Leno Writes Own Material – Writers Guild Upset

J.J. Jackson* | January 4, 2008

Filed Under Conservative Musings, Liberals

You bet they are. If you’ve ever been in a union environment, and I had the displeasure of such an experience once although thankfully escaped having to join, you know who things work. You need a one man to loosen the nut, one man to turn off the electricity, one man to remove the equipment, and one man to watch them all do it. Then on top of that you probably have another man watching the man watching the other men do it.

So when Jay Leno writes his own monologue and breaks the “rules” designed to keep people hardly worth their salaries employed it raises their dander.

I have a feeling this controversy not only isn’t going away but will probably deepen over the next days: Jay Leno admitted last night on the air during his first show back from strike hiatus that he wrote his own monologue. That’s a huge problem because it violates the strike rules of one of his unions, the Writers Guild Of America, which is currently on strike and picketing NBC and Leno’s Tonight Show. Leno did deliver what was a funny monologue. So the big question is who wrote it: WGA members or scabs (i.e. the usual contingent of joke writers who hang out around Jay’s kitchen table)?Leno addressed that very issue during the monologue: “You know what I’m doing? I’m doing what I did the day I started. I write jokes and wake my wife up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Honey, is this funny?’ So if this monologue doesn’t work it’s my wife’s fault,” he explained. “We are not using outside guys. We are following the guild thing… We can write for ourselves…”

Earth To Leno: That’s not the way the WGA interprets its strike rules as spelled out here: “The Strike Rules, among other provisions, prohibit Guild members from performing any writing services during a strike for any and all struck companies. This prohibition includes all writing by any Guild member that would be performed on-air by that member (including monologues, characters, and featured appearances) if any portion of that written material is customarily written by striking writers.” (See my previous: WGA Reminds Returning Jay And Conan: No Monologues.)

Why does the Guild have these rules? Because it is the only way they can justify the existence of their members and the union. Why, if people could actually write their own material and chose not to follow the crowd like lemmings what would be the point of the union?

If someone else can do the job then what is the point of having writers on staff other than to leech money?

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