As the old rule of politics has it, one should never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel. And perhaps in the past few months, Hollywood has earned its own, updated version: never start a war of words with anyone who spends all day in front of their laptop. Incredibly, that is what the studios did in May, when they refused to back down in a contract dispute with the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) – the union which represents the 11,500 screenwriters currently earning a living, or trying to, in the US film and TV business. And even now the bitter 146-day strike which followed is over, only now is the real trouble about to begin.
