by Leonard B. Stern
The Way It Was...
So Help Me!
There are as many versions of what took
place at the first meetings of the Caucus as there are producer credits on
situation comedies. Well, maybe not as many.
Why these discrepancies and
inaccuracies about such specific events? There are those who say that memory and
truth do not coexist well in time. What is most interesting is that those who
push this philosophical clap trap are, in fact, the founding fathers of the
Caucus. Obviously, these men do not want their conspiracy to be remembered.
It is now time for the truth to be
told. When we first met back in '74, we were ostensibly hyphenates who were
meeting to discuss the inequities perpetrated by the Writers Guild. Actually, we
were hardened ex-servicemen from Armed Forces Radio and WAC recruiting who had
been trained as writer-guerrillas. None of us were interested in such benign
concepts as being directly responsible to the public for television programming
or to protect our integrity as creative artists. Our mission was to seek and
destroy current network programming concepts.
I now put myself significantly at risk
by revealing our initial battle plans. (They were so inflammatory, we were
required to read and eat them immediately. Much the reason why the majority of
us have had heartburn all these years.) For the record, I did try and confirm
these plans, but unfortunately those among the original eleven, in whom I have
trust, can't remember what they were told not to remember.
In January of '75 we launched surprise
attacks, simultaneously, on the three networks.
We Demanded that CBS improve the
quality of their programming. If they didn't, we threatened to withhold our most
gifted, intelligent and literate writers from working for them. They thanked us!
We decided to hit ABC where they were
most vulnerable. We gave them 24 hours to get rid of marketing research. They
called back and asked for 48 hours so they could test the idea.
We took the head of NBC hostage. We
sent a ransom note. The Network asked for a rewrite. We did a second draft in
which we asked to talk to them personally. The best they could do was setup a
pitch meeting. We met and told them our ideas. They have yet to get back to us.
These setbacks dictated we try a new
approach. We demilitarized immediately and set about creating a list of aims and
objectives. We encouraged our members to speak to them. An egregious error if
ever there was one. Anyone who listened to a Writers Guild acceptance speech
knows you can't give a writer a microphone (especially one that works), and an
audience without imposing a modest time constraint, such as the speech may not
run longer than a day. Our think tank became a talk tank leading to this
shocking revelation. Although our aims and objectives have been in existence for
the past twenty years and have been printed in this magazine for the last ten,
they have yet to be ratified. We still have five of the original eleven writers
waiting their turn to address the issue.
