bonus! a brief history of the writers strike
exploring the darkness of earth-wga
Hello! You might be wondering what this is doing here, and what happened to Quantum of Solace. Well, that’s still coming. It’s just that I wanted to do a bit of background work on the writers strike in Hollywood that completely screwed up the scripting process for the movie, and then I got really into union talk, and suddenly my introduction was 1000 words long and I hadn’t written about the movie yet. In the interest of Keeping Things Bond (TM), then, I’ve sliced out the union talk and put it in this extra special shiny bonus newsletter. I think it’s fun, but really, it is your choice about whether you want to educate yourself about union activity from a decade ago. We’ll start fresh with Quantum of Solace on Monday. Promise.
At the beginning of April and the end of May 2017, there was a lot wrong in the world. Donald Trump had become President a few months before, and everything was as bad as anyone had been worried about. Britain was in the middle of a general election campaign that, at the time, looked to be leading to a wipeout majority for Theresa May’s Conservatives. North Korea was threatening nuclear war on the regular. I was spending a lot of time worried about whether the Writer’s Guild of America would go on strike or not.
Obviously this was deflective thinking and a clear example of undiagnosed anxiety and a tendency to hyperfixate, but I didn’t have nothing to worry about. It sounds weird to say that the union activities of some guys in Los Angeles would affect my mental health significantly, but that’s an interconnected world for you.
I get it if you’re not as fussed about the Writers Guild of America as I am/was. That’s probably healthy. But there’s an alternate timeline out there where Avengers: Endgame was delayed to November 2021 because of this.
See? You’re interested now. Maybe.
On Earth-WGA, as we’ll call it, the Writers Guild of America officially went on strike at the beginning of May 2017, as they threatened to do on our Earth-Prime. Suddenly, production on most major TV shows shuts down. Pre-production on major films also grinds to a halt. Big productions already filming keep going, but hesitantly, without the usual regular input from writers that would usually occur. Several big 2018 films, like Deadpool 2 or Aquaman, shoot with rushed first-draft scripts and will get hammered by critics on release. Avengers: Infinity War - which by all accounts involved plenty of script changes throughout production - slows down its filming process, and, aware of the burden of having to shoot a sequel immediately afterwards, delays its release date to May 2019 to allow more time for production. Endgame is delayed to May 2020 as a result, and Spider-Man: Far From Home to July 2020. The writers return after a new deal is struck in the autumn, and Infinity War wraps production with Endgame starting filming in mid-2018. (Black Panther comes out in the autumn of 2018, but that’s by the by.) Infinity War comes out in May 2019 and makes a buttload of money and “Mr Stark I don’t feel so good” memes. Endgame finishes up reshoots, and releases a trailer at the end of the year. Everyone is excited.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 also exists on Earth-WGA, and cinemas slam shut like they did on our world. The entire 2020 film slate is slowly delayed, which unfortunately includes Endgame and Far From Home to fans’ horror and anger. It gets booted to May 2021 - then, later, after a gigantic bunfight between the combined forces Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson and Disney, settles on a November 5, 2021 release date, exclusively in cinemas. A desperate Sony tries to get Far From Home out in the summer despite the obvious nightmare this would have for spoiling Endgame, but they eventually relent and put it out on December 17, the same date occupied by No Way Home on Earth-Prime.
That did not happen, of course. The WGA came to a deal with the AMPTP (does it sometimes sound like I’m not using words?) at the last minute, though their deal did not prevent the spread of a deadly disease three years later.
But something very similar did happen between November 2007 and February 2008, when the Writers Guild struck for three months during what happened to be Quantum of Solace’s production.
See? It was relevant after all! It only took 625 words. Man, having no editor is bad for me.
Membership of the WGA isn’t really optional - you’ll have to search very hard for someone who isn’t unionized, and definitely not on a production financed by any major company at all (so yeah, you’d have to work hard). It also overlaps with the various other unions that make up Hollywood - directors, actors, producers etc. - so even if you’re not a member of the WGA, it’s in your interest to express solidarity anyway. A list of people who picketed during the 2007-08 strike is basically a list of who was big in film and TV at the time (though there are some fun details there, like how everyone involved in The Office picketed or expressed support except John “definitely not a Republican” Krasinski).
This is obviously good for worker solidarity and collective bargaining, but it means that when the lights go out, they really go out. In November 2007, virtually all American TV stopped production, unable to feed in the constant flow of scripts needed to keep the cameras running. The film industry had a slightly better time, because you only really need one script to make a movie (fascinating!), but studios faced the awkward choice of either rushing into production during the strike with an early-draft script that couldn’t be altered or edited, or waiting out the strike but delaying the release date. It might not be surprising to hear that for most big productions, Hollywood chose the former option.
As a direct result, a higher-than-average number of blockbusters filmed in early 2008 and released in late ‘08 or in '2009 were shit. We’re talking X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Terminator: Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen shit. Every time an actor noticed a bad line, or a plot point that didn’t make sense - the kind of stuff that quick rewrites can iron out normally - bad luck. Films where everyone knew the finished product was hot garbage were thrown out to placate shareholders. More so than usual, I mean.
(Actually, there is one notable exception to this. The 2009 Star Trek reboot went into production during the strike and turned out pretty great, which maybe goes to show that if your film was shit because it wasn’t rewritten enough, it might have been quite bad to begin with anyway.)
That’s your backdrop for Quantum of Solace, a film largely co-written by Daniel Craig. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but Daniel Craig is not a writer. He has not written things before. Daniel Craig writing large sections of your script is clear evidence that things are not going to plan.
And, well, they did not go to plan. But more on that later.