Hollywood Gossip and Political Hoopla

In a move that I can only assume is meant to make my live blogging coverage on January 13th of the Golden Globes that much more excruciating, the WGA has denied requests to allow writers to script any sort of prepared material for the Globes as well as the Oscars on February 24th. Jon Stewart may have to ad lib his way through the Oscars this time around. This means that the Globes are going to suck far more than they already do. In addition, no clips are allowed to be shown at the Oscars. Yeah. No clips of the movies that are nominated.

We’ll still be covering the Globes, because we’ve got nothing better to do. But something entertaining better happen. I demand at least one chuckle during this show. As for the WGA, between this and forcing Prison Break to go off the air, I’m officially on neither the writers or the studios side. You all annoy me, and I hope all your picket signs blow away in the wind.

This writers / studios war is leading to some side battles in Hollywood, including one that Fox wants to get involved in with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Fox is running out of Family Guy episodes, and rather than cut their losses with MacFarlane in the picket lines, they’re opting to move ahead with three episodes of the show that haven’t even passed the finalization process. MacFarlane, who actual voices three major characters, isn’t happy and you can bet your ass legions of faithful Family Guy fans aren’t going to be thrilled either if Fox starts screwing around with their show by feeding them incomplete episodes. To make things even more interesting, MacFarlane has been in the middle of renegotiations for a new long term contract with Fox for awhile now.

Dumb, dumb move. Family Guy has one of those rapid fan bases that’s liable to pull a show boycott or something if Fox actually goes ahead with this plan. They’d probably be happier with reruns for awhile.

E! - Fox Plans Foolish Move

Curb Your Enthusiasm star Jeff Garlin showed up last week at a WGA rally in LA with a gift for striking writers. Personally, I think they’ve been getting too much as it is what with all the food and cake and generally catering they’re receiving. They’re living better now than they were before the strike. Garlin had something else in mind though. He gave them porn DVDs.

It doesn’t say anything about him providing something to you know, watch them on. Wouldn’t magazines make more sense since they can read those in line as they’re eating their chocolate torte?

NY Post - Are Porn Writers Striking?

I always end up defending Ellen DeGeneres in this blog for some reason, despite the fact that I hated her old sitcom and I hate her talk show. She should be low on my pecking order of people I defend, or at least in the middle somewhere because she’s never done anything to make me particularly care about her. I guess I could argue that she pisses me off for making me feel sympathetic towards her and thus whenever I have a chance I need to toss some sort of vile her way in retribution. I’ll start now. Ellen DeGeneres has ugly hair.

Now that that’s out of my system I can move on. I get why the writers involved in the current strike are pitching a fit because she’s still producing episodes. I understand that it breaks the show of solidarity everyone’s trying to show for the writers struggle. With that said, there’s a good number of staffers working on the Ellen DeGeneres show that could lose their jobs if she stops production, and in case no one has noticed Christmas is coming up. If you looked around hard enough last week you probably heard about either the Tonight Show or the Late Show having to cut a good portion of their staff in two weeks if the strike doesn’t end. I can give Ellen a pass for this because regardless of what her real motivation is people who aren’t making millions a year, the lowly peons stuck in the middle of all of this, are going to stay employed.

It’s not like there’s not enough support for the writers as it is. It’s not like people haven’t noticed, and it’s not like ones that haven’t noticed yet won’t in the coming weeks as they find their favorite shows off the air and a shitty American Idol clone or some other d-level reality show stuck in it’s place.

I was just about to take a break but damn, MSNBC is breaking with this shot of a rally being held in California to support the writers strike. It’s almost like one of those crowds in Rome when the Pope pops up on a balcony or something, except it’s not quite as big. Still, it’s flipping huge.

They also said Arnold Schwarzenegger is currently talking to both sides personally in an attempt to get them to work out their differences because naturally this strike is affecting more than just the writers and the studios and it’s kinda screwing up the economy there. I think after the past couple days regular people are starting to realize just how big the scope is of this thing and the effect it’s really going to have on TV shows if it continues on. There’s going to be a lot of happy people if a miracle gets pulled out but all I ever hear is how the studios don’t want to negotiate their terms, despite the ever growing number of people, including actors, that are behind the writers now.