Writers and the law
Everybody in the country is exquisitely aware of the television writers’ strike that threatens to be extensive and in so many ways universally damaging. Of course it’s painful to see these talented men and women walking the streets, but extraordinarily few know that there is another legal matter involving the writers that is in progress, and that has remained in progress since the year 2000.
Let me clarify. A lawsuit involving writers and the companies and individuals who have hired them in the past was instituted by writers in 2000. Over the course of seven years, a lot of questions have bee n asked, depositions taken, papers mailed-but no trial has begun. We are still before the beginning.
So to say that the end doesn’t begin to be in sight is alternately funny and pathetic when you understand that the subject of the suit is age discrimination. Here we have older television writers suing those people / companies who have refused to hire them because they have gotten too old, all the while they are getting older… and indeed dying. In other words, if they were too old seven years ago… but you get the idea. And of course there has been no dollar amount proposed as recompense for this permanently enforced idleness, only a change in the criteria for buying material, i.e., the age of the writer is to have nothing to do with the value of his writing. You can immediately see the difficulty here. You’re a person who buys material for a company that has been sued, and you read something you don’t like, and someone says to you, “You’ve got to like it. The man who wrote this is old.” You’d probably say, “Are you kidding? Nuts to that!”
No, it’s simply impossible to govern. So what is left is a dollar “award to make up for past misconduct.” Unfortunately, the people who might benefit from winning this protracted suit will have passed on, so they will never have the satisfaction of knowing they won something. And if they should win something, it will go to a spouse or children.
There is no question that the television writer these past years has gotten ever younger. A fellow just out of college who used to start in the mailroom-with perseverance and talent-might, if he were lucky, inevitably get a staff job. Now this same young man is coveted, and put to work on a series, often with no professional experience
In plain words, the age of the writer has become a determining factor in the sale of written material, no matter how good the writing or how provably excellent the scrivener. Forty-five has become some sort of outer limit. At even that age, it becomes ever more difficult for a writer to get a meeting to even pitch a story.
And of course, as awful as it is for a talented man, who often has an exceptional credit list, to suddenly find it impossible to do what he has most likely done all of his life, the viewing public must suffer as well, by being deprived of the experience lost.
You cannot teach life. You must experience something in order to viscerally understand what it is you are going through. You can imagine what losing a child is, but the man or woman who has lost one has had something added to his person that changes him. And this makes the way he thinks, what he cares about and what he values quite different.
Multiply that experience unlimitedly. Those things you may live through come in a bottomless barrel. A young man may have a superb imagination, a great facility with words, but his experience is limited by his age.
I could go on for some pages annotating samples of the ludicrousness of this situation. But the other day I received a progress letter informing us older fellows how our representatives were progressing. And I could see that we were probably years away from a solution to our problem. In fact, I could see that the companies in their own defense would be wise to stall as long as possible, so that we writers who have faded from their considerations might gradually disappear altogether.
I will hold my breath waiting for this outcome. On the other hand, a fellow could die doing that.