Striking Out: The Writers' Guild of America and The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The pandemic introduced me to the pleasures of vegging out on the couch most evenings to watch the best in television. It’s allowed me to catch up, belatedly, on now-classic series like Breaking Bad and newer ones like Inventing Anna. But at times I’m looking for something nostalgic and easy on the eyes. Often the passage of time creates a disconnect: my once-beloved Carol Burnett Show seems to me now a bit grotesquely out of date, though its classic movie parodies still give me a chuckle. Still, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) is an amiable, and sometimes hilarious, way to spend 30 minutes with some deeply flawed but lovable characters.

 I think of this show, about a single gal working for a Minneapolis TV news station, as pretty much pure escapism. But a second-season episode (one of the funniest I can recall) reminded me of issues that are in the news right now. It’s all about fallout from a writers’ strike, which briefly decimates the newsroom in which Mary is the Gal Friday to curmudgeonly Lou Grant (Edward Asner). Mary and Lou are officially Management, so they must stay behind when their show’s news writers walk off the job and join the picket lines. Doofus announcer Ted Knight (as Ted Baxter) is dumbfounded by all the issues involved, but his performers’ union requires him to leave too. So Lou and Mary are put in the position of trying both to write the news copy and present it on air. It doesn’t work: Mary’s attempt to put a bit of drama into a weather story is ridiculously ill-considered, and Lou – as on-air presenter – turns out to have a galloping case of stage fright that only a lot of scotch will cure. Fortunately the strike only lasts two days, and everyone lives happily ever after.

 Too bad things don’t end so neatly in the real world. Members of the Writers’ Guild of America (who work in both film and television) are now on strike for real, desperate to improve their take-home pay in an era when TV is dominated by streaming services. In contrast to the big TV networks of old, Netflix and the other streamers notoriously pay only modest wages to staff writers. Nor do they offer the healthy residuals on which writers have long counted as a way to shore up a middle-class lifestyle.

 It doesn’t stop there. As aggrieved writers are quick to point out, studios won’t even discuss another elephant in the room: the advent of ChatGPT as a threat to the writing profession. We all know that writing for movies and TV often tends to rely on well-known formulas. As pointed out in a recent report in The Hollywood Reporter, what’s to stop studio heads from turning to Artificial Intelligence to plan new episodes of old shows?  Said Amy Webb, founder and CEO of something called the Future Today Institute, a long-running procedural like Law & Order could easily make use of ChatGPT for plotting out episodes, then bring in a human writer only to shape and polish. It’s a possibility that WGA members are desperate to hash out with Management, but Management won’t commit.

 As a teacher of screenwriting I know how many “civilians” are out there, hoping to make it as writers in Hollywood. But Hollywood professionals know how easy it is to get cheated out of a living wage.  My former boss Roger Corman would habitually ask an office drone to throw together a first draft over a weekend, then pay a professional only for a rewrite. Have things changed so very much?

 

Dirt on “The Dirty Dozen”

My colleague Dwayne Epstein is perhaps the world’s #1 fan of tough-guy Lee Marvin. In 2013, after years of research, he published Lee Marvin: Point Blank. It’s an in-depth tribute to the gruff action star, whose world view was shaped by his combat experience in the Pacific. Now Dwayne has published an in-depth appraisal of one of Marvin’s biggest films, one that topped the box office in the volatile year 1967. This April saw the release of Dwayne’s Killin’ Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WWII Movie of All Time.

 Since I myself have written books about the movie year 1967, I’ve wrestled with the popularity of this exciting but disturbing film. I was lucky enough to interview the late E.M. Nathanson, who wrote the best-selling 1965 novel on which the film was based. Dwayne was lucky too: I shared with him my unpublished transcript of that interview, and in his Acknowledgments he graciously thanks me for my contribution to his book. (Nathanson had praised to me Robert Aldrich’s film adaptation, and particularly its new climax, in which the ragtag American GIs take a particularly gruesome revenge on a cluster of Nazi generals and their consorts, saying: “Aldrich had a lot more balls to put that on screen than I did.”) 

 The Dirty Dozen is a World War II movie with a difference. Major John Reisman, played by Lee Marvin, has been put in charge of twelve dangerous men. They’re a motley bunch, coming in many shapes and colors, but all of them are American soldiers who’ve been convicted of criminal offenses, including rape and murder. With D-Day fast approaching, Reisman’s mission is to whip these felons into shape, then take them far behind enemy lines for a daring assault on a German stronghold.

Through finding its heroes among hardened outlaws and criminals, the film taps into a late Sixties inclination to challenge authority. Still, The Dirty Dozen, vigorously directed by Aldrich, is in many ways a glossy and old-fashioned war movie. The men’s crimes are mostly explained away, or quickly forgotten. A training segment (in which they discover group solidarity and earn their nickname by jointly refusing to shave) is played chiefly for laughs. So is an extended war-games sequence in which the Dozen use dirty tricks to stymie the pompous military brass, thus earning the sympathy of every viewer who’d ever butted heads with what the Sixties called the Establishment. By the film’s climax, when the tone turns deadly serious, virtually all of Reisman’s men come through in the clutch. Once they reach the chateau that harbors a large contingent of German officers, only one of them reverts to being the sociopath he once was. The filmmakers have taken several of the novel’s hardest cases—a rapist, a racist, and a pervert—and rolled them into a single character. True to the spirit of the Sixties, with its deep-seated commitment to civil rights, it is the Southern racist (played by the very unlikely Greek-American Telly Savalas) who proves to be beyond redemption. The others, under Reisman’s canny leadership, join forces to do their job bravely and well. Most of them end up laying down their lives for the Allied cause. Patriotic music swells as the mission’s few survivors are given military commendations, and a solemn voiceover tells us that the fallen men “lost their lives in the line of duty.”  

 What message is The Dirty Dozen sending? Critics of the day vigorously debated what Aldrich was saying about the nature of war. I’ll leave it to Dwayne Epstein to sort it all out. 

 

 

 

Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Kingdom

King Charles’ coronation last Saturday brought out the Anglophile part of me that’s fascinated by the British monarchy, its triumphs and its troubles. Queen Victoria had never been a particular favorite of mine—she has always seemed stuffy and dull—but a recent visit to Kensington Palace that featured an exhibit on her difficult girlhood showed me she was more interesting, and much stronger, than I had expected. So, as my own idiosyncratic way of celebrating the formal installation of the new king, I watched a 1997 British drama called Mrs. Brown (also known as Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown) that details a surprising relationship in Victoria’s later life It is not to be confused with Victoria & Abdul (2017),  about the elderly queen’s relationship with a male Indian Muslim servant. Obviously if you’re a woman who from 1837 to 1901 has ruled over the most powerful empire on earth, you have time for a good many surprising relationships.

 In both Mrs. Brown and Victoria & Abdul, the role of the queen is taken by the formidable Judi Dench, who has made something of a specialty of playing regal types. She won her Oscar in 1998 for playing Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, in a role that was scarcely eight minutes long. Remarkably, she was convincing as the imperious Virgin Queen despite looking in no way similar to the tall, slim Elizabeth. But I suspect that physically Victoria much better suits her petite, slightly plump frame. Her performance in Mrs. Brown too was much admired, leading to her first Oscar nomination: there have been eight in all.

 Playing opposite her is Billy Connolly, a Scottish actor once known for his raw stand-up comedy chops. His rough-and-tumble role is that of John Brown, a Scotsman who had once tended the horses for Victoria’s beloved late husband, Albert. Following the early death of Albert at age 42, Victoria has retreated to Scotland to mourn, presiding over a retinue of servants and hangers-on while turning her back on any royal duties. It is as part of a pact to lure her back to public life that Connolly is brought into her sphere. He makes quite a sight among the black-clad courtiers, wearing a kilt and his hair in a pigtail. Her royal highness first tolerates him because of Albert’s fondness for him, but then quickly succumbs to his blustering, bantering ways. Soon they are riding out in the highlands, and leading the dancing in Balmoral’s ancient halls. There’s no suggestion in the film that theirs is a romantic (o, heaven forfend, a sexual) relationship, but rather a deeply affectionate friendship that bypasses the difference in their public status.

 It's clear to see that Victoria enjoys this respite from her public obligations and this distraction from her private grief. Brown’s motives can more easily be questioned. As someone who came to the British throne before she was 20, Victoria obviously revels in the chance to be girlish. As for Brown, the film shows that his role at her side feeds an already healthy ego: he certainly takes the opportunity to lord it over the others who dwell in the servants’ hall. Still, there seems a selflessness in his loyalty to his sovereign. He makes a mistake or two, but surely seems to have her best interests at heart. Eventually, of course,  his role in her life comes under public scrutiny. When it gives rise to satirical cartoons and jests about “Mrs. Brown,” thus threatening her reputation in Parliament and encouraging republican moves against the monarchy, he knows where his duty lies.