The Columnistic Stylings of Me

They tricked me into thinking I had it pretty good--free Snapple, a service that delivers cake when it's someone's birthday, doing nothing the entire week except the three hours it takes to write this column. But now I see through their attempts to buy my soul's work through cheap trinkets like a corporate AmEx card and health benefits. Yes, we writers, we conjurers of phrases, we have been used like a...no, I will expend metaphors for the Man no longer. Not since I learned that the Writers Guild of America has issued a list of demands and will go on strike if they are not met. If they do, that means we'll all have to watch old stuff. Not remakes of old stuff but the old stuff itself.

I was ready to join with my quilled brethren, but it turns out the Guild is for film and TV writers, whose jobs are slightly different from mine in that they make $2 million a script. Still, their demands touched a part of me, the part of me that's greedy and egocentric, so really more "the vast majority of me" than "a part of me."

The W.G.A. is demanding that writers' names have equal prominence with directors' in movie posters, that actors not change their words on the set, higher pay, invitations to premieres and press junkets, and better seats at the Golden Globes. Actually, I don't agree with the press-junket part because I have to go on them sometimes and they have really bad food and local newspaper reporters asking Mel Gibson "What was it like kissing Helen Hunt?" and "When did you realize you were so talented?"

To see how bad it has got for screenwriters, I spoke to Steve Koepp, who co-wrote The Paper and carries a W.G.A. MasterCard. "It was like the royal treatment, actually," he said of his screenwriting experience. "They even gave me a small part--and my own dressing room--and I got paid for that too. I can't think of a single beef." You might remember Steve as the critically lauded but hard-to-spot "German Newsperson."

Nevertheless, I drafted a list of my own demands, which I sent to the editor who is in charge of my raises and promotions, deputy managing editor Steve Koepp, a man many recognize as the German Newspaperman from The Paper. I told him I wanted the name of the magazine, as shown on each week's cover and all promotional materials, to read "TIME--featuring the columnistic stylings of Joel Stein." I would get to put back every penis joke my editor cuts. I wanted to fire this cartoonist and hire someone who draws a "thinner, smaller-nosed, more Stamosesque version of me." I asked for more money. I also threw in something about a "lap-dance allowance" because there was some room at the bottom of the e-mail.

Steve was pretty accommodating, saying the "columnistic stylings" bit could be used for people on my Buddy List. He said I could get a more flattering cartoon drawing if I just underwent some simple plastic surgery procedures. And in lieu of a cash raise, he offered some AOL stock options. We both had a good laugh over that.

I hope the W.G.A.'s negotiations go as well as mine. And if they don't, no matter how much Hollywood may offer me to step in, I will refuse to cross the row of Mexican immigrants the writers pay to stand on the picket line for them.