it a pass. Or bring ear plugs, your own chair, something to read and a bag of chips. (Hey, why not read the book? I may do that again soon.)

My favorite musical comedy is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and I have been known to travel great distances to see any production of it. Somehow though, I missed this one…

Last night, I was at a show-bizzy event up in Hollywood (tell you about it later today) and I decided to wear my Writers Guild lapel pin.

This led to a couple of folks asking me how things would turn out as we vote for a Strike Authorization. I said I was sure the Strike Authorization would pass but I really have no feel for how wide the margin will be. If it's 51%-80%…well, that won't be so good. It won't lead to the Producers making an offer sufficient to avert a work stoppage. The lower ends of that range would probably mean no strike or one that didn't last long; that would collapse quickly, especially if the Producers bettered the offer by a token amount.

A Strike Authorization of 85% or above might prompt the AMPTP to lay down an acceptable offer. Then again, it might not. People in power do not always do wise things. Management erred greatly with its "final offer" in '88 that led to that strike. Someone had badly misgauged the spirit of the guild then. I'm sure some lawyer said, "Don't worry. There's no way they'll turn this down" and then we turned it down by 90-something percent and the Producers began fighting amongst themselves, unable to budge enough off their "final offer" for months.

There's sometimes a human, often-stubborn element to these matters. We've all seen politicians say or do unwise things…and then when it becomes apparent it ain't working, they double-down rather than admit error. I remember an agent who wanted to be my agent, who was pitching me on dumping my guy and signing with him. He kept telling me how tough he was. As I've mentioned, I find people who keep telling you how tough they are to be very dangerous. They're dangerous if they really are as tough as they say and they're even more dangerous when it turns out, as it so often does, that they aren't.

He kept saying things like, "When I set a price, I have the balls to never budge from it" and "I will kick these guys in the nuts for you." He even said, "In this business, you have to make them pay good money to see your cock" and I laughed because we were in Nate n' Al's Deli and Milton Berle was across the room. I pointed and said, "I think you want to go sign him!"

Everything was a dick reference with this guy and while I didn't go with him, I know someone who did and regretted it. That person said, "It was never about making a good deal with this man. It was always about proving his schmeckel was bigger than someone else's." Which, of course, means that it probably wasn't.

So you don't know. You just don't know. You can know that you're staking out the position that will logically be better for All Concerned, even the employers. But you can't always be sure they'll see it that way or that they'll do what financially makes sense for them. They have internal conflicts about which we know little.

I can tell you this, though: The Writers Guild has a basic, fundamental problem. I wholeheartedly support the organization, in large part because I've written for TV with it (on live-action shows) and without it (most animation). I know how hard it is to (a) get a good deal and (b) have the employers honor it when they're only afraid of you and not you and your union. Disney on a WGA deal is a much different company than Disney on non-WGA work.

Still, we have this occasionally-visible structural defect: The Guild covers all kinds of writers. It covers folks who write movies, who write TV, who write comedy, who write drama, who write episodic, who write one-shots, who write soaps, who write game shows, etc.

When an offer comes in that's good for TV writers and bad for screenwriters, there's understandable division within our ranks. When I was mainly writing variety shows, I felt my needs were neglected because the main issues addressed at the bargaining table were all about sitcoms and/or features. There just weren't that many of us writing variety shows.

More relevant is that the WGA covers writers who have vastly different economic situations. Your top, most-in-demand writers work for way above Guild Minimums such that an increase in those minimums may not affect them much. The main issue that prompts strikes is how much, if at all, to increase said minimums.

You also have writers who are, for example, actors 95% of the time and writers the remaining 5% of the time. Or who write novels 93% of the time and Guild-covered work the other 7%. Or are really producers who've joined because they got a few writing credits. Last strike, I marched with one friend whose income plunged instantly to 0 when we went out, and one friend whose income didn't change because at that moment, it was all coming from writing comic books. And later, I marched with a writer-producer who clearly was thinking like a guy on the right-hand side of that hyphen.

Finally, you have the big divide, which is that most writers either think of themselves as someone who works constantly in TV and movies or someone who is going painfully underemployed in those areas. When the subject of "Strike!" arises, they tend to think that their group is the one that has it all on the line.

Writers who work a lot say, "We're the ones who are walking out on actual jobs, whose current projects may get scuttled, who will incur the wrath of the Producers for our stance. We're the ones who lose real dollars, whereas the guys who weren't working…well, they have other sources of income. The Producers aren't missing their services. They're walking out on jobs they never had in the first place."

At the same time, you have the writers who aren't working much…or at all. They'll tell you, "We're the ones who are suffering. The guys who work all the time…they have income from residuals. Some of them can spend the strike writing scripts at home that know they'll get paid for as soon as the strike ends. They have money in the bank to live off. I'm losing out on a job that I was about to get and I can't pay my mortgage without it."

Many of them have a spec screenplay or pilot that they believe/hope is close to a life-changing sale and that can't happen while we're on strike. Plus, they figure that when the strike ends, there'll be a flood of spec pilots and screenplays into the marketplace from the top writers, selling stuff they wrote at home during the strike. That, they expect, will freeze out their projects.

There's some truth to the thinking on both sides. There's greater truth though in the view that if one grouping of writers gets screwed, that does not augur well for any writer. I have about nineteen reasons for wanting there to not be a strike and one of them is that I don't want to have to keep giving everyone, including myself, the "we're all in this together" speech.

The first hundred or two hundred times I had to do that, I felt like Ben Franklin in 1776 saying that if we don't all hang together, we should most assuredly hang separately. After a while though, it becomes dreary and even painful to keep repeating that, especially to a friend who's terrified he may lose his house.

But in the mumble-mumble years I've been doing this — oh, why hide it? I've been a professional writer (and really nothing else) since 1969 — I've learned you have to say no a lot. If you don't, you just screw yourself. So vote Yes on the Strike Authorization and hope that almost all of us do.

I don't know if there's going to be a strike but I do know the three things that are almost always true in my line of work. One is that when they say "it's a done deal," it is not a done deal. The second is that when they say "I'll get back to you," they won't get back to you.

And the third is that if you take a bad offer today, you get a worse one next week and an even worse one the week after…and they'll just keep getting worse and worse until you absolutely have to say no. So it's much, much easier and more cost-efficient to just say no to the first bad one.

If you're setting your TiVo or similar device and you get the Starz network, set it to record a special called Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg, which has been running all month and is next being telecast on April 30. It's a great show about a great talent in the world of stand-up comedy. I wrote here about how important Robert Klein was and this special has folks like Jon Stewart and Jay Leno saying a lot of the same things.

Years ago on this site, I had a piece about how some friends of mine and I had made a list of the Top Ten Stand-Up Comedians of all time. It was, in no particular order: Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Mort Sahl, George Carlin, Jackie Mason, Richard Pryor, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, Lenny Bruce and Robert Klein. If you disagree with this list, fine…but you might not if you read the criteria via which we arrived at it.

Now: Carlin, Pryor and Bruce have died. Berman is retired and in poor health. Sahl and Mason are almost retired and, to be as polite as I can be about this, their admirers seem somewhat embarrassed by their current acts. Allen left stand-up long ago. Cosby has…well, let's just say "problems." The only two on that list who still perform and who demonstrate why they were ever on a list like that to begin with are Newhart and Klein. Newhart is 87 and probably won't want to work much longer…but Klein still tours and he's still great and if you've never seen him live, you really oughta.

You might want to set your TiVo or similar device for next Monday. That's when Independent Lens, a PBS series that showcases documentaries, is running The Last Laugh, a film about folks trying to be funny about The Holocaust. Among those discussing that delicate topic are Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Sarah Silverman and (of course) Mel Brooks. I haven't seen it but it sounds worth recording.

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It has been announced that this year's Tony Awards ceremony will be held on June 11 and that they'll be hosted by Kevin Spacey. He's kind of an odd choice, not that he's not a distinguished actor and a funny guy. But not since 1994 has the show been hosted by someone who wasn't thought of as a musical performer. I'm guessing the Tony folks wanted him because they thought it might snare some viewers who only know from movie stars…and he wanted to do it because he thought it would make him a contender to host the Oscars. He'll probably be very good.

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I'm kinda waiting for the posting of Keith Olbermann's daily video rant. Given the news about Bill O'Reilly, Keith has to be among the happiest people on the planet. Stephen Colbert sure did well with the topic last night. I have the feeling we're going to hear from Jon Stewart very shortly.

Let us not forget that Fox News did not rid itself of Mr. O'Reilly because they were appalled at his behavior. They did it because it became public and advertisers were starting to desert him.

It really doesn't matter to me much that Bill O'Reilly has lost that show. Tucker Carlson, who's getting the time slot, has become just as insufferable and undedicated to being reasonable or factual…and of course, O'Reilly will find another job soon enough. What is nice is the message sent to men who act abominably with women that even if you're rich and powerful, you can be caught and exposed and humiliated. I'm afraid though that some of them will think, "Hey, if I get the kind of severance package O'Reilly got, fine!"

I couldn't make it to the Writers Guild information meeting tonight but I've read enough to do what I just did, which was to vote for the Strike Authorization. That's not a good name for it — it's more like a Threat Authorization — but by any name, it's essential. If you're a member, you have until Noon on Monday to vote, which you can do at the WGA website.

If you're on the fence, there's a good 14-minute video there in which Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser explains what's going on and what's at stake. It says some of the same things I said here but better and with a greater focus on what's going on in the bargaining sessions. You can find the link to it after you log in with your name and member number.

Please vote and please vote yes. Our negotiators can't bring back a good deal unless there is a show of support from the membership behind them.

Stephen Schwartz is one of Broadway's most successful composers, having written the tunes for (among others), Godspell, Pippin, The Baker's Wife and Wicked. He is always justifiably receiving tributes and at a recent one, my pal Jason Graae did a very brave thing by performing his rendition of "Popular" (from Wicked) in front of the guy who wrote it.

Watching this, I'm not entirely sure Mr. Schwartz was as entertained as others in the room but Jason went right ahead with it and I thought it was hilarious…

Numerous sources are now saying that Bill O'Reilly is out at Fox News. We're not going to weep for the guy. He's got eighty zillion dollars and given his track record, he's probably already got better offers up the ying-yang. Come to think of it, he was probably fired for making women better offers up the ying-yang. When someone so successful is axed, I always figure that there were already people in the company — whatever company it is — who already wanted to replace him and that they just got empowered.

Two things interest me about O'Reilly and only two things. One is that he's been one of the most-watched, most-read conservative commentators in the country for a very long time and yet, as I browse right-wing pundits and websites, I almost never see him quoted or even mentioned. Folks in that world love Sean Hannity and Rush and Ann Coulter and many, many columnists. I see almost zero love for Papa Bear, as Stephen Colbert — who is famously terrified of bears — calls him. And yet O'Reilly has the biggest audience.

Second thing: I don't like people who talk tough. In most cases, it's a sham because they aren't tough. In fact, in most cases, their actions are the opposite of their words and their supporters regard that as a minor discrepancy, easily overlooked. Hearing some people talk tough just gives some folks a tingle and I think that's one of the reasons we have who we have in the White House. There are certain fans Trump will never lose even if he never builds that wall, never cracks down on illegal immigration, never eradicates ISIS, etc. They hear the fiery rhetoric and say, "That man's a leader," never mind that he doesn't lead where he vows to take us.

Part of O'Reilly's entertainment value has always been how he dominated his show, controlled the flow of information on it and attacked his guests just enough to make "good television" but not so much that they wouldn't return next week. It was wrestling, not discussion. To the extent he won debates, he generally won them by being loud and defining the battle on his terms. Sometimes, he may also have been right but on his show, that was kind of irrelevant.

I always found his show unwatchable because the arguments — usually on his side, often on the other — were so phony and theatrical with no seeking of common ground. I'm not interested in that but I sure understand why it's popular. I expect it will continue to be popular wherever he lands…and land he will.

Stu Shostak's guest today is my pal Ken Levine. That's Ken on the left there posing with some old guy who thinks he can do comedy. Ken, meanwhile, does all sorts of things, many of which involve comedy. Ken is a TV writer, a TV producer, a TV director, a screenplay writer, a novelist, a playwright, a teacher of comedy, a disc jockey, a blogger, a baseball announcer…and, oh, I don't know what else. I can't keep track of what the guy does. He's probably doing ninety other things he doesn't tell me about. Anyway, Ken's credits include M*A*S*H and Cheers and The Jeffersons and I could name twenty others but those are impressive enough already. Ken's a good storyteller and you'll enjoy hearing them talk about whatever he talks about.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at that Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are 99 cents each or you can save enough money with Stu's "Buy three and get a fourth one free" offer to buy yourself a new, fully-loaded Porsche Carrera 911. You'd have to buy something like 325,000 Stu's Show downloads to save enough for a new, fullyloaded Porsche Carrera 911 but it could be done.

Phil LaMarr is one of the best voice actors working today…and sometimes, he even lowers himself to appearing on camera. But hey, I'll tell you where Phil's really great. He's part of an improv troupe that pops up every month or two in Los Angeles. It's called The Black Version and it's a bunch of black actors who take a classic movie full of white people — chosen by the audience — and improvise a musical version of it cast with black folks, i.e., them. I've seen it several times and everyone in it — not just Phil — is real good.

Their next performance is May 6 at the Largo at the Coronet on La Cienega Boulevard. Get tickets here and then listen to a podcast in which Phil talks about his work…

Here's a Christmas song and yeah, I know. It's April. But it's an Allan Sherman clip I haven't linked you to yet…his parody of what may well be the most-parodied song of all time. This is (obviously) from The Jimmy Dean Show, which was on ABC from September of 1963 until April of 1966. Sherman's single of this number came out in October of '63 so I presume this clip is from a show closer to Christmas but in that year.

And I have no idea why the framing on this clip is so odd. Maybe whoever digitized the clip did it on a boat during rough water. Try to enjoy it anyway…

If you browse auction sites and art dealers, you will find an awful lot of phony cartoonist drawings. In fact, here's a new "rule" that I just made up: You should spot many phony drawings. If you prowl eBay and don't see some, it probably means you aren't able to tell real drawings from fake ones and should treat your own judgments accordingly.

The two most often-forged cartoonists seem to me to be Charles Schulz and Jack Kirby. There are always some fake drawings around by these two — sketches someone did and signed their names to — but lately, there seems to be a special epidemic of them. Some of these are accompanied by impressive-looking Certificates of Authenticity or letters from folks claiming lofty credentials to know what's real and what's not.

(I've never quite understood the premise behind Certificates of Authenticity. They seem to be based the assumption that it's possible to forge a piece of art by a great artist but impossible to forge a one-page Xeroxed page by an "authority" you probably never heard of.)

There are good art forgeries and there are bad art forgeries and I am amazed at how bad some of the bad ones are. I just saw where someone paid over $2000 for a quick sketch of Snoopy which the seller swore was by Schulz. If Mr. Schulz did that, he did it with his left foot while coyotes were gnawing on his drawing hand.

Many of the Kirby fakes work like this: An artist — we'll call him Huckleberry Frelinghuysen — traces an existing drawing by Jack and inks his tracing. He signs it "Kirby/Frelinghuysen" and sells it. He may represent it honestly as a tracing or he may lead the buyer to believe that it was an original pencil drawing by Mr. Kirby which he [Mr. Frelinghuysen] obtained and inked on the same piece of paper. If the latter, a later owner is likely to represent it as an actual Kirby drawing inked by Frelinghuysen and price it like an actual Kirby drawing, which it is not. Frelinghuysen may be a talented man but he does not have the power to create an original Jack Kirby drawing.

And I guess I should add a word here about Kirby tracings that are inked and sold by artists who at some point in their careers actually worked with Jack and did at times ink real Kirby pencil art. Most of these guys, like Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer, are careful to label any Kirby re-creation or tracing they do in a way that makes clear the provenance of the piece. At least one artist who inked Kirby's work has not had that kind of integrity. The buyer thinks (wrongly) the piece originated on Kirby's drawing board and pays accordingly.

The forgery market is not, of course, limited to bogus Schulz and Kirby sketches. Right now on eBay, I see counterfeit Ditko, Romita, Steranko, Bruce Timm, Frazetta, Frank Miller and many others. Sometimes, a seller has one or two fakes among dozens of real drawings, which leads me to believe the seller doesn't know — and doesn't know the difference. Some dealers though have enough fakes that one suspects they know darn well they're selling forgeries. Auction sites rarely police this stuff, even in some cases when the legal reps of the artist whose work is forged — or even the artist himself — contacts them.

So watch out. As Abraham Lincoln said, "If an offer seems too good to be true, it's probably false." You might not know Lincoln said that but I have an original letter of his in which he said that and the guy who sold it to me assured me it was genuine. He even showed me that the zip code on the letter was Abe's actual zip code. If that isn't proof, what is?

Ezra Klein writes of the fundamental problem Republicans are having on agreeing on an Obamacare replacement. Obviously, it's that some of them don't want one at all, whereas some of them would like to be re-elected.

But Klein's point — and I think he's right — is that the ones who don't want the government at all involved in health care don't for the most part, say that. For the most part, they mask their true goal by pretending to be looking for that great, impossible fix where everyone's covered and it doesn't cost much. And that therefore has become the presumed goal in our government.

It's been a while since we had baby pandas on this blog…so here to make up for it, we have triplets. The birth appeared in 2014 at the Chimelong Safari Park in the Guangdong province in China. The mother panda, Juxiao, was preggo and there were some indicators that she might have twins. When three came out, the attendants couldn't believe it.

This video shows the actual births so don't watch it that kind of thing will disturb you…