Beat the Client

So this MySpace page isn't about me, Andre Paul Thierry, exactly...It's more about the fabulous camera-ready screenplay, "BEAT THE CLIENT," written by me, kept under wraps during the strike by the Writers Guild of America and now pushing for the greenlight to go into production in 2008 or 2009.(I fully support the Guild, by the way, even though my dick is a member, but I am not. I honored the strike. I even picketed at Time Warner in Columbus Circle. But I gotta play Devil's advocate: first of all, was it fate or conspiracy that the Hollywood hierarchy was reversed in terms of the strike schedule--first, the Writers on the front line, then the Directors nad finally (if at all) the Actors? WTF?!? The Writers were like the Black soldiers in the contractual 'Nam. Frankly, I don't know if tomorrow's 2-year fixed residual of $1, 200 for online streaming and the Year 3 2%share of the distributor's revenue was worth today's billion-dollar shutdown or the loss of 70 development deals by now-stillborn "show runners." DIABLO CODY'S smile for her WGA Original Screenplay victory might be as Pyrrhic a face as there ever was. Post-strike, the writer may well be hot, sexy, dead.Is it a revolution if (scripted) television is no longer televised? Next thing you know, the WGA will be striking over broadcast rights for our wet dreams. And the studios and the AMPTP will compensate us for our nocturnal emissions, but refuse to give us a percentage of the dreams themselves.I gotta admit, though: the WGA's strategy of getting independent producers & studios, such as David Letterman's Worldwide Pants, Tom Cruise's United Artists, The Weinstein Company and Media Rights Capital to sign agreements with the Guild was brilliant---guerrilla warfare-brilliant! That may have been the difference between this year's strike and the strike of '88. Watch this space, your TV and your local movie house, assuming any of these technologies still exist come May 1, 2011.)Anyhoo, one of the best things about comic books, which i grew up reading along with the occassional James Baldwin novel and "the" Bible, are the "Secret Origins" of superheroes in which stories are told to lay down the background, firm up the mythology and revise the perception of characters for us, the fanboys. And so this is the Secret origin of "Beat the Client"....One of the best things about graphic novels ("Persepolis," "Maus," Kyle Baker's "Why I Hate Saturn," Ho Che Anderson's "I Want to Be Your Dog") a/k/a "comic books, " which i recently started perusing to supplement my dog-eared copy of David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and "Pictures of Nothing," the transcriptions of Kirk Varnedoe's Mellon Lectures, is the revisionist mythology of the "Secret Origin." A "Secret Origin" of a superhero is the creator-author's vain attempt to provide substance, meaning, artistryand, yes, even credibility to my...er, um, his/her pop culture contribution. A "secret origin" is the literary equivalent of marrying foie gras to peanut butter.(I confess I didn't make this up: you can actually find "Foie gras, peanut butter, cocoa, pear" and Absinthe Gummi Bears at Tailor restaurant in NYC, 525 Broome Street between Thompson & 6th Ave, (212) 334-5182. I'm just happy I got this far into this MySpace page before saying: "But I digress." And so I present to you, the Secret Origin of "Beat the Client"---hate to be a total clit-tease, but you gotta go to the Blog.