Some Screenwriters Are More Equal Than Others

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Bridget Johnson, columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News ]
[Commentary] In a town full of dirty little secrets, the composition of writers in Hollywood rises to the level of scandal. Though Tinseltown pays lip service to liberalism and equality, women and minority film and television writers get work and get paid with a disparity that is striking. The 2005 Hollywood Writers Report found that among film writers, women represented just 18% of employment while minorities combined stood at 6%. The median earnings gap between men and women, and minorities and white men in film work widened from $12,500 to $19,000 since the WGA's last report was released in 1998. In television, women accounted for 27% of writers and minorities represented just under 10%. And both are more likely to hold the lower-status title of "staff writer." About 10% of all shows in the 2004-05 season had no women writers on staff, unchanged from the WGA's comparative assessment of the 1999-2000 season. Pay for TV writing was an average of $12,000 more for men than women. Minority TV writers in 1998 earned on average $8,500 less than white men; this gap jumped to nearly $18,000 in the 2005 report. Women and minority writers also tend to be pigeonholed -- for example, much of the TV work for minorities is on black-themed UPN sitcoms. Women are often expected to write romantic comedies or dramatic tear-jerkers. One hears tales around town of women feeling they might have better luck getting their action script accepted if they just put their first initials on the title page. Though the WGA report didn't include a breakdown of genre typecasting, "We do know anecdotally that it occurs, said spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113018969817778009.html?mod=todays_us_pe...
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