Thread by @howardrodman

My father, Howard Rodman Sr., worked in one-hour episodic network drama in the 1960s, notably on Route 66 and Naked City. There were no writers rooms then in one-hour drama. Only two people, called "story editors,” and a pool of freelances. That was it.

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The two of them, my father and Sterling Silliphant, wrote or rewrote every single episode.

You can only imagine — meaning you can't imagine — the pressure they were under.

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They wrote pages in Los Angeles that were put on airplanes in hopes that they could be shot the next morning in New York. They used every prescription drug available to keep up the pace. During the course of this my father worked through three minor heart attacks.

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He refused to be taken to the hospital. The show had to go on.

As an express result of the working conditions of one-hour episodic drama in that era, he died of cardiac insufficiency at age 65.

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Had there been other shoulders to help bear the load — had there been a room of writers, rather than two lone and overburdened men — it’s not unreasonable to think he might have lived into his 70s. Or 80s. Or— (His dear friend and colleague Walter Bernstein made it to 101.)

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The companies want as much work as possible done by as few people as possible at the lowest wages possible. They can’t help it. It’s what they are. They are as conscious of their workers’ health as are the owners of coal mines.

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If they are not restrained by the power of our Guild, they will mandate a future for writers that all too clearly resembles my father’s past.

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He has three grandchildren, none of whom he ever lived to see. The fight to preserve the writers room is many things. But please remember: it is also a fight for working conditions that might enable long, fulfilling human lives.

#WGAstrong
#WGAstrike

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