Enough is enough.
It's time that the public stand for professional standards.
Think about this: You need to know about politics, national, state, local, because DECISIONS MADE EFFECT YOUR LIFE. You do not need to know anything about celebrities who are not in your life. If they are friends they will tell you themselves about themselves; at least what they want you to know. Unless you are among them, working for or with them,what is happening in their personal lives, IS NOT LIKELY GOING TO EFFECT YOUR LIFE.
So should you be reading about politics or celebrity gossip?
The studios and most actors make extreme incomes. It is the writers who provide the scripts, and give them the dialogue, who are essential to film-making. Maybe every writer has a script they're working on in a drawer of their desk at their "real job," so I was told years ago when I typed my creative work on a laptop at a coffee house where I heard one of these Hollywood writers call me "the girl who types." I was an adult woman who had just graduated from a writing program that was not easy to get into and there was this sexist jackass trying to turn me into a secretary. He was there hoping to get my ideas having run out of his own. Those guys are everywhere.
A script writing hopeful one showed up at my writing round table and took everyone else's work home with him to critique and never showed back up. We thought he was a script thief. That was why I told the group we should never admit anyone who didn't first submit their work to us - to prove they had some.
I have reason to think a couple of my ideas were stolen over the years.
That or there is a collective consciousness.
Women and the work of women creators in all the arts do not at all enjoy equality with men. It's still very much a boy's club and the boys in the boy's club are still playing the "if you have sex with me I'll get you the break you need," card with women.
Someone who worked for Steven Spielberg said writers called him Thieven Steven because, they said, he was fond of claiming, when being pitched, that he had already had that idea... I have no idea if this is actually true as I never wrote a script in my life to that point and did not have a script in any drawer, but I heard it more than once. The script writers would show up at one coffee house or another and when they chose to move to a new location to write - well you never knew why they showed up or vacated a location.
One said that if you did it right, you could even sell a shitty script, just so someone else could have your idea more legitimately.
There were stories of certain writers taking a script and spilling coffee on it and stamping it with dirty shoes to make it look like it had been sitting around a while...
A man who told me about Thieven Steven, sent me an e-mail that said, "I know you're writing naked. I know you do." I was appalled. I e-mailed back, "Never contact me again."
I remember going on a walk in the Hollywood Hills with someone who told me to sell a novel and likely someone would buy the film rights for $40,000 which they called "bathroom remodeling money."
Pay for writers in Hollywood is often a joke.
But the cost of living is no joke.
So though sexism and sexual harassment is very much Hollywood, I stand with the writers on strike.
And I note that Prince Harry is taking a beating in the British media for speaking up about his own experience with privacy invasion and being spied upon. They are circling the wagons but if it did or did not happen is not so much the point. It should NEVER happen. Journalism had standards and that was WHY it was an admired and proud PROFESSION.
Like other professions, it's up to the PRO's to keep it PRO. So rather than focus on beating up Harry for speaking out, check into your own tactics.
C 2023 Christine Trzyna
PS: Re true crime on YouTube. Avoid NewsNation. They are shit stirrers.
Listen to Surviving the Survivor! Best guests in true crime, owned and hosted by a Journalist who has guests from many points of view.
