[ While writers like me struggle to make ends meet, Hollywood
studios get rich off the content we create.]
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I’M A TV WRITER ON FOOD STAMPS  
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Jeanie Bergen
May 16, 2023
New York Magazine
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_ While writers like me struggle to make ends meet, Hollywood studios
get rich off the content we create. _

Illustration: by Samantha Hahn // New York Magazine,

 

I was working as a cater waiter when I sold my first TV show. One
evening, while working a party, I ran into someone I knew in college.
I was serving weed-infused chocolate-covered strawberries to rich
white men while a celebrity tooted on a harmonica in the background. I
offered my acquaintance a napkin and asked what he had been up to. He
informed me he’d just developed a pharmaceutical drug. He returned
the question in kind and I shared my news. He smiled, surely thinking
I was joking. I wasn’t.

The original pilot was based on my experience becoming guardian and
caregiver to my sibling, who is a person with disabilities, after our
parents died. It had been years in the making. After working as a
local-news journalist, I came to Hollywood and started over. I took
out loans to attend a graduate screenwriting program, worked for a
studio, and landed a gig as a writers’ assistant, where I met the
writer who generously agreed to supervise my pilot. We had sold the
pilot in May, but I wasn’t paid until October of that year. Which is
why I’d happily kept donning my apron and spilling Champagne on
people at weddings.

The pilot never got picked up for production. As a mid-level TV
writer, I’m now used to this feeling of taking one step forward in
my career only to then take two steps backward. I’m currently
walking two dogs for $30 per day on a route that takes me through
Hollywood and past a billboard for the hit comedy I most recently
wrote on. Have I “made it,” I wonder? It doesn’t feel like it as
I pry stray chicken wings from a dog’s mouth in an attempt to pay my
bills.

Right now, the WGA is striking because sustainable writing careers in
film and television are in danger of disappearing. There are two main
ways you can make a living: you sell pilots or screenplays to studios,
or you get staffed as a writer on someone else’s project. In
traditional broadcast TV, writers could stay employed for most of the
year, from the writers’ room through production. But streaming has
changed the game. Lower- and mid-level writers are rarely paid through
production now, meaning we do not get on-set experience or learn how
to produce TV. Studios are also ordering shorter seasons and hiring
fewer writers to work on them. It has become common for writers to
work on just one season of television, for ten to 20 weeks per year,
and be unemployed for the rest.

Industry revenues topped $220 billion last year
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yet somehow median weekly pay for writer-producers has fallen over the
last decade of peak TV. Television writers are compensated on a weekly
basis. The current WGA minimum for a staff writer position is about
$5,000 per week, though some lower-budget streaming series are allowed
to pay less. In theory, it sounds like a lot. But not if you’re only
employed for ten weeks, and you pay your taxes, and you pay 25 percent
of your wages to agents, managers, and lawyers — partly to negotiate
more money and secure fair contracts. Factor in rent in one of the
least affordable cities in the U.S. and eating three meals a day and
you aren’t left with much.

In Hollywood, there is a mentality of “you’re lucky to be here.”
It’s why people don’t speak out when they are mistreated,
overworked, and underpaid.

In my first job for a streamer, I was one of three writers in the room
tasked with writing 12 episodes. I was paid around the WGA minimum for
“low budget New Media,” and in addition to having a smaller
writers’ room, streamers pay less in residuals too. A residual is a
payment for reuse of a writer’s work — anytime a show is
repackaged, resold or rerun. Not that long ago, writers could live off
residuals until their next job. I’ve only ever made $533.55 in
residuals, none of it from streaming, even though the show has rotated
through every major streamer.

I could not live off what the streamer paid, and I later ran out of
room to stretch the money I’d made off my pilot. So I got a gig as a
script coordinator, a support role in which I formatted and proofread
scripts for production. It was a demotion, but I wanted to be in a
writers’ room again and I needed the work. To make ends meet, I was
nannying and dog sitting on the weekends. When that job ended because
of the coronavirus pandemic, I took out a loan to survive, adding to
my six-figure student debt. Being able to take out loans is a
privilege in itself, but it also feels like digging a hole I’ll
never climb out of.

Once writers’ rooms resumed, I was hired to write on a limited
series that told the true story of a large corporation. It was for a
major streamer with big stars attached and a huge director. The job
demanded massive amounts of reading and research both before and after
work. The show focused on workers’ rights, the kind of story that
had potential to shine a light on corporate greed. Unfortunately, the
streamer decided not to move forward with the project.

After that, I was hired on a show where I was told there was no room
to negotiate higher wages. Ten years ago, around one-third of writers
worked at WGA minimum; today, half of us do. I asked for a title
promotion, something that would cost the studio nothing but would in
theory help at my next job. My request was rejected, apparently
because the last show I wrote on was never made. When I inevitably
worked past my contract — when studios have writers’ rooms work
for shorter periods, it’s often not enough time to break all the
stories and write all the episodes — I did not get paid my weekly
fee.

Recently, I applied for food stamps. If I make over $1,473 this month
from the side gigs I’ve picked up to tide me over, I’ll have to
report it to the county and my benefits will be stopped. In that
scenario, I’d still be short $502 to pay rent on my 600-square-foot
apartment and still in need of, you know, food. This is a math problem
Hollywood studio heads will never have to solve, and yet they are
getting rich from the content writers like me create. Last year, 13
CEOs across 12 major media companies averaged $32 million
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in total compensation.

It’s as if we’ve been forced to accept that this is just how
society works: A handful of people hold the power and the money while
the rest of us live paycheck to paycheck. Writers are on strike for a
deal from the studios that allows us to share in the success of the
content we create and make writing a sustainable career. That, and the
studios want to replace us with AI
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not because we’re bad at our jobs but because they don’t want to
pay human beings fair wages.

In Hollywood, there is a mentality of “you’re lucky to be here.”
It’s why people don’t speak out when they are mistreated,
overworked, and underpaid. (This is not unique to the entertainment
industry. Worker exploitation is everywhere.) I’ve stayed because I
care about writing stories about people we rarely see on TV: poor
people, people with disabilities, people who are disenfranchised. I
also believe people who don’t come from money should have a seat at
the table; otherwise it’ll just be rich people and robots (gross)
who have no incentive to tell stories about those who are already
underrepresented in our media. Since the beginning of time, humans
have created stories to connect to each other; maybe we’re not
saving lives, but film and TV has the power to make people feel less
alone.

I’m sharing my experience because it’s much more common than
people realize. I recently applied for a program called Groceries for
Writers, along with hundreds of other TV and feature writers in the
guild. There is so much shame when you’re struggling financially,
but I want to talk about it openly. Instead of internalizing the blame
and wondering if we’re working hard enough, we should be challenging
the systems that created these conditions in the first place.

On the Friday before the strike, my agents sent me an email telling me
they’d secured a job interview. I spent the weekend prepping: taking
notes, writing pitches, thinking of how my life experience related to
a comedy about power dynamics in the workplace. It felt good to do my
job again, and the interview alone gave me what I needed: hope. I
thanked the showrunners for meeting with me and went to pick up the
dogs for their walk.

_[JEANIE BERGEN is a comedy writer living in Los Angeles, CA. She is
known for Dave (2020), Zac and Mia (2017) and One Mississippi
(2015).]_

* WGA Writers Strike
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* WGA
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* Writers Guild of America
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* Hollywood Strikes
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* Hollywood studios
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* Films
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* movies
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* television
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* AI
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* SAG-AFTRA
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* residuals
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* streaming
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* New Technology
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* artificial intelligence
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* Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
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