A thought came to me as I was watching the end of season 3 of The Wire while listening to the director and writer's commentary. The director talks about lens lengths, subtle camera movements, blocking. All of these have effects of on the viewer, ones that they likely can't quite put their fingers on. I certainly wasn't conscious of some of the track-ins that were happening during conversations between two characters, but I bet that, subconsciously, it helped to boost the sense of tension and importance in the scene for me, all the more so b/c The Wire doesn't use the crutch of emotion-directing musical cues. But I couldn't help but think that the camera movements, the lighting, the music (if there were any), the performances, and everything else serve to augment the core of the text - the script. Even though I know that TV and film are collaborative arts, I cannot help but think that the script is the most important element of either medium.
I had a sudden pang of guilt about an earlier entry I wrote about why screenwriters will never get much pay or much respect. I've enjoyed The Wire so much and believe that it will go on to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in DVD, online, and cable syndication revenue; how could I say that its writers weren't entitled to most of that revenue when they created the core of that text?
I still believe what I wrote in that entry: that unlike directors, producers, financiers, cinematographers, agents, and actors, writers do not need a lot of capital to ply their trade. The reason why all the rest of those individuals get paid so much is not b/c they're equally or more responsible for what shows up on screen. Its b/c they need capital and, in the case of agents and producers, connections to practice their trade, to get better at it, and to get anything done in that industry. Capital is rare. Pens and paper (or laptops) are not. Because of that simple economic truth, writers will never get all that much money. There are always more out there.
Of course, there aren't that many George Pelacanoses and David Simons out there. Good writing is rare. But how do you know that one writer is better than another, that one script is better than another?
I'd argue that unions, because they encourage producers and studios to pay flat rates for scripts that have little to do with the number of people that will actually see the movie or the TV show, encourage mediocre writing. Producers would pay writers more if there were some way of knowing what they were paying for.
And what about the David Simons and George Pelaconoses that are just starting out, that could use the support of the unions to make it through the lean years so that they can get the time to write something as good as The Wire? I think that with the storytelling incubator that the internet allows for, either through making low-budget web-series or no-budget blogs publication of scripts (hell, even fanfiction gives scouts an idea of who the good and the bad writers are), financiers will be able to spot the writers who can please large audiences without having to guess, offer them the contracts they deserve, and stop taking bad bets on bad writers. Good writing has always been rare, but b/c financiers had to guess as to what might be popular, they had no incentive to pay them all that much, and unions didn't help by encouraging those financiers to compensate good and bad writers equally based on the misguided premise that today's hack could be tomorrow's Herman J. Mankiewicz. Not anymore.
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