With tomorrow's Golden Globes ceremony cancelled and the Oscars under threat , the writers' strike is really starting to hit home, writes Sean O'Driscollin New York.
It's a Tuesday evening on the picket line outside the studios of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a hugely successful TV satire of right-wing political punditry.
The Writers Guild of America is here to protest the show, which is back on the air after a nine-week strike gap. Host Stephen Colbert has decided to carry the show without writers, as have fellow Comedy Central fake news host Jon Stewart and network TV talk show hosts Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel, who all returned to work last week.
Outside the Comedy Central studios, the atmosphere couldn't be more pleasant. The writers love Colbert, who supports the union, and the line between picketer and picketed is blurred and ever-shifting.
The picketers chant slogans at studio staff who come outside a few minutes later for a cordial chat about film scripts.
Colbert's production team has hired the Daisy May's catering company to feed the picketers. Beside the catering trolley stands a cardboard cut-out of Stephen Colbert holding a sign that reads: "Picketers - Enjoy the finger-lickin' barbecue."
Picketer Melissa Simmons, who writes for "old school" daytime soaps such as CBS's As The World Turns, says the relationship with pro-writer hosts such as Colbert and Conan O'Brien is "very delicate". "Stephen is great, we love him. We are working to get his writers back to him," she says.
"Working to get his writers back to him" - it's a nice pitch but is the public going to buy it? As with almost everyone I spoke to on the picket lines, Simmons feeds the language of scriptwriting into her speech. The studios are presenting a false "dialogue" to the public, she says, in which the writers are offered as the "hostage takers" in this scenario.
Just outside the studio entrance, Daisy May's pro-strike catering manager Jeff Cicio is one of the few people making money out of what is becoming a public relations and financial disaster for TV networks and film studios. Tomorrow's Golden Globe awards have devolved from a glitzy, star-strewn celebration of cinema to a tepid news conference with all the ratings power of a weather forecast or Pentagon briefing. The People's Choice Awards earlier in the week was a ratings bomb, its audience halved and its advertisers bolting for the internet. Down on 14th Street, fashion stylist Phillip Bloch, who has prepared many of Halle Berry's award ceremony dresses, is slumped in front of his TV set, a fashion king turned reluctant couch potato.
"I'M UNEMPLOYED RIGHT now, I'll probably have to put an ad on [ classified advertisement website] Craigslist," he says. As he talks, his attention is diverted to news coverage of the New Hampshire primary. One of Hollywood's most important award ceremony stylists suddenly catches himself. "As you can see, I have time on my hands," he says with a laugh.
The effects of the strike are only now being felt in the wider entertainment world. With the Oscars "very, very much in doubt", according to Bloch, high-end Los Angeles jewellery stores are holding back on free loans to stars, while celebrity hairstylists are going on holidays.
Paparazzi photographers are some of the worst-affected, their chance to earn repeat commission on Golden Globe red carpet photos suddenly evaporated. The same is likely to happen at the Oscars, unless the strike ends by February.
For stylist Nicola Chavez, who was working on a dress for Grey's Anatomy actress and Golden Globe nominee Katherine Heigl, it was painful to see the glamour fade away. "It's sad but it would also be very awkward to have award ceremonies. The strike has put so many people out of work and Hollywood is at a standstill right now."
Award ceremony organisers have frantically tried to pay and flatter their way out of catastrophe - the Golden Globes offered a sizable donation to the strike fund and invited the head of the writer's guild to address the ceremony, but the union refused. The Oscars are expected to offer a deal just as generous, if the actors' union would end their sympathy boycott for just one night.
For the much bigger business of summer blockbusters, the effects are already palpable. Studios ordered a rush on scripts before the strike but now there are no actors or writers to work them.
"That's what we were hoping for," says Simmons. "We heard the studios were stockpiling scripts in time for an expected strike in June, so we went out as fast as we could. They didn't know what hit them." In the TV drama world, producers have to work with dusty scripts written before the strike. Rewriting a single word risks a walk-out by the actor's union.
For Tom English, who worked on NYPD Blue and other detective shows, it will be exhilarating to see how the studios cope.
"Many shows go through at least seven or eight drafts and then there are rewrites up to the day of shooting. It's going to be fun to see how they get by on scripts that are on their first or second draft. Unpolished, awkward dialogue, it should be great," he said.
THIS INCREASINGLY SURREAL dispute was prompted by a radical change in the film and TV world. It is clear to Hollywood, the actors and the writers that the internet is about to engulf film and TV in the same way it consumed music. Wall Street is also unconvinced that people will continue to pay $15 for a cinema ticket when they could download the movie for a fraction of the cost.
The technology is already here, but there's a vicious dogfight about control of the profits.
The writers' guild is relying on the long tradition of earning residuals and profit percentage for successful films. The studios say the internet is just another distribution channel and that they shouldn't have to pay separately.
However, even as they protest, signs that the studios are preparing for the big jump to the internet are growing much stronger.
On Tuesday, as the strikers were preparing their daily round of pickets, Sony Pictures Television announced that it has signed a deal with film download specialists Divx Inc. Sony, which distributes everything from Spider-Man 3 to Seinfeld, suddenly found itself rushing into bed with a company previously known for distributing pirated content, according to JP Morgan financial analyst Paul Coster.
Over at the sprawling Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on the same day, one of Wall Street's favourite technology research companies, Yankee Group, was predicting the painful, lingering death of the record company as artists take control of the download business. Individual bands and singers will make big money from music downloads, which are set to nearly triple by 2012, the researchers said.
It's that kind of power that has brought writers to the streets. Whoever takes a cut of internet downloads will make a fortune; those who don't will fade away.
"You can see internet deals being made every day," says Irish writer and director Terry George, who claims studios want to smash the unions before the jump to the internet.
There is a related issue that could ultimately decide whether the studios are willing to let this year's Oscar ceremony sink into news conference obscurity. If the film business moves to the internet, download figures will give a much more transparent and immediate assessment of a film's success than studio estimates of global profits.
"Hotel Rwanda was by far my most successful film yet I haven't made a dime from residuals or profit sharing. If figures on a film's success were instantly available, it could make a massive difference," says George.
For Bloch, sitting in his Manhattan apartment watching Hillary romp home to victory in New Hampshire, the concerns are more immediate. After weeks of preparation, his award ceremony season is ruined. "I hope it works out for the writers but it's tough," he says. "It's like waiting to see a beautiful wedding dress and being told the couple has eloped. You're happy for them and crushed at the same time."