Fitzgerald and the Writers’ Strike
F. Scott’s last creation is a warning to the picket line
“Most writers,” the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “look like writers whether they want to or not. It is hard to say why.”
I thought about this recently as the writers of the Writers Guild of America announced they would go on strike against their studio overlords for the second time this century. When I took part in the picket line in 2007, it was remarkable how true Fitzgerald’s words were. At one standoff I saw Tom Fontana, the creator of the HBO series “Oz,” shoving his hands in his pocket and rolling his shoulders into the wind, looking like a writer. To my right, an erudite and charming friend who writes an educational cartoon your children watch stroked his beard and picked at his ear very much like a writer. Even an elusive beauty from the staff of “Sex and the City” whom I had dated a few years back now looked, with her suspect glance across the crowd, more than anything else, like a writer.
Make no mistake: The writers’ strike is not about integrity or fairness . . . it’s about fear.
Of course there are exceptions. Not all writers look like writers. One writer in particular, Fitzgerald noted, didn’t look anything like a writer. This…
