Tom Corwine

Wednesday, at NBC studios in Burbank, picketing resumed.

The first day at a new location is always interesting. I like to scope out the location, learn where the bathrooms are, where the different gates are and which gates we picket. The best part, though, is meeting new people.

One person of interest is Brian. Brian isn’t a writer. He is a journalism student from Fairbanks, Alaska and he joined our picket line Wednesday. He was a funny guy to talk to and we couldn’t be happier having him.

Thursday was my shortest day on the picket line. I spent two hours walking, until I had to come home and go to bed. Although working the overnight shift allow me to picket with the writers, I must sleep sometime.

Picketing will continue Friday at NBC. Monday, January 7th, picketing at many of the other studios continue.

For the past couple of days, I’ve done some location picketing. As one might suspect, location picketing involves picketing productions where they’re shooting on location. This is very different from picketing studios, where we’re just walking back and forth in front of a gate. On location picketing, we’re walking on public sidewalks right next to the production. We have interactions with crew members. They talk to us, we talk to them. The chances of a battle ensuing are greater.

Despite the greater tension of doing a location picket, I feel we’re getting more accomplished. We’re actually able to communicate a message to the cast and crew and get our voices heard. Many of them support the WGA’s position, and the whole event is very civil, although a few line producers have pulled the hair out of their head trying to get the cops to make us leave.

Speaking of cops, the LAPD has done great job allowing us to express our 1st Amendment right while balancing complaints from the production.

There’s no more picketing left this year. It will resume January 7th, if necessary.

It’s Saturday night and I’m finally getting around to writing about Monday and Tuesday on the strike lines.

For the most part, they were pretty normal days. The one new thing this week was the time, I started doing a later shift, 9am to 12pm. As much as I like walking in circles with the same people over and over again, meeting new people is always nice too.

Tuesday at noon, the cast of Heroes showed up to the lines. Many fans of the show turned out to meet the cast, including two girls from Utah. Another girl showed up early and walked the lines at gate 3 with us, which was greatly appreciated. It was a great turnout, and I’m sure it brought Universal’s moguls to their knees.

As usual, I took some cellphone pics. I haven’t really taken a good look at them, but if any of them are decent, I’ll post them here tomorrow. I wish I had some better ones, but camera phones suck.

Last Wednesday, I spent another day at Universal, making it the first week I walked the same gate each day. As much as I’d like to wander to the other studios, I can take the Red Line to Universal and forgo dealing with the parking situation at the other picket locations.

The only event that can qualify as exciting was a visit from the LAPD. We didn’t do anything wrong, but we’ve had various near misses with cars ignoring our right-of-way in the crosswalk. The LAPD showed up to monitor the situation and talk to any motorist who felt it’s okay to hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk, so long as they’re holding a picket sign.

Gate 3, in all its glory.

Next week my schedule may vary somewhat, as I have some other strike-related projects I’m working on that might hinder my picketing availability. I’ll post some links to those projects next week, hopefully.

It was typical day at Gate 3, Universal - show up at 6am, walk for three hours, go home. Today, though, instead of going home, I went out to eat with two other picket line walkers, Fred and Isaac. While talking on the picket line is great, the restaurant was a better environment to chat, since we’re not subjected to traffic noise and sucking carbon monoxide fumes.

I returned to Universal later in the day to attend location picketing training. As the name suggests, location picketing entails going out to locations and asserting our 1st Amendment right to get our message across. Location picketing doesn’t have a fixed schedule like studio picketing, it’s more like on call, on the fly type work. It sounded interesting, but for now I think I’ll stick to the studios.

If anyone out there would like to come out to Universal and join the line, we’d love to have you. The Gate 3 morning shift has at least five regulars who are not WGA members, including myself, so you will be in good company. Information about picket locations and shifts is available at the WGAw web site.

Fridays are reserved for rallies, and this Friday’s (12/7/07) rally is the It’s All Written Rally at FremantleMedia from 12pm to 2pm.

The only picture I took today was a close up of a picket sign. I intend to use this to create a virtual picket sign in Second Life. If you are interested in participating in a virtual strike, get on Second Life and search for the Fans For Writers group.

Here is the picture of the picket sign, in case I don’t get a chance to make my virtual picket sign before Saturday.

Universal Studios is getting to be a regular stop for me, as Paramount was the first few weeks. As usual, I worked the morning shift - 6am. Today, we had some close calls of picketers getting run over by cars, myself included. In the end, though, we all made it through unscathed.

We had a visit from Neal Baer, a member of the WGA negotiating committee, who talked about what went on in the negotiating room last week and where the WGA is going from here. The discussion went on for over 30 minutes and was very detailed. I’m not going to try and sum it up here, there are better web sites for that kind of information.

Past jobs was a topic of conversation today. I talked a little about my pizza delivery days while others talked about operating forklifts, loading trucks and stocking grocery stores. Some jobs seemed very out-of-place for a writer, like our gate captain, Steve, who used to be a prosecutor. Our visitor, Neal Baer, went to medical school and became a pediatrician before his current role as showrunner of Law & Order: SVU.

I’m not sure where I’m going to head tomorrow, either Fox, Paramount or Universal. I’ll make up my mind in the morning.

On Wednesday, I picketed Universal again. Like Tuesday, it was a very uneventful day.

Friday there’s a rally at Sony Studios, and since I couldn’t find any reference to it on the WGAw web site, I’ll mention it’s Friday November 30th from 10am to 12pm at Sony Studios in Culver City.

I won’t be there, but I’m sure there will be plenty of YouTube videos.

Universal Gate 3 is much like Paramount’s Van Ness, a busy gate with no traffic light.

This week’s shifts are only three hours, as opposed to the previous weeks’ four hour shifts. This is a popular change as hour four is when the pain really starts to kick in. Since I’m not a member of the Guild, I can come and go as I please, but it’s nice to arrive and leave with the others.

Much like Paramount, I’ve gotten to know people at Universal and I am often greeted with familiar faces. One of the things that makes walking in circles bearable is the conversations with other writers, which vary widely. Occasionally, there’s talk about screenwriting but more often we talk about Thanksgiving dinner, cars, where we live, where we’d like to live, and otherwise useless pieces of knowledge. Sometimes I find myself trying to invent a conversation topic in an attempt to break the awkward silence. Universal has billboards all around which make great conversation pieces, but there’s only so many times one can ask “Have you seen American Gangster?” before that gets stale.

This is gate 3. I took this picture during a shift change, in case you’re wondering about the lack of picketers.

Wednesday, I’ll be at Universal again for a few hours in the morning.

Today I walked the line at Paramount’s Van Ness Gate, where I’ve done most of my picketing. I get nervous at this gate because there’s no traffic light, and it’s busy during certain hours of the morning. I’ve made a lot of friends there, however, and I enjoy talking with them as we walk the ten or so miles a day.

We had at least one Teamster refuse to cross our line. Several other trucks pulled over to the side of the road, sat there for a moment, then took off. Since the drivers never got out, it’s hard to tell whether they were respecting the line or just stopping for some other reason.

My cellphone battery was dead, so I didn’t get any photos. Not a big deal, since there weren’t many photo moments.

Tomorrow I’m heading to Universal for the 6am shift.

Here are some pictures I took from the Solidarity March for Writers on Hollywood Boulevard. Although I didn’t bring a real camera along, I made extensive use of my cellphone’s added feature.

The Teamsters showed up in full force. The crowd cheered as not one, not two but three 18 wheelers from International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 399, Local 64 and Joint Council 42 rolled past.

The march started off with Alicia Keys performing Go Ahead and No One.

Dedication can be expressed many different ways.

We started at Ivar and headed west to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Not only did various entertainment unions such as SAG, DGA and AFLCIO show, but many non-entertainment unions including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) marched. I tried counting how many different industries were represented - I lost count.

Okay, so The Incredible Hulk isn’t a union. It’s still nice to have his support.

Amongst the crowd, I met some writers from The Young and the Restless. There have been some nasty rumors that the Y&R writers went Fi-Cor and crossed the picket lines to go back to work. They didn’t. They are in solidarity with the rest of their fellow WGA members.

Once we arrived at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Writers Guild of America, west President Patric M. Verrone spoke along with many others. From Grey’s Anatomy, Sandra Oh gave a passionate speech which basically called for a complete boycott of Sony, Disney, GE, Viacom, News Corp., and Time Warner.

My inner paparazzi wishes I could’ve taken a better picture than this, but I suppose it’s not bad for a cellphone.

Walking the picket lines these past few weeks has been an emotional experience for me, but this rally was one of those exceptional moments in life when I feel like I was part of a moment in history.