About the only significant difference in opinion that emerged between Norris and me during our afternoon chat in her apartment in early 1971 was that she thought New York City’s Channel 13 non-commercial educational television station had a chance of providing a real political and cultural alternative to the early 1970s cultural wasteland, political censorship and patriarchal capitalist commercial propaganda of the ABC, CBS and NBC television networks in the 1970s. I, on the other hand, expressed strong doubts that the patriarchal U.S. corporate elite would ever allow hip left anti-war radicals like me, who then authentically reflected New Left counter-cultural values, to ever be given equal access to New York City’s Channel 13 public television station in more than a token way.
In retrospect, I think my estimation of how non-commercial public television stations in the U.S.A. , like New York City’s Channel 13, would eventually become the victims of “creeping commercialism” and become corporatized media institutions, that pretty much excluded most grassroots counter-cultural left-wing activists like me, during the rest of the 20th century and early 21st-century proved to be a more accurate prediction than Norris’s prediction of what kind of difference establishing non-commercial public television stations in the U.S. would actually make.
Not surprisingly—given both how much I then despised the corporate media television network world of ABC, CBS and NBC, and given how much of my daily 9-to-5 slavery time was then being spent delivering scripts in and out of various network TV and radio offices—in early 1971 I also actually ended up writing a protest folk song titled “Paley, Sarnoff and Goldenson.” The “Paley, Sarnoff and Goldenson” folk song protested against their corporate television networks’ complicity with the crimes of U.S. imperialism in the early 1970s, in a way similar to how my 1967 “Bloody Minds” protest folk song had protested against Columbia University’s complicity with the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in the 1960s, during the early Viet Nam Era of U.S. history.
I no longer recall the exact lyrics to the “Paley, Sarnoff and Goldenson” protest folk song, since I never memorized it; and, after I recorded it on some homemade cassette “basement tape” in 1971, I pretty much forgot about the song and didn’t bother saving the page of lyrics. But my general recollection is that the “Paley, Sarnoff and Goldenson” protest folk song combined a denunciation of then-CBS board chairman/owner and then-Columbia University Trustee William Paley, then-RCA/NBC board chairman Robert Sarnoff and then-ABC board chairman Leonard Goldenson for their abuse of U.S. mass media power with a prediction that the people of the United States would eventually liberate CBS, NBC and ABC by non-violently occupying their television network studios—until the grassroots counter-cultural voices of the New Left anti-war, Black liberation and women’s liberation Movement were given daily full free speech rights on the CBS, NBC and ABC television networks.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xxi))
Norris proved to be the most interesting Writers Guild member I spoke with in early 1971. She seemed to be in her late 40s or early 50s and lived alone with her early teen-age daughter in a middle-class Upper West-Side Manhattan residential hotel on West 72nd Street, east of Broadway, on the north side of the street. Her residential hotel apartment was cluttered with a lot of books and it looked like Norris and her daughter could have used a larger apartment for all the stuff they had accumulated, had they been able to afford the Manhattan rent for a larger apartment.
As an alternative to being crowded in with her teenage daughter in her Manhattan apartment, Norris probably could have afforded a much larger apartment in Brooklyn. But she seemed to be the type of writer who felt that to have to live in Brooklyn in the early 1970s (unless you could afford to live in Brooklyn Heights), instead of residing in Manhattan, meant having to live in a cultural wasteland that would isolate her too much from the recreational and work world of her mass media colleagues and her literary friends, who mostly lived in Manhattan.
Norris was both more intellectual and more interested in talking about literary and mass media culture, current events and social justice issues, women’s liberation movement-related issues and the early 1970s hippie anti-war counter-culture than the other Writers Guild Members I met. Like Pat of the Writers Guild office staff, Norris seemed to be the type of woman who still usually just wore a dress or a skirt and not pants, and still always used lipstick and make-up in the early 1970s. But being at least 10 years older than Pat and probably seen as less physically appealing to the men of her own generation than was Pat, Norris seemed to have a deeper appreciation of the anti-war social critique of patriarchal capitalist society that the radical feminists of the early 1970s were raising—and which I was then reflecting—than did Pat.
Norris and I chatted with each other in her apartment for a few hours before I finally had to head back to the Guild office before it closed at 5 o’clock. What seemed to intrigue her most about our conversation was the emotionally open way I was able to talk with her about my personal feelings, my negative feelings about the 9-to-5 world, and my idealistic views of how counter-culture, new age values--which would use technology to free people from 9-to-5 slavery--would also both enable everyone to be writers and artists equally and substitute artistic values for lowest-common denominator commercial appeal values, in determining which television scripts get produced on U.S. television.
As an alternative to being crowded in with her teenage daughter in her Manhattan apartment, Norris probably could have afforded a much larger apartment in Brooklyn. But she seemed to be the type of writer who felt that to have to live in Brooklyn in the early 1970s (unless you could afford to live in Brooklyn Heights), instead of residing in Manhattan, meant having to live in a cultural wasteland that would isolate her too much from the recreational and work world of her mass media colleagues and her literary friends, who mostly lived in Manhattan.
Norris was both more intellectual and more interested in talking about literary and mass media culture, current events and social justice issues, women’s liberation movement-related issues and the early 1970s hippie anti-war counter-culture than the other Writers Guild Members I met. Like Pat of the Writers Guild office staff, Norris seemed to be the type of woman who still usually just wore a dress or a skirt and not pants, and still always used lipstick and make-up in the early 1970s. But being at least 10 years older than Pat and probably seen as less physically appealing to the men of her own generation than was Pat, Norris seemed to have a deeper appreciation of the anti-war social critique of patriarchal capitalist society that the radical feminists of the early 1970s were raising—and which I was then reflecting—than did Pat.
Norris and I chatted with each other in her apartment for a few hours before I finally had to head back to the Guild office before it closed at 5 o’clock. What seemed to intrigue her most about our conversation was the emotionally open way I was able to talk with her about my personal feelings, my negative feelings about the 9-to-5 world, and my idealistic views of how counter-culture, new age values--which would use technology to free people from 9-to-5 slavery--would also both enable everyone to be writers and artists equally and substitute artistic values for lowest-common denominator commercial appeal values, in determining which television scripts get produced on U.S. television.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xx)
While delivering and picking up Writers Guild Script Awards contest scripts from Writers Guild members’ apartments and offices during the time when I was coordinating the script award judgment process, the longest conversation I had was with Marianna Norris, one of the writers whose script about Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway’s life in Paris eventually received an award for the category in which it had been entered.
Having spent some of my spare time in the Writers Guild office in early 1971 reading each script that was entered in the contest by Guild members, I had the feeling that Norris’s script about Gertrude Stein and Hemingway was going to win an award that year, since, from an artistic point of view, it was much better written, intellectually deeper, more interesting and more socially significant than the other scripts that had been entered in the same contest category. Norris’s script seemed more like the teleplays of the 1950s that were written during the “Golden Age of Television” than the other scripts, which resembled post-1960 Hollywood MCA or Warner Brothers syndicated television film scripts that reflected less literary craftsmanship and intellectual depth than did Norris’s script.
So when I delivered some scripts that had been entered in a category which was different than the category in which Norris’s script had been entered to Norris’s apartment for Norris to evaluate, I was curious to see how the writer of such a great script about Gertrude Stein and Hemingway would turn out to be when you met her in person.
Having spent some of my spare time in the Writers Guild office in early 1971 reading each script that was entered in the contest by Guild members, I had the feeling that Norris’s script about Gertrude Stein and Hemingway was going to win an award that year, since, from an artistic point of view, it was much better written, intellectually deeper, more interesting and more socially significant than the other scripts that had been entered in the same contest category. Norris’s script seemed more like the teleplays of the 1950s that were written during the “Golden Age of Television” than the other scripts, which resembled post-1960 Hollywood MCA or Warner Brothers syndicated television film scripts that reflected less literary craftsmanship and intellectual depth than did Norris’s script.
So when I delivered some scripts that had been entered in a category which was different than the category in which Norris’s script had been entered to Norris’s apartment for Norris to evaluate, I was curious to see how the writer of such a great script about Gertrude Stein and Hemingway would turn out to be when you met her in person.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xix)
In early 1971, the only woman Writers Guild member who worked at the networks that I delivered contest scripts to judge who wore pants and dressed like a liberated woman was Marlene Sanders. In early 1971, Marlene Sanders was a writer in the ABC television news department at the ABC studios on West 66th Street and, when I delivered the contest scripts to her office there, she looked like a slightly older Newsreel/Movement white woman, although she wore more make-up and lipstick than most white Movement women at that time.
Sanders seemed to be in her late 30s or early 40s in early 1971 and looked like she would be considered attractive by most men of that time—unless they had been conditioned to reject women who wore pants to the office in early 1971, instead of dresses or skirts which enabled them to show off their legs. But Sanders also seemed to be under a lot of stress and pressure when I delivered the contest scripts to her. Although she was polite to me, you got the sense that Sanders felt somewhat alienated from having to work within such a male chauvinist-dominated institution as ABC’s television network was under Leonard Goldenson’s control during the early 1970s.
Sanders seemed to be in her late 30s or early 40s in early 1971 and looked like she would be considered attractive by most men of that time—unless they had been conditioned to reject women who wore pants to the office in early 1971, instead of dresses or skirts which enabled them to show off their legs. But Sanders also seemed to be under a lot of stress and pressure when I delivered the contest scripts to her. Although she was polite to me, you got the sense that Sanders felt somewhat alienated from having to work within such a male chauvinist-dominated institution as ABC’s television network was under Leonard Goldenson’s control during the early 1970s.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xviii)
The other person I met from Columbia in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971 while on the street delivering scripts for the Writers Guild-East Script awards contest was a tall, good-looking former African-American Columbia student named Frank. Although Frank was an African-American, prior to April 1968 at Columbia he seemed to have absolutely no interest in Black Liberation Movement politics, New Left SDS politics or U.S. anti-war movement politics.
In the two years before April 1968, Frank worked at the front desk in the lobby of Carmen Hall each weekday evening and he always wore a tweed suit and dressed like a white prep school student. In addition, whenever any Columbia SDS activist would be handing out leaflets in Carmen Hall, putting leaflets under dorm room doors or posting SDS leaflets on floor bulletin boards in Carmen Hall, Frank would often ridicule the SDS activist in a friendly, but supercilious, preppie way. And before April 1968, if you attempted to discuss issues like IDA, the war, or Columbia University complicity with the Pentagon with Frank, he would just seem to scoff at you in a condescending way, as if any Columbia student who was interested in those kinds of issues must be just some kind of weirdo.
But after observing the first police invasion of Columbia’s campus on April 30, 1968 and apparently observing how the New York City cops brutalized people indiscriminately in Carmen Hall where Frank worked at the dormitory front desk, Frank suddenly began identifying himself as a political radical. And between May 1968 and September 1968, Frank no longer dressed in a tweed, preppie way and devoted nearly all his spare time assisting National Lawyers Guild lawyers with all the legal work and legal details that had to be attended to in representing the 700-plus people arrested at Columbia, whose criminal trespass cases were now being processed daily at the Centre Street Courthouse in Manhattan. And being down in court so often around the Columbia Student Revolt preliminary hearings during the summer of 1968 seemed to further radicalize Frank.
But by the time I bumped into Frank on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, Frank—although still identifying himself as a political radical—no longer was into any kind of left legal activism on a day-to-day level and had lost faith in the possibility of there being a Revolution in the USA in the 1970s.
When I explained to Frank my then-current, early 1971 social change theory, which predicted that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by their male left lovers and male left political allies would soon make the Revolution in the 1970s by first taking over the U.S. mass media studios, Frank was skeptical.
“Most women workers in the 9-to-5 office world that I meet are still mindless and politically unconscious. Most women office workers in the 9-to-5 world will never follow any women’s lib leadership that calls for a Revolution now in the United States,” said Frank.
In retrospect, Frank underestimated the degree to which large numbers of women office workers would eventually become more politically conscious, increasingly college-educated and intellectual, less anti-feminist and less traditionalist during the 1970s and 1980s. But, in retrospect, Frank also did prove to be more accurate than was I in estimating how likely it was that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by male left lovers and male left political allies, would be able to create a matriarchal socialist society in the United States before the 21st century.
And after bumping into Frank on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, I never heard what happened to him. Presumably, he just ended up spending much of his life as some lawyer for some corporate law firm in Manhattan or elsewhere, trying to earn as much money as he could, in order to personally escape, as much as possible, from being born African-American in an institutionally racist white capitalist and imperialist U.S. society.
In the two years before April 1968, Frank worked at the front desk in the lobby of Carmen Hall each weekday evening and he always wore a tweed suit and dressed like a white prep school student. In addition, whenever any Columbia SDS activist would be handing out leaflets in Carmen Hall, putting leaflets under dorm room doors or posting SDS leaflets on floor bulletin boards in Carmen Hall, Frank would often ridicule the SDS activist in a friendly, but supercilious, preppie way. And before April 1968, if you attempted to discuss issues like IDA, the war, or Columbia University complicity with the Pentagon with Frank, he would just seem to scoff at you in a condescending way, as if any Columbia student who was interested in those kinds of issues must be just some kind of weirdo.
But after observing the first police invasion of Columbia’s campus on April 30, 1968 and apparently observing how the New York City cops brutalized people indiscriminately in Carmen Hall where Frank worked at the dormitory front desk, Frank suddenly began identifying himself as a political radical. And between May 1968 and September 1968, Frank no longer dressed in a tweed, preppie way and devoted nearly all his spare time assisting National Lawyers Guild lawyers with all the legal work and legal details that had to be attended to in representing the 700-plus people arrested at Columbia, whose criminal trespass cases were now being processed daily at the Centre Street Courthouse in Manhattan. And being down in court so often around the Columbia Student Revolt preliminary hearings during the summer of 1968 seemed to further radicalize Frank.
But by the time I bumped into Frank on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, Frank—although still identifying himself as a political radical—no longer was into any kind of left legal activism on a day-to-day level and had lost faith in the possibility of there being a Revolution in the USA in the 1970s.
When I explained to Frank my then-current, early 1971 social change theory, which predicted that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by their male left lovers and male left political allies would soon make the Revolution in the 1970s by first taking over the U.S. mass media studios, Frank was skeptical.
“Most women workers in the 9-to-5 office world that I meet are still mindless and politically unconscious. Most women office workers in the 9-to-5 world will never follow any women’s lib leadership that calls for a Revolution now in the United States,” said Frank.
In retrospect, Frank underestimated the degree to which large numbers of women office workers would eventually become more politically conscious, increasingly college-educated and intellectual, less anti-feminist and less traditionalist during the 1970s and 1980s. But, in retrospect, Frank also did prove to be more accurate than was I in estimating how likely it was that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by male left lovers and male left political allies, would be able to create a matriarchal socialist society in the United States before the 21st century.
And after bumping into Frank on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, I never heard what happened to him. Presumably, he just ended up spending much of his life as some lawyer for some corporate law firm in Manhattan or elsewhere, trying to earn as much money as he could, in order to personally escape, as much as possible, from being born African-American in an institutionally racist white capitalist and imperialist U.S. society.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xvii)
While out of the office taking my time delivering and picking up the contest scripts in early 1971, I only bumped into somebody I had known at either Columbia, Barnard, Richmond College, Queens College or Lehman College in Midtown Manhattan on two occasions. After 1979, I can’t recall bumping into anybody I had known in college in Midtown Manhattan until I bumped into my Furnald Hall roommate during my sophomore year at Columbia, Tom, after work one evening in June 1981.
The first person I knew from college that I bumped into on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, Steve, had been heavily into the WKCR radio station at Columbia and, by 1968, was also getting into filmmaking. I had first met Steve when we were both Columbia College freshmen during Freshman Week in September 1965 because he was in front of me on the long line of Columbia College freshmen in Columbia’s Kent Hall Registrar’s Office, who were all waiting their turn to officially register for their Fall 1965 courses.
Steve was a tall, good-looking and very friendly guy who had attended a Manhattan private school before enrolling at Columbia; and he seemed more sophisticated and more intellectual than most of the other Columbia freshman who had previously attended private schools or prep schools, instead of public high schools.
Talking with Steve on the long freshman class registration line ended up making the one hour wait to register seem to go by much faster. But during the next 3 years at Columbia, I did not talk much with Steve before April 1968. He was into WKCR and helping to set concerts up for people like Eric Anderson in Wollman Auditorium on one weekend afternoon, while I had been more into working in the Citizenship Council and building Columbia SDS on campus.
But during the month after the April 30, 1968 police invasion of Columbia’s campus, Steve had decided that I might be a good person to portray the typical Columbia College Citizenship Council idealistic student volunteer in a new recruiting film that Steve was making for Citizenship Council. So for a few days, Steve and I renewed our acquaintance somewhat at the same time he directed me and filmed me “working as a volunteer” with a local eight-year-old African-American grade school student from the neighborhood. Although Steve’s footage of me was never used since Cit Council felt it projected too much of an out-dated “white paternalistic” image for a post-April 1968 recruiting film, it was interesting to see, somewhat, how Steve had changed or not changed as a person between the Fall of 1965 and May of 1968.
While I felt Steve had become slightly more cynical, more careerist and less intellectual between the time I met him in 1965 and May 1968, he still seemed as friendly, good-natured, and non-snobbish as ever. I also then assumed that after graduating from Columbia he would probably end up as some kind of AM or FM radio rock music DJ in Manhattan like Scott Muni or Pete Fornecelli, since Steve had a radio professional-sounding cultured voice when he spoke to you either in-person or through a radio microphone or stage microphone.
But when I bumped into Steve on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, nearly three years after I had last spoken to him in May 1968, Steve seemed dissatisfied with the job slot that had been assigned to him in one of the network radio or television divisions in Midtown Manhattan. Instead of letting Steve produce or host a rock music show for young people over one of their FM stations, Steve had been dumped by the radio or television network executives in some kind of dead-end, dull job which involved helping to arrange for the airing or broadcasting of “community” or “public service” announcements over a local commercial radio or television station. Although the mass media network job Steve had obtained after college in the early 1970s apparently paid a lot more per week in salary than the $100 per week that I was getting for being the Writers Guild office boy, it seemed pretty obvious—after I spoke with Steve on the street—that no matter how much of a salary they paid Steve, the mass media job he had in early 1971 was not one that Steve would ever feel like keeping for much longer.
After bumping into Steve in early 1971, I never saw him again. But a few years later I noticed he had gotten into rock journalism and was writing literate rock music reviews for 1970s magazines like Circus, Cream or perhaps Crawdaddy. So I mailed Steve a homemade “basement tape” of some of my early 1970s protest folk songs that I had recorded on my cheap cassette tape recorder, since I thought he might be interested in listening to some of the lyrics--including the lyrics to a protest folk song about a 1970s protest action against ITT following the CIA-backed September, 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende.
But by the time I next spoke with Steve over the telephone once in the mid-1980s, he seemed to have been forced by economic necessity to leave the world of rock journalism and radio broadcasting for the post-1980s world of computers and techie-computer journalism and techie-computer magazine publishing. Yet although Steve now seemed more into business and more entrepreneurial by the mid-1980s than he had been in the 1960s and early 1970s, he still seemed like a very friendly, good-natured guy in the mid-1980s; and he seemed much happier with his work life in the mid-1980s than he had been when he worked for the mass media network in early 1971 at his dead-end, unglamorous, dull, media job there.
The first person I knew from college that I bumped into on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, Steve, had been heavily into the WKCR radio station at Columbia and, by 1968, was also getting into filmmaking. I had first met Steve when we were both Columbia College freshmen during Freshman Week in September 1965 because he was in front of me on the long line of Columbia College freshmen in Columbia’s Kent Hall Registrar’s Office, who were all waiting their turn to officially register for their Fall 1965 courses.
Steve was a tall, good-looking and very friendly guy who had attended a Manhattan private school before enrolling at Columbia; and he seemed more sophisticated and more intellectual than most of the other Columbia freshman who had previously attended private schools or prep schools, instead of public high schools.
Talking with Steve on the long freshman class registration line ended up making the one hour wait to register seem to go by much faster. But during the next 3 years at Columbia, I did not talk much with Steve before April 1968. He was into WKCR and helping to set concerts up for people like Eric Anderson in Wollman Auditorium on one weekend afternoon, while I had been more into working in the Citizenship Council and building Columbia SDS on campus.
But during the month after the April 30, 1968 police invasion of Columbia’s campus, Steve had decided that I might be a good person to portray the typical Columbia College Citizenship Council idealistic student volunteer in a new recruiting film that Steve was making for Citizenship Council. So for a few days, Steve and I renewed our acquaintance somewhat at the same time he directed me and filmed me “working as a volunteer” with a local eight-year-old African-American grade school student from the neighborhood. Although Steve’s footage of me was never used since Cit Council felt it projected too much of an out-dated “white paternalistic” image for a post-April 1968 recruiting film, it was interesting to see, somewhat, how Steve had changed or not changed as a person between the Fall of 1965 and May of 1968.
While I felt Steve had become slightly more cynical, more careerist and less intellectual between the time I met him in 1965 and May 1968, he still seemed as friendly, good-natured, and non-snobbish as ever. I also then assumed that after graduating from Columbia he would probably end up as some kind of AM or FM radio rock music DJ in Manhattan like Scott Muni or Pete Fornecelli, since Steve had a radio professional-sounding cultured voice when he spoke to you either in-person or through a radio microphone or stage microphone.
But when I bumped into Steve on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, nearly three years after I had last spoken to him in May 1968, Steve seemed dissatisfied with the job slot that had been assigned to him in one of the network radio or television divisions in Midtown Manhattan. Instead of letting Steve produce or host a rock music show for young people over one of their FM stations, Steve had been dumped by the radio or television network executives in some kind of dead-end, dull job which involved helping to arrange for the airing or broadcasting of “community” or “public service” announcements over a local commercial radio or television station. Although the mass media network job Steve had obtained after college in the early 1970s apparently paid a lot more per week in salary than the $100 per week that I was getting for being the Writers Guild office boy, it seemed pretty obvious—after I spoke with Steve on the street—that no matter how much of a salary they paid Steve, the mass media job he had in early 1971 was not one that Steve would ever feel like keeping for much longer.
After bumping into Steve in early 1971, I never saw him again. But a few years later I noticed he had gotten into rock journalism and was writing literate rock music reviews for 1970s magazines like Circus, Cream or perhaps Crawdaddy. So I mailed Steve a homemade “basement tape” of some of my early 1970s protest folk songs that I had recorded on my cheap cassette tape recorder, since I thought he might be interested in listening to some of the lyrics--including the lyrics to a protest folk song about a 1970s protest action against ITT following the CIA-backed September, 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende.
But by the time I next spoke with Steve over the telephone once in the mid-1980s, he seemed to have been forced by economic necessity to leave the world of rock journalism and radio broadcasting for the post-1980s world of computers and techie-computer journalism and techie-computer magazine publishing. Yet although Steve now seemed more into business and more entrepreneurial by the mid-1980s than he had been in the 1960s and early 1970s, he still seemed like a very friendly, good-natured guy in the mid-1980s; and he seemed much happier with his work life in the mid-1980s than he had been when he worked for the mass media network in early 1971 at his dead-end, unglamorous, dull, media job there.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xvi)
The work assignment at the Writers Guild-East office that I most remember from January and February 1971 involved receiving in the mail, delivering and picking up script manuscripts that had been entered in the Writers Guild’s annual television scriptwriting awards contest. Awards for the best scripts written during the year were given in different categories: an award for the best fictional teleplay script, an award for the best public affairs documentary script, etc..
A Guild member who wished to enter his script in the Writers Guild-East Awards contest would mail a copy of the script to the Guild union office. I would then assign a number to the script and make a photocopy of the entered script that did not indicate the name of the Writers Guild writer who had written the script.
Once a script’s author was no longer indicated and a number had been assigned to it, I would then put the copy of the script in a manila envelope, along with an anonymous evaluation sheet. Then I would hand-deliver the manila envelope to the Manhattan office or Manhattan apartment of one of the Writers Guild writers who had volunteered to be one of the Guild judges for the particular category for which the script had been entered.
After the script had been read by one Guild member-judge, it would either be sent back to the Guild office by messenger or I would return to the Guild judge-member’s office or apartment and pick-up the evaluated manuscript and evaluation sheet. Then I would deliver the manuscript to another Guild member who was on the judging panel for that entered script’s category.
Coordinating, recording, delivering and picking up the manuscripts for the Writers Guild-East’s script awards contest in early 1971 proved to be more interesting than the work I had been doing at the Writers Guild office between September 1970 and the end of December 1970. Besides giving me a chance to have some interesting conversations with a few of the television writers at either their network television offices or in their Upper West Side, Upper East Side or West Village apartments when I delivered and picked-up the contest scripts, it also gave me a legitimate excuse to stretch out the time I could stay out of the office and hang out on the street even longer than I was able to do during my previous 4 months as the Writers Guild office boy.
A Guild member who wished to enter his script in the Writers Guild-East Awards contest would mail a copy of the script to the Guild union office. I would then assign a number to the script and make a photocopy of the entered script that did not indicate the name of the Writers Guild writer who had written the script.
Once a script’s author was no longer indicated and a number had been assigned to it, I would then put the copy of the script in a manila envelope, along with an anonymous evaluation sheet. Then I would hand-deliver the manila envelope to the Manhattan office or Manhattan apartment of one of the Writers Guild writers who had volunteered to be one of the Guild judges for the particular category for which the script had been entered.
After the script had been read by one Guild member-judge, it would either be sent back to the Guild office by messenger or I would return to the Guild judge-member’s office or apartment and pick-up the evaluated manuscript and evaluation sheet. Then I would deliver the manuscript to another Guild member who was on the judging panel for that entered script’s category.
Coordinating, recording, delivering and picking up the manuscripts for the Writers Guild-East’s script awards contest in early 1971 proved to be more interesting than the work I had been doing at the Writers Guild office between September 1970 and the end of December 1970. Besides giving me a chance to have some interesting conversations with a few of the television writers at either their network television offices or in their Upper West Side, Upper East Side or West Village apartments when I delivered and picked-up the contest scripts, it also gave me a legitimate excuse to stretch out the time I could stay out of the office and hang out on the street even longer than I was able to do during my previous 4 months as the Writers Guild office boy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
