Lauren Minnerath
WGA East strike captain on the exploitation of the industry and the importance of unions.
Photography by Evelyn Freja
Tell me a bit about your background. What brought you to NYC and to writing and directing?
I grew up in rural Minnesota with zero connections to the film or entertainment industry. I was obsessed with movies for as long as I can remember. At one point when I was a kid, I mentioned to my godfather that I wanted to be a film director, and he said, “Then you need to go to film school.” So I looked up film schools, and saw NYU was supposed to be the best, and I just got it in my head early on that I needed to go there. I ended up attending and then never left New York. After graduation, I came up in the independent film world and now currently write for both film and television. I also direct and am currently developing my first feature, which just participated in the Sundance Producing Labs.
What kinds of challenges have you faced career-wise?
I guess a better question would be, what challenges haven’t I (or most of us) faced? Sexism, exploitation, rejection, long stretches without working, etc. During the first eight years out of film school, I was very overworked and underpaid and thought about throwing in the towel a lot. Then I sold a series to a major streaming service, which got me into the Guild, and that changed so much for me. For the first time in my life, I had good health insurance!
But even when you’re in the Guild, you still face so many challenges. Squeezing free work out of writers has been normalized to a ridiculous extent, and that’s one thing the Guild is trying to correct by fighting for mandatory two-step deals in these negotiations. Right now, one-step deals are the norm, which means the writer is only guaranteed one draft before an optional second draft or polish. It’s become very common for producers to want rewrites before they hand the draft in to the studio or financier, and since you only get paid per draft you write, you find yourself doing multiple rewrites for free so the draft can get sent to the studio and you (hopefully) get another step triggered and paid again. Technically, you can always say no, but you risk looking difficult or the next step not being triggered. The real money comes when the film gets made, so you’re inclined to do whatever you can to play ball and move development along so that happens.
This has happened to varying degrees on all the open writing assignments I’ve been hired on. It has become so normalized that it is now endemic, and everyone does it. Eliminating one-step deals would help eliminate the extensive free rewrites that are expected of a writer after they complete a first draft.
There are other challenges as well. For example, I have been hired on open writing assignments to do "rewrites" where I’ve never even seen the previous writers’ drafts, but I still make less money because it’s “technically” a rewrite. I’ve been asked to write entire treatments (something we are supposed to get paid for) for free just to get hired. There’s also the issue of erratic development schedules that make it impossible to know if you’re being paid next month or next year. But the free rewrites are the most common problem feature writers face and are an issue that the Guild will be able to address in these specific negotiations.
Basically, exploitation is rampant in this industry, and our unions are pretty much all we have protecting us. It would not be a remotely sustainable line of work for anyone if we didn’t have labor unions.
What kinds of changes have you seen in the industry from when you began to now?
I’ve only been in the Guild for about three or four years, and I’ve never been in a writer’s room, so I can’t personally speak to the explosion of mini-rooms and shrinking residuals over the last ten years, which are very real, existential problems to our line of work.
I will say that while there are definitely still amazing films and shows being made, I think for me, personally, the most depressing recent trend has been the industry’s over-reliance on algorithms and IP when deciding what to produce. When I was taking general meetings just five or six years ago, the people I met with seemed excited about my specific voice, style, and point of view. That was all a selling point. Now it feels like those things (you know, everything that makes a film or show interesting, unique, and exciting) aren’t that important anymore, or can even be viewed as detrimental. You get this sense that the questions now are — what is our algorithm telling us we should make? What popular IP can we reboot? Can audiences watch this while looking at their phones? These trends feel like a dangerous slippery slope for art, creativity, and culture, and it’s no wonder replacing writers with robots is an actual issue we’ve been fighting. We all know AI could never write something like the ending of Fleabag, but will that even matter to the studios in a few years? Discovering new, exciting voices and stories is becoming a rapidly shrinking priority in this business.
I think the Barbenheimer phenomenon has shown that audiences still want to go to the movies, they’ve just been starved for films that offer something new, have a specific voice, and respect their intelligence. If you want people to eat at your restaurant, you don’t serve them microwaved leftovers, so why does our industry seem to think perpetually churning out algorithm-and-recycled-I.P.-driven content is good business?
What are some of your biggest concerns around some of the AMPTP contracts?
I’m mostly worried about proposals that could turn writing for the screen from a career into essentially gig work. In the initial round of negotiations, the AMPTP proposed "day rates" for comedy-variety writers and refused minimum weekly employment guarantees for series writers. Something I’ve also learned from the strike is the slashing of writing budgets and proliferation of mini rooms means many writers aren’t being paid to cover sets anymore. That leads to a major knowledge gap amongst a generation of writers who haven’t had the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to run a show. The career ladder from writer to showrunner is now broken.
My understanding from union leadership is the most recent AMPTP proposals do address some of the existential concerns we have, but that there are still way too many loopholes and limitations.
Tell me about being a strike captain, what does that mean and look like?
I volunteered to be a Guild captain because I wanted to know more about the nuts and bolts of the union and the business of being a screenwriter. As I said, I’ve never been in a room and have mostly worked on open writing feature assignments or my own show, so my writing career has been pretty insular thus far. Because I’ve mostly worked by myself, I assumed a lot of the challenges I was experiencing were happening to me because I wasn’t a big enough deal yet. Then I started going to Guild meetings and saw people who had written and created huge movies and shows you’ve heard of standing up and sharing their experiences of losing their health insurance or having to work for free. I realized this is happening to almost everyone.
As a WGA captain, you try to stay informed on what’s going on from union leadership so you can pass along accurate information to other members. There are organizing opportunities as well, but for me, this has been a great opportunity to connect with the larger screenwriting community. The irony of these strikes is because we’re all together on the picket line now, we’re all talking to each other and learning all the different and similar ways we’ve all been getting screwed these past few years.
What does equitable compensation look like for WGA members?
I think at minimum, this should be a career where any union member can make a steady income, comfortably raise a family, buy a home someday, etc. Some writers will always be paid more than others, but our lowest-paid writers should be making a middle-class living.
What do you want folks outside the industry to know about the strike?
A few things.
First, this strike is not a bunch of millionaires asking for more money. The vast, vast majority of working writers and actors are not rich. This strike is not even about getting a raise – it’s about past-due corrections. For years, streaming companies have been considered “new media” and thus aren’t covered under our contracts the way traditional broadcast media is.
As streaming grew, we saw spending on production increase while our earnings decreased. Adjusting for inflation, median TV writer-producer weekly pay has fallen 23%. Half of series writers now work WGA minimums. For feature screenwriters, median pay has declined 14% since 2018 when adjusted for inflation. And late-night comedy variety writers still have no WGA minimums on late-night shows made for streaming services.
We all know streaming has grown to the point where it’s no longer “new media” – it’s just media. But rather than invest back into the labor that built these services, these companies have continued to run razor-thin margins churning out thousands and thousands of titles and charging just $15 a month for them. This excess of cheap content was all subsidized by cheap labor. Now the bubble has popped, and the AMPTP is crying broke when the workers who make the products their businesses run on want to finally be paid a fair wage. We shouldn’t be forced to pay for their bad business decisions.
Second, please don’t write this strike-off as just being about Hollywood and its internal drama. It’s a reflection of a squeeze we’ve all been feeling. The world’s ten richest men literally doubled their fortunes since the pandemic, all while income inequality accelerates and people everywhere are experiencing mass layoffs. No matter where you stand politically, the reality is US labor is on the precipice of an existential crisis akin to the one we faced 100 years ago, and that is bad for all of us. My hope at the start of this strike was that it would turn into a larger labor movement outside of our industry. Seeing unions like UPS, UAW, and APFA flight attendants authorizing their own strikes, or VFX workers voting to unionize, is incredibly heartening. I hope the larger labor movement only continues to grow after our strike is over.
✦
