It’s a funny about this whole WGA strike thing, no on seems to really seem to care about it, except in the context of all the fun its ruining for celebrities, Hollywood marketing firms, and the entrenched Hollywood media. No one cares whether the writers get more money or whether the producers make less. If I wrote a story on that right now, absolutely no one would read it. But they’ll read this, because it’s about the panic that’s setting in over the industry… not over all the great scripts that will never be written, but over all the awards and promotional opportunities that are being missed.
Where was the outrage when new episodes of The Office and Chuck were no longer airing? Everyone just sort of shrugged their shoulders and listlessly wandered over to their remote to see if they could find some mildly bearable reality programming. Now though, the strike has reduced the People’s Choice Awards to a clip show, cancelled the Golden Globes, and people are panicking.
Yes yes, the Golden Globes are cancelled. And as if to add insult to injury, they’re being replaced by an episode of American Gladiators. Erik Davis over at Cinematical I think had the best suggestion. Instead of canceling the awards, why not just have them handed out by the Gladiators? I’d love to see Katherine Heigl in a dress next to Militia. Those pasty faced writers would never have the guts to protest that. It’s too good.
So the Golden Globes are cancelled and now everyone’s suddenly woken up and realized… hey this could ruin a lot of cocktail parties! Fervently worried, half-crazed, premature proclamation of doom has broken out, with the press suddenly frightened that their boss will no longer be willing to spring for that Comic Con trip. Yeah, Comic Con is still six goddamn months away, but people are actually writing concerned editorials, fretting that it might not happen. Or worse, what if it cancels the Oscars? Holy hell, we might not get to hear Sean Penn bitch about the Iraq war this year! How will we live? Maybe it will cancel the Oscars. If it does, trust me, it'll only make your life better.
Instead what Hollywood, the press, and all of you dear readers, ought to be worried about is how funny Stephen Colbert is… with or without writers. Why does he need them again? Or the way in which the strike is allowing the cancer of awful reality programming to take an even bigger bite out of television. Or all the millions of people who are going to end up out of work and on the street, because 3,000 writers and a few greedy producers couldn’t work out their differences like big boys and girls. Or maybe we should worry about the potential problems the strike is causing for movies already in production. There’s a good chance a lot of the stuff you watch next year might not be as good as it could have been, because directors are forced to shoot the scripts they have without changes, even if they have good ideas that might improve them. Or maybe we shouldn’t care at all about any of it. Hollywood is spoiled and pampered enough as it is. Maybe we’d all be better off if they shut the whole thing down and started over.
Screw the Golden Globes. Drop dead Oscars. Fuck you Comic Con. Who cares. It doesn’t matter. You and I weren’t going to get invited to any of the cool after parties associated with them anyway, and I'm sure JJ Abrams can find some other way to release Star Trek news. What matters is that I spent my Tuesday night watching fat people on a teeter totter in the latest episode of the Biggest Loser, not because I wanted to, but because there was literally nothing else for me to view.
