Showrunners show on 'wasted days'

UPDATED 5:45 p.m. Nov. 7, 2007

By Leslie Simmons, Carl DiOrio, Nellie Andreeva

Disney's Mouse House in Burbank was overrun Wednesday morning by more than 125 showrunners from TV shows including "Ugly Betty," "Law & Order: SVU" and "Lost." "Every day the producers don't give us a fair and decent deal is a wasted day in Hollywood," "Ugly Betty" creator and executive producer Silvio Horta said. Wearing a T-shirt reading "Wasted Days" written in the famous Disney font, Horta and fellow "Betty" executive producer Marco Pennette said it was important for all showrunners to get together and be seen publicly supporting the strike. "For the sake of the show, we worked on the scripts up to the deadline," Pennette said. "And for the sake of the actors, they can shoot something. But we chose to not cross the line."

Among the showrunners: "SVU's" Neal Baer, "Entourage's" Doug Ellin, Carlton Cuse of "Lost," veteran producer John Wells ("ER," "I'm Not There"), "Desperate Housewives' " Marc Cherry and Shaun Cassidy, who said he has several pilots he's working on at Disney that are now in "development freeze."
"Shaun's the only showrunner here who's been in Tiger Beat," joked Cherry, who is part of the WGA West negotiating. "Today is very much about showing solidarity among showrunners," he added.

"Desperate Housewives" shuttered production Wednesday, and as more shows start to close up shop, Cherry said he expects to see more SAG members turn out at the picket lines. Next week, Cherry said, there will be special pickets featuring actors, and on Friday, the "entire guild membership" is supposed to show up at 20th Century Fox studios.

Meanwhile, down the street at Warner Bros., Garry Marshall was among the showrunners who turned up to show his support. And at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant showed up as their "Reno 911!" alter egos, Lt. Jim Dangle and Deputy Travis Junior, to picket.

Also Wednesday, a couple hundred showrunners gathered at the Smoke House Restaurant in Burbank, and Paradigm picked up the check. The agency reps several of the biggest showrunners, including WGA negotiating committee members Marc Cherry and Neal Baer. Despite that goodwill gesture, scuttlebutt afterwards swung on the near-foodfight that erupted at one point after, ahem, discussions between negotiation moderates and more militantly inclined scribes escalated into a heated debate. No punches were thrown, though the verbal barbs were sharp and unusually multisyllabic.