We Need to Talk

These are the words that strike fear into the heart of any relationship. Man, woman, writer, AMPTP. Doesn’t matter. It always means the same thing; whatever relationship there was is about to be over.
 
Yesterday, WGA leaders and AMPTP representatives got together somewhere in the Sherman Oaks Mall. The meeting’s itinerary was a simple one. Let’s gauge the water and see if the two of us can’t agree to sit down for further talks. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. Like an estranged man and his wife meeting for the first time in some lawyer’s overpriced conference room, the one-hour meeting quickly turned to angry finger-pointing and who would get custody of the family cat.
 
I do not pretend to know what went on behind closed doors. I do know this; it wasn’t an improvised quickie while the children were busy outside playing. Apparently, we still have a very long way to go. Writers need to have some very important issues addressed. Among them writer’s rooms, A.I., and who gets the children on Christmas and Thanksgiving. 
 
The writers, we are the children, huddling behind closed doors, listening to our parents verbally slug it out accusingly; Who’s cheated, who ran up the credit cards and who keeps piling their dirty laundry onto the bedroom chair. Pretty sordid stuff. Oh, we’ll survive. We always do. Perhaps our parents married too young. Apple, Netflix, Amazon, they weren’t really ready for the responsibility. But they have it now and I guess we, the children, are the ones to pay the price.