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Late-hour talks broke down over the weekend, so the Writers Guild of America went on strike at midnight New York time and is preparing to set up picket lines all over town Monday morning. (The first shift is 9 am to 1 pm.) The producers asked to stop the clock and keep negotiating, but the guild rejected the gambit and has declared what Variety calls "all-out war." The last time the writers went out, in 1988, the strike lasted five months and is remembered as a fairly devastating blow to Hollywood. Here's the list of picketing locations, the companies being struck, and the rules the WGA uses to decide which written material is covered.
Selective media coverage:
Variety / Hollywood Reporter
NYT / LAT / WSJ
Blogs: Mark Lacter, Nikki Finke
The players:
Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
Writers Guild of America
Noted: The guild is telling strikers at Universal to park in the MTA lot, which means a worse than usual hunt for parking for subway commuters. "The #1 problem with taking the subway from Universal is the lack of parking," says one, who dashed off a letter to the MTA.