Don’t tell the coffee club, but I’ve changed teams

Yesterday, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe drinking coffee with a few other writers and complaining. This is pretty much what writers do whenever they have a spare moment, and the subject tends to stick to a few perennials: we complain about how hard writing is, how little we’re paid for it compared to our show business colleagues in the acting and directing arenas, and how busy we are.

It’s bad form, as you might imagine, to bring up in conversation that, despite how hard our jobs are, we still manage to wait until 11am to get started, or that our lower-than-movie-star salaries nevertheless place us in the top one-half of one per cent of all Americans, or that, despite our busy lives, we feel the liberty to spend an hour or so lolling in the sunshine, sipping espresso.

That, of course, would be rude. And it would break the unspoken Hollywood social code: I’ll pretend that you have real problems if you pretend that I do.

Yesterday, though, a television director we all knew sauntered by and stopped to chat. We gossiped for a bit until the director looked at his watch and said: “Sorry guys, but I have to go. I can’t hang out doing nothing like you writers.”

The insult stung a bit. But then, directors are always lording it over writers. On a movie set, the director is king. He – and it’s usually a he – sits enthroned like a princeling on a canvas-backed chair, attended by a small army of minions. Often – like a Sultan of the Ottoman Empire on campaign – he’ll be shielded from view by a large tent. They say this is to make it easier to see the array of video screens that a typical shoot requires, but everyone knows this is silly. The tent is part of the mystery of power. It’s designed to spook the underlings.

Servants buzz all around him. There’s a “first assistant director”, a “second assistant director” and even, curiously, a “second second assistant director”. The first assistant director relays the director’s orders to the crew and to the main actors. The second assistant handles the extras, props and wardrobe. The second second doesn’t do much except get yelled at by the others.

Where is the writer in this tableau? Usually, at home.

Directors have total control over who gets on – and who doesn’t get on – their sets. And because directors like to rewrite dialogue on the spot and in general stomp on the writers’ delicate and brilliantly crafted words, they usually bar the original writer from the set. Apparently, there have been too many instances of a writer suddenly snapping and physically attacking the director.

In the television business, writers have the upper hand. Call him the “executive producer” or the “head writer” or the more bluntly descriptive term “show runner”, the guy in charge – and it’s often a guy, but it can be a woman – is usually a writer.

On the whole, writers, unsurprisingly, prefer to work in television.

As soon as our director friend made it out of hearing range, my writer friends instantly turned on him. “Typical director,” they muttered. “He wouldn’t even have anything to direct,” they said, “if we hadn’t written something first.”

All of which is true, but it still made me uncomfortable. I spent the week before last doing something I’ve never done before: directing an episode of a television series I created. I was behind enemy lines – and after a week of being cosseted and catered to and having my every wish carried out by three sets of devoted acolytes, well, I had come to the conclusion that there’s something to this directing thing.

In the first place, it’s not all that easy. You have to know where the actors should stand and when they need to walk. You have to arrange the cameras and figure out when they need to move or refocus. You have to add enough creative touches so that when the writers come to the soundstage to review the rehearsal, it’s clear what parts of the script need to be rewritten. Worse, you have to talk to the actors. A lot.

I tried to explain this to my writer friends, but they just eyed me suspiciously, as if to say: “Whose side are you really on?” And we continued to complain about the special and almost unendurable miseries of a writer’s life in Hollywood until our cappuccinos were cold.

Unfortunately, I’m set to direct a few more episodes of my series. And I’m considering an offer to direct some episodes of another show. In other words, I’m becoming a director. Which means my cappuccino will never get cold, because I now have staff to handle such a crisis.

Rob Long is a writer, producer and director based in Hollywood

On Twitter: @rcbl