Often Overlooked Entertainment Industry Workers Make Their Voices Heard During The Writers Strike

Average viewers are aware that every piece television show starts with a writer, but what many aren’t aware of is that an integral part of the process of getting that content produced involves a subset of people without which nothing would get done.

These are the people who serve as support stuff in the entertainment industry.

There are several roles that fall under this heading, with the most common being assistants, which includes those providing support to producers and executives, and writers assistants, individuals who actually work in the writers room taking notes and supporting the writing process. Script coordinators, who manage the constant collation needed on the ever changing scripts that writers produce, among other duties, also fall under the support staff heading as well.

The path from support staff worker to writer had long been a workable career trajectory in the industry — many of today’s higher level writers and executives started out as assistants — with the reasoning that that the low pay and long hours required in these positions would be worth it in the end.

But in 2019, Liz Alper, a writer, whose credits include Two Sentence Horror Stories, The Rookie, and Chicago Fire, co-founded a grassroots movement entitled #PayUpHollywood, a campaign to bring attention to the pay inequities, abuses, and struggles of many Hollywood assistants.

The movement came about in response to a conversation about assistants’ pay between writers John August (Aladdin) and Craig Mazin (The Last of Us) during an episode of their podcast Scriptnotes.

In response, scores of assistants began sharing their experiences, via the hashtag #PayUpHollywood on Twitter, created by Alper and fellow writer Deirdre Mangan (The Crossing, Roswell, New Mexico), and elsewhere online.

It became clear that the most pressing issues with the current system for assistants and support staff is the low pay and a lack of advancement created by the new television streaming model.

During a special picket session in front of NetflixNFLX
, recently, Alper and fellow speakers addressed these problems.

At the event, Franklin Leonard spoke about his struggles as an assistant.

Leonard, who has worked as a studio executive, now runs The Black List, a website that connects writers with industry executives, and puts out an annual list of the year’s best unproduced scripts. He has been recognized by the WGA for his efforts to herald the importance of writers contributions within the creative process.

dressing the crowd, Leonard revealed that as an assistant he made just $23,000 a year. He distinctly remembered about how on payday he’d run to cash his check at lunch time so that he had enough money to put gas in his car to get home.

Alper, who is also a WGA West board member, set up the event, which included a resource fair.

In her remarks she said that nothing would get done in Hollywood without assistants and support staff, speaking specifically to this subset of the group, Alper said, “We know that this labor action has directly affected all of you, we want you to know that you are supported not just by writers but by the entertainment community at large.”

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August, who was also an assistant at one point in his career and has helped raise approximately $500,000 for #PayUpHollywood, says that the initiative came out of asking listeners of his podcast Scriptnotes, ‘what are the issues in the entertainment industry that no one is talking about.’

Listeners came back saying they were most concerned about how little support staff and assistants were being paid, and how this has led to the collapse of the ability to advance.

“Those jobs were classically the first rung on the ladder to success, and that ladder is broken. No one can afford to take these jobs because they can’t make a living [on the low salary],” August pointed out.

He says that while the group has made some progress in the past few years, “We’ve haven’t made enough, because even right now, Liz’s group did a survey that showed 95% of assistants and support staff workers are not making enough money to live in LA.”

Chris Keyser, a writer (The Society, Party of Five) and a member of the WGA negotiating committee, told the group that, “The fight for economic justice is a universal fight. It touches everyone.”

He added, “The thing that the Writers Guild is worried about is the path that others have followed before you may have been broken. And we’re not going to let that happen.

Referencing how advancement used to occur, Keyser says that in the past, assistants and support staff moved up to became writers and showrunners in a way that doesn’t currently exist.

This is because of both the shorter number of series episodes ordered, which often times blocks assistants from advancing, with companies asking them to continue as an assistant on show after show, and the smaller number of writers per series, which means fewer writer positions for assistants and support staffers to move into.

In addition to these factors, many companies now also engage in a practice in which they ‘close the writers room’ once all scripts are complete, which blocks those writers from working on pre-production, participating as a writer on-set, and collaborating on the final edit of an episode. Lower level writers therefore cannot learn these skills, which are needed to advance to an upper level position.

And, sometimes, once the writers room is closed, the studio decides not to proceed with production on the series. In these cases, the writer gets no credit, and, most importantly, no more money, for any episode they’ve written. This can also result in a writer repeating a lower level position several times.

All of this is to say that if writers don’t advance up to a higher position in a timely manner because they don’t have the credits or can’t gain the skillset needed to move up, assistants and support staff can’t advance into lower level writer positions and start their ascent into a television writing career.

This is the chain that’s broken.

But, if the current labor action by writers results in guarantees for a set number of writers in each writers room, protections against closing writers rooms prior to production and more attention to training so that they can advance, assistants and support staff will be on the winning end of the strike as well.

Keyser, seeking to instill hope in the crowd during this difficult time, reminded the assistants and support staff workers, “You are the voices of tomorrow, the varied and beautiful voices of tomorrow, and without you that future is not possible. We cannot let that happen.”

Initiatives to help members of the entertainment industry affected by the strike include The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund, which supports individuals with less than three years working in the industry, The Entertainment Community Fund which offers financial relief for anyone working in Hollywood who is experiencing a work stoppage and Green Envelope for Groceries which provides direct assistance by providing grocery gift cards.