As a recent episode of the rather wonderful The Pitchers cartoon pointed out so succinctly, Hollywood doesn't seem to have the greatest of regard for writers. They would appear to be second class citizens, doomed forever to make their way into the shiny LA HQs of Warner Bros and Paramount through the equivalent of the tradesmen's entrance.
You get the impression that the current writer's strike could only have been allowed to happen if studio executives really didn't "get" that without someone to originate the stories which form the basis of their movies, they would have no product at all. It's almost as if these people don't believe a storyline is necessary for their productions. Then, again, some of these people were involved in making Transformers.
In order to illustrate their essential point that without them, Hollywood will be forced to remake the same films over and over again (umm...) the Writer's Guild of America have enlisted the help of some of the more altruistic A-list stars to film a series of short films depicting the outcome should the strike not be brought to a swift conclusion.
There have been three films posted so far, with the most recent, featuring Sean Penn, viewable here. You can see the opening episode, starring Holly Hunter and a gentleman in an Indian call centre, above, and the second, featuring Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, is viewable here. What do you reckon? Do these shorts make their point?
