For those of you who turned down a lucrative job in the advertising game so that you could stay home and write the great American screenplay (or television show), well, you may be in for a big surprise. As reported on NPR's
"On the Media", Writers Guild west president Patric Verrone bemoans the new state of product placement. Writers are being commanded not only to include products in their scripts, but to create dialogue that hawks them as well. For example, "Law and Order" might have a serial killer suddenly turn on the witness stand to testify how great Bounty is in soaking up the blood. In response, the WGA, west has issued a
White Paper "Entertainment Guilds Call for Industry Code of Conduct or FCC Regulation for Product Integration in Programming and Film Guilds Issue White Paper Report on the Runaway Use of Stealth Advertising in Television and Film." Of course the WGA, west is horrified by this insult to artistry. But their bottom line -- and this is all about a bottom line -- is that if writers are going to have write like ad men, then they should be paid like ad men. Well, one can still dream of writing the Great American Ad.
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posted by Peter Bowen @ 11/21/2005 05:28:00 PM
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