Beginnings and ends

The Oscars brought last year to a close and just a day ago the Cannes Film Festival ended, bringing excitement and speculation about this year’s offerings stacked with top talent. Meanwhile outside the bubble, we’ve had gamesmanship and high drama in Washington about the Debt Ceiling, all the while running parallel, to the raw, bread and butter, and very real Writers Strike!

Cannes encapsulates a moment in time where the film world’s gods and goddesses gather to bathe in the heady thrill of premieres and lavish parties. Where film lovers stand in the rain for hours to catch a glimpse of this years contenders for awards, and where filmmakers are overcome with emotion from standing ovations for the films that often took them years to make.

On the other side of the rainbow, we have over 11,000 writers, picketing in the Hollywood sunshine, and on the crowded pavements of New York, Atlanta and Chicago. Writers who are demanding better compensation in a world increasingly dominated by streaming and with AI threatening their redundancy. The world has changed radically since the last Writers Strike way back in 2007 when Netflix still mailed DVD’s and which lasted 100 days. In todays climate the inequities are enormous and writers have been left stranded on the losing end of “progress.” The strike could again go for a long time, until Film and TV producers offer writers a fair share of the industry, an industry where hopefully originality and creativity still command value.

Hey, when you’re a writer and telling stories is in your DNA, or somewhere along the way you caught the bug, it’s what you do, you write, and you will keep writing, for as long as you live in the wonderful universe of filmmaking.

So keep writing and see you next time.