Category: WGAE

Leave it to the Prose-Rejected Writers Guild Picket Signs

8/28/2023

I wrote this piece back in June, thinking I'd have to get it out to the world ASAP, figuring the writers strike shouldn't last too long. Unfortunately, 4 months later, it's still topical.

Rejected Writers Guild Picket Signs

To be honest, the longer the writers’ strike goes on, the less clever the picket signs become. Sure, they started out slick and comical, but now they’re beginning to read like a standard “Fast and Furious” comeback. As the WGA attempts to maintain a certain level of decorum, they’ve taken to monitoring the signs the writers come up with. Here’s some that were left on the picket line floor:

Pencils away! Or are you just glad to see me?

Sorry, studio contract, you’re not my TYPE(ing)!

Something, something, unfair!

Could you make the contract 10% sweeter?

We will not be replaced! By machines! Or your brother-in-law!

Without writers, what will you base all your future reboots on?

Hey, studio contract, we have notes!

Pencils down! Dander up!

Those post-credit Easter eggs don’t write themselves, you know!

Yadda-yadda-yadda, we’re on strike!

You think AI is going to suck up to you, too?

I hope we win the strike before they sell off the studios.

At least I’m getting my steps in.

My other sign is wittier.

And the sparkling water was flat!

FYI, we’re not the DGA.

Hey, Hey! Hee, Hee! Gotta beat the AMPTP

Hey, Siri, write me a picket sign.

0 Comments

Ghosts of Strikes Past

5/9/2023

0 Comments

Someone on Twitter recently posted his video from the last WGA strike 15 years ago, just to show how little has changed for the studios and what they think of writers. And it's spot on. I'm posting it here, though, because, I'm in it. I'm one of the picket sign holders in the background. I even use a screen-cap of it in my blog header.

This is the writers of the Daily Show putting together a video to explain the reasons for the strike. The WGA wanted to have a picket line in front of the NY Stock Exchange on Broad St. You know, to let the big corporations that own the studios and networks that they were serious. The city wouldn't give them a permit to picket the NYSE, and basically forced them to picket several blocks over by Battery Park. I don't know what passer-bys thought; were we protesting pigeons? Did Castle Clinton alarm us in some manner? Anyway, this was all down by where I work my day job, so I grabbed by WGA jacket, took a long lunch and jumped in the picket line.

Good luck, WGA.

0 Comments

Barely Home Companion - Who Wants to Marry a Sound Effects Guy?

1/24/2019

0 Comments

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Okay, so here's the deal. While messing around on my computer, I stumbled across some of my older Prairie Home sketches! There's a few unused skits prior to December 1999 and I found the sketches from the year 2000 of the 1999-2000 season. Go figure.

One of the bits I found was a rejected skit I submitted in April 2000. As you are aware, PHC was first and foremost a radio show, a theater of the mind. And the cast and crew played mightily in that arena. Garrison Keillor would do entire sketches just about sound effects to give their sound effects guy, the late, great Tom Keith, a chance to shine. They were quite whimsical and silly. I found myself drawn to them and would write several of them, none of which made it to air.

Around this time, the big TV show was "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and there were weird game show rip-offs like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire." That was my inspiration. I remember emailing the producer to ask if Tom Keith was married, because the ending tag kinda revolved on that fact, his wife demanding to know what was going on. I was told Keith wasn't married and dropped that part. Since the show was broadcasting from Town Hall in New York City, I gave it a New York flavor---which explains the Trump reference. As happy as I was with the piece, the fact is, I violated the first rule of writing for Keillor; I based the skit on pop culture, a TV show. He wouldn't get it.

As my motto is "Never throw anything out," I held on to those radio bits. Many years later, the Writers Guild of America, East, began a program to try and get radio dramas back on the air. They cut a deal with the local radio station, WNYC, and produced a number of episodes of a show called "Anything Goes." I pulled out and submitted some of my radio-intensive sketches rejected from PHC and a couple of them were produced for this new show during the summer of 2005.

I wasn't thrilled with the results. There's no sense of fun, the comic timing is off and there's no studio audience, so it's a bit ponderous as opposed to absurd. Oh, well. We'll file this under "What might have been." But I recorded it and I'm posting it here.

I've included the original script from the PHC version beneath.

Dan Fiorella · Who Wants to Marry a Sound Effects Guy? 2006

WHO WANTS TO MARRY A SOUND EFFECTS GUY?

0 Comments

Leave it to the Prose-Rejected Writers Guild Picket Signs

Rejected Writers Guild Picket Signs

Ghosts of Strikes Past

Barely Home Companion - Who Wants to Marry a Sound Effects Guy?

WHO WANTS TO MARRY A SOUND EFFECTS GUY?

Dan Fiorella

Archives

Categories

Blog Roll