During the 1988 writers' strike, Tim McCanlies got a pilot's license and a wife. "I've still got both now, so I may write the novel I've always intended to write," said the writer/director of Secondhand Lions and perhaps Central Texas' most successful screenwriter. McCanlies had been working on two projects for two separate studios when the last-ditch effort to avoid a Writers Guild of America strike failed last week. The sticking point in negotiations with the studios was what share writers should receive from new sources of film and video distribution via such sources as cell phones and the Web, as well as old complaints about scribes' take from DVD sales. "I'm actually looking forward to a break ... or was," McCanlies said when reached late last week. "I'm climbing the walls. Maybe I'll take a vacation!"
The impact of the strike is already being felt nationally, with the shutdown of talk shows and a number of other television programs. The effect on the Texas film/television industry will likely depend on how long the strike lasts. Friday Night Lights is still shooting its second season around Austin and should continue through the end of the month and probably into December when it runs out of completed scripts. "It's business as usual," according to NBC/Universal spokeswoman Jessica Nevarez. If the strike continues, expect idle crews and disappointed vendors that would have worked through about March. Series television has been the savior for the Texas film industry recently, as more and more studio films have crossed the border to New Mexico and Louisiana, which offer heftier incentives than the $20 million program the Texas Legislature approved this year. In Dallas, Prison Break is expected also to shoot through the end of the month. In an open letter to fans posted on the website PBreakFans (www.pbreakfans.proboards47.com), show producer Nick Santora made his feelings about the strike clear: "This is a wonderful collaborative art form ... writers, directors, actors, art directors, make-up artists, and everyone in between help make film and TV a great way to entertain, educate and inspire. But it seems to me, in my 6+ years in this industry, that sometimes The Powers That Be forget that you can't produce a blank page, you can't act a blank page, you can't direct a blank page."
The 1988 writers' strike lasted for 22 weeks and led to a major loss of television viewers. A threatened strike by both writers and members of the Screen Actors Guild in 2004 resulted in lots of unscripted television reality shows and led to a flurry of filming activity in Texas and elsewhere in anticipation of the strike that never happened. Many were expecting the same thing this time, only with the rush to film happening in January, as it was assumed the writers would wait to join forces with the Screen Actors Guild, which has a contract with the studios expiring in June. "Things seem to still be shaping up for an interesting '08," said Bob Hudgins, head of the Texas Film Commission. "That's got everyone on pins and needles about getting this resolved." Interesting new year? Consider word that Terrence Malick will shoot a film in Austin (see "Film News," right), and you see what is potentially at stake.
Hudgins' biggest fear is that picket lines now confined to Los Angeles and New York City will appear elsewhere in the country if the strike lasts for a long time. "Knock on wood," he said. "My feeling is they will expand if the strike goes into a third month. It would kill us long-term." In Hollywood, strikers are already seeing individual actors and Teamsters joining their cause, compounding the effects. Television networks lost a big chunk of their audiences in 1988, and much of it never came back as cable offerings gave viewers more choices. For Friday Night Lights, a show that struggled in ratings its first season, a truncated second season could be a death knell. Part of the problem for both television and the big screen is that scripts are often blueprints that face major rewrites on the set, and those rewrites can't be done during a writers' strike. "Half of the features shot are rewritten during the process in some capacity," Hudgins said.
