…Peter Rader! Screenwriter for “Waterworld” and participant in today’s Entertainment article in the Business section of the LA Times.
That’s right, the article is about writers doing their own web startups as a way of flouting the big companies and getting that mighty internet dollar themselves. And Rader is among the Hollywood A-Listers who have invested in online ventures designed to eliminate the filtering effects of a studio or network, and bring those fresh, writerly ideas direct to you, the viewers at home.
The contest in these kinds of articles is to see who finally breaks down and uses the expression, “thinking outside the box.” And there it is, after the jump in paragraph 11: “The people who are going to crack the internet are the ones who have to be thinking outside the box.”
I guess you have to fill up those column inches, Mr. Menn (author of the piece), but for the love of God would you please protect some of these guys from themselves? Not only does Rader, who is putting himself forward as the arbiter of future pitched material for his new-found company, use the one expression you will hear come from the mouths of every executive and producer in a pitch meeting, but he sets it up with a statement implying that the internet has not yet been cracked. Yeowch!
As I have said before, I can’t criticize the strike in any way. It’s clear the blowback from that shot would be much more damaging than any devastation caused by the shell. But at least I can channel my powerlessness, I mean, creativity into serving at least a few of the goals of the strike. Time and again (well, twice, which is the number of times we have had a general membership meeting), the leadership has stated that this strike is for the middle class writer. And being a middle class writer, I can’t afford the buy-in to participate in these new companies. And I have a feeling the Strike Fund ain’t going to lend it to me. In that light, how do these new companies, starting up at this point in time, serve that goal, or really any of the Strike goals? I guess all entrepreneurism is opportunism, but it seems out of place, at least to tout it, at this point.
Strike TV is the Writer’s Guild’s own venture. It wasn’t mentioned in the article, it doesn’t have its own website, no funds, and whatever money it makes goes to the Strike Fund. But it does serve at least one strike goal: to give writers a platform to express themselves. I hope it succeeds and isn’t crushed by these well-funded startups.
I guess we all have different motivations for leaving the cozy confines of The Box.
