'Don’t be a Burns, be a Lisa'

A group of writers for “The Simpsons” got their close-up in the Fox Studios picket line today, discussing their concerns over DVD and Internet residuals with writer-director Peter Rader (“Waterworld”), a  WGA “communications captain” who has been producing short, pithy videos for the “wgaamerica” YouTube page. A crew from ABC’s “Nightline” was on hand to shoot it.

The writers -- among them Matt Selman, Mike Scully, Don Payne, Rob LaZebnick and Joel Cohen -- mocked the idea that episodes of their show being aired online are just “promotions” for the shows themselves.

“If you watch ‘The Simpsons’ on the Fox web site Hulu,” said Selman, speaking of the online video venture between Fox owner News Corp. and NBC Universal,  “there are advertisements that Fox is making a killing off of because they’re embedded and you can’t skip them.”

Holding up his video iPod, writer Daniel Chun gave another example, “I’m watching ‘Battlestar Galactica’ right now. This episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ is a really good promotion for ‘Battlestar Galactica’ -- I should really watch the show I’m watching right now!”

Rader is affiliated with "United Hollywood," a group of blogging strike captains that is an unofficial offshoot of the WGA’s communications team.  He has posted videos featuring "Grey’s Anatomy"’s Patrick Dempsey and Sandra Oh, as well as last week’s modest YouTube hit “The Office is Closed,” which has scored 350,000 views since it was posted Wednesday.

After Rader had rolled tape for 20 minutes or so (he expects it will be posted later today), a couple of “Simpsons” writers, worried they had been perhaps a bit too vitriolic (e.g. someone had described Fox owner Rupert Murdoch as “sitting on a throne of skulls”) asked Rader to make sure they didn’t get into too much trouble.

Daniel Chun was unworried.  “You can use whatever you want,” he said. “I’m young enough to destroy my career and then build it back up.”

More news on the strike

-- David Sarno

Comments

[Shoot First Inc.]

See the Studio's Response to this Writers Strike!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8qM3QNqT48

This should settle everything.