Picking Up on the Picket Line
A single's guy look at the writers' strike.
By Duncan Birmingham
December 10, 2007
I write screenplays, often romantic and mostly comedies, although I go to great lengths to avoid using those two words in conjunction. As of November 5, my workday no longer involves sitting alone in a room. Instead, I'm walking in circles with people. Lots of people. Like many members of the Writer's Guild of America, this is my first strike. Since picketing started a month ago, I've met more writers than I have in seven years working in Hollywood. It's the one bright spot in a truly shitty situation. So it's only logical that while I'm out fighting the power, I might try dating too.
Out on the picket line, between chants and Krispy Kremes, I've met some quirky, literate, attractive women. (I'm trying not use the term "ladies," after a woman on my picket line told me I overused it, and pronounced it in a way that really skeezed her out.) As we marched in circles in front of the studio gates, my strike sisters and I rattled off our favorite movies of the year, played "Marry, Fuck or Kill" using high-profile producers, and shared our own alternative Sopranos endings. We vented about the studios' latest press releases, with their fuzzy math and indignant tones. And when conversation or interest flagged, one of us just slowed or quickened our steps and went through the conversational paces with someone else. Opening lines came easily. (I became partial to "So, what did you do?") It was like speed dating, with intermittent chanting and the occasional Lexus almost running us over.
A few days in, I'd confessed to wanting to sleep with an embarrassingly high number of producers and collected some good office-supply-shopping tips. But I hadn't finagled a single phone number. I found it unexpectedly difficult to ask someone on a date after discussing how broke and anxious the strike had left us. It felt inappropriate, like hitting on someone at a health clinic or an intervention. Or maybe I was just more comfortable with a vodka tonic in my hand than a picket sign. I considered starting fresh and picketing at a different studio gate the next week — or "gate-hopping," as the kids call it.
During the next couple of weeks, amid the usual talk of negotiations and strategies, I overheard chatter about which studio gates had the cutest picketers, where Diablo Cody was striking and what bars were running discount specials for writers. One striker told me he picketed at the Vanity Fair gate; I hadn't heard of it, but he was literally wearing a cravat, so I assumed it was fairly exclusive. Over at Raleigh Studios, gay picketers met up for a special "gay gate" shift with a mixer atmosphere and appearances by some of the Ugly Betty crew. One day I found myself at Paramount Studios in the middle of the "singles gate." There was a Moby remix blasting on a boom box, a small cluster of picketers strike dancing, and the longest line of dudes I've seen since the last Star Wars movie opened. A shapely alcohol rep gave me a penis-shaped sample bottle of tequila and someone else ordered me to put some groove into my picketing. I didn't even try to get any digits, but I'm sure the sight of so many white guys dancing scared some people away from crossing the picket line that afternoon.
Soon, a month of striking alongside my peers had yet to yield us a fair contract, or me a date. Frustrated, I brought this up on the picket line one morning.
"You should have been at the gay gate. Fish in a barrel," smirked a features writer. "Too bad for you."
Another picketer asked me why I was wasting my time chatting up female writers, when the picket lines and rallies were ripe with Screen Actor's Guild members. He had a point. I had introduced myself to Katherine Heigl the first week of the strike and babbled a bit about her role in revitalizing the modern romantic comedy before a couple reporters usurped my spot. (I didn't have the courage to stick around and find out if she had the same weak spot for doughy unshaven stoners as her Knocked Up counterpart.) One writer suggested I hit the upcoming Star Trek-themed picket. I bit my tongue hard. Someone else recommended I revamp my strike persona — come up with a witty new slogan for my sign ("something firm for the studio suits, but still sensitive for the ladies"), get my own megaphone, grow a strike moustache, shoot a YouTube video or, failing all that, just wash my WGA T-shirt more often.
Ultimately, the only person I know who's gotten lucky is my friend Tim, who met a petite redhead at a solidarity rally down on Hollywood Boulevard. Within five minutes of meeting, she was sitting on his shoulders watching Alicia Keys perform. That night, they got each other off in a private karaoke booth in Koreatown.
Neither of them are writers.
"That's your stumbling block out there: the writer thing," said Tim, who returned to picket with me in solidarity and to see if lighting would strike twice. "No unemployed person is itching to date another unemployed person. Nothing sexy about that."
That day, I got suggestions from all sides. I must have been soliciting advice too loudly and for too long, because I heard a voice behind me mutter something to the following effect:
"This strike isn't about you getting laid. It's about all of us not getting fucked."
Amen. I turned around, and an older woman gave me a reproachful look over the top of her Ray-Bans. Half of me wanted to explain I was just trying to eke out a little harmless fun in a desperate situation; the other half felt like I should start flagellating myself with my own picket sign. It would have been an ideal time for me to gate-hop out of there. Instead, I jabbed my sign into the air, kept walking and opted for awkward silence.
©2007 Duncan Birmingham and hooksexup.com