Now-concluded strike by writers underscored the vital role they play
To the vast majority of TV viewers and filmgoers, scriptwriters are invisible, just cogs in a vast machine.
The lengthy, just-concluded strike by the Writers Guild of America against studios and streaming services offered a rare moment of public visibility for the hard-working wordsmiths behind our favorite series and movies.
Writers will now go back to invisibility again, of course. But the strike underscored their importance. Without the emergence of so many talented writers in the past decade or two, we wouldn’t be talking about any Second Golden Age of television, that’s for sure. Somebody is writing all those groundbreaking scripts.
In whatever field, writers are always on the hunt for material. Sometimes, TV scriptwriters have found subject matter in their own workplace: the writers room.
It has been a key setting for a number of series over the years, giving us a glimpse at the brainstorming, personality clashes, tedium, bursts of collegial creativity, and deadline-driven tension that occurs when you put a bunch of people who are used to expressing themselves in the same room.
In “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1961-66), the writers room was the place where Rob Petrie (Van Dyke), Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) cracked wise and dreamed up jokes and sketches for a TV variety show whose host was Alan Brady (Carl Reiner).
(The temperamental and eccentric Brady was modeled on Sid Caesar of “Your Show of Shows.’’ That show, whose writers included the likes of Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, also inspired a wonderful 1982 film, “My Favorite Year.’’ It featured Joseph Bologna as the Caesar-like King Kaiser, and numerous scenes took place in the writers room.)
On “30 Rock” (2006-13), Tina Fey played Liz Lemon, the beleaguered head writer on a live late-night comedy show akin to “Saturday Night Live,” where Fey had been a head writer and a performer.
“Reboot,” a Hulu series about the reboot of an early 2000’s family sitcom, mined the writers room for humor, as did Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” (Unfortunately “Reboot” was canceled after one season).
During awards season, some actors are savvy enough to give a shoutout to writers when they accept an Oscar or an Emmy. Funny thing, it’s hard to recall an instance where performers have thanked them by name.