Under the spreading writers strike, the village Smithee stands....

[captainsblog]

The latest salvo from the producers after the writers tossed a whole new pile of union-shop demands on the table last week:

CBS to move Showtime programming, including possibly Dexter, to broadcast television.

So. Heroes is done, there's presumably a full season of Lost already in the can, and now I'm gonna get to watch premium programming on CBS.  The Bills and Sabres are still both in the hunt, and pitchers and catchers report in just over 60 days.

This strike is a bad thing, how?

----

I netflixed a bitingly wonderful movie about these battling millionaires in La La Land, titled Burn Hollywood Burn.  Its premise is fiendishly simple, and is based on the old movie conceit that if a director pulled his (or her) name from a finished product, the DGA would replace it with the code name "Alan Smithee." In this spoof, Eric Idle plays a loony director whose name really IS Alan Smithee, and who therefore cannot get Guild approval to take his name off the product. Union rules, y'know.

Either through extreme irony or a touch of guerrilla marketing, the actual director of the mockumentary, Arthur Hiller, disliked the final cut and demanded removal of his name, so the credited director is, in "real life," Alan Smithee. To prevent Xeno's Paradox from causing California to fall into the ocean, Smithee's name is no longer used for this purpose.

Comments

[meredith-mae.livejournal.com]

Well, the strike DID cause my roommate to lose her job (extremely small production company with no new work coming in), so it's not terrible as far as I'm concerned, programming-wise (I'd be fine if I only watched TV once or twice a month), but rent-wise, perhaps. For me. :-)

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

I swear to all things holy, if they move Dexter to CBS as planned, I'm thinking they'll have to cut all but five minutes of every episode. Wooohooo, lots of commercials....

[lisaofdoom.livejournal.com]

Which would be exactly what the network is hoping for.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

Grrrargggh. But what good is Dex if you can't show some severed limbs and blood everywhere? What's Doakes without a "muthafucka" now and then? Etc.

[lisaofdoom.livejournal.com]

I never said it was a GOOD idea. :p

[lisaofdoom.livejournal.com]

This strike is a bad thing, how?

...you're being serious?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Nah, not really. But don't tell them that. The only way to get both sides serious about this business is for them to think we really don't care.

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

I LOVE Dexter. It's my favorite show at the moment.