AFI FEST vs WGA meeting: pick your war
Tomorrow night’s big AFI FEST opening, Redford’s “Lions for Lambs” and the swank afterparty, may be overshadowed by events east. All industry eyes will be on the LA Convention Center - the site of a historic WGA meeting where thousands of writers will be told to either stay on the job or strike. Their contract will have expired hours earlier.
The "Lambs" screening starts at 7:30pm. The meeting starts at 7pm. If the audience hasn’t been checking their blackberries throughout the film, they’ll be a mad dash out at 10pm, to see what the word from downtown is. The small-talk at the party has already been set.
As a guild member and "Lions" ticket holder, in many ways the choice is about which war I want to step into on Thursday. The ill-conceived, disastrous war in the Middle East that serves Redford’s plot, or the long-planned for, highly organized, and (as John Ridley writes here), "ill-conceived, potentially disastrous war" in the industry.
[Edited to add: That's Ridley's opinion. Not mine, but not one to be dismissed.]
Ironic that the choice comes down to scripted or reality.
Several writers I know are scrambling for babysitters, reading developments hourly, yapping on ichat. There is hardly a sense of dread. In fact, it's guarded excitement. All the melodrama and bad behavior of the past few weeks... you just can't make that stuff up. And to crescendo on a particular day, at a particular hour and place colors it an unmissable season finale, an edge-of-the-seat third act, a Norma Rae moment. Perhaps making light of this day is a defense unique to writers. Perhaps it's too much to comprehend the devastating, rippling effects Friday could bring.
For this writer, "Lions" didn't stand a chance. Even if I wasn't WGA, I'd be one of the many aisle-seated bodies in the audience, front-lit by a PDA, waiting for word.
Michael Jones is the film festival editor at Variety.com. 
Sorry you have to miss your screening, dude. Life sounds tough for you. Other writers are worried about paying their rent, putting food on the table, but hey, it's a big movie so hate for you to have to skip it. Most writers don't have the luxury of not worrying about these things. Most work unpaid for years on their samples, hoping to get them read and possibly (if there's a miracle) made into a movie. Or they toil for equal years trying to get on the staff of a TV show. And these gigs usually end quickly, with work extremely hard to find afterwards. Without residuals to keep them going during this time, they won't be able to work on future scipts. The writer/creator of Desperate Housewives lived off his residuals for years so he could create a show that millions of people love and one that makes the studio even more millions. Asking for a tiny tiny piece of the huge pie they created is not "ill-conceived" it's imperative. Glad you find it entertaining.
Posted by: Fellow Writer | 10/31/2007 7:49:15 PM