THE NEW HOLLYWOOD REALITY

FOR an industry at war over competing visions of the digital-age future, the sight this week of thousands of Writers Guild members whipping out their bluntest, most antiquated weapon -- picketing -- was, well, striking. Especially for a professional group typically wary of physical movement and potential exposure to sunlight.

“I think it’s the least effective form of protest known to man,” said one writer, who wished to remain anonymous because he has no plans to join his WGA comrades in front of the studios. “It has no efficacy whatsoever. I think it’s indicative, just from a larger standpoint, of a stale view of things. Like, ‘Let’s go and get writers and give them wood signs and walk around.’ We’re not dealing with blue-collar personalities here, so it’s a little odd.

“Look,” he adds. “We’re in a creative community here. Why don’t we come up with a better alternative?”

Having stood in the midst of the spirited mayhem earlier this week, I think picketing’s lack of originality is exactly what gives it the immediacy of its link to history. Yes, the WGA may be going to the mat over the jurisdiction and compensation of digital downloads and other new media content (among other things). But it takes no real leap of imagination to connect that these same sidewalks were trod by creative ancestors in previous union actions dating to the early 1930s meetings of the reconstituted Screen Writers Guild. With the ultimate outcome ever in doubt, the presence of that legacy carries a lot of weight.

Additionally, with passing cars and trucks and taxis honking their horns in support (some even as they pull into the lot), and writers using their voices and shoe leather instead of keypads to express their emotions, the picket line is appealingly active, verbal, public and communal -- four adjectives generally missing from the screenwriter’s typically isolated life.

The scene was certainly set properly. Symbolically resonant, the cold, gray and misty atmosphere surrounding the start of the first walkout by TV and film writers in a generation seemed to portend its unvarnished truth: Even if both sides of the contract debate somehow eventually find bearable common ground, the preceding weeks and months will be financially, socially and creatively grim.

A swing by Sony Pictures, Culver Studios and Fox during the guild membership’s first few shifts revealed dozens of writers fortified by skim lattes and purpose as they streamed back and forth across the variety of lot gates.

As one strike deputy marching outside of Sony’s main Overland entrance commented with resigned candor: “I’m here because of peer pressure and anger -- in equal parts.”

The real test is whether weeks from now, when fatigue has set in, the cupboards have emptied and the news cameras have slunk back to covering freeway chases and mayoral mistresses, the membership’s support and commitment will remain as focused as they are this week. Especially if there are reports of guild members violating strike regulations by working on quarantined material or wedges driven into the tense industry balance by the Directors Guild of America, should it negotiate early its own deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

The Screen Actors Guild, for its part, had representatives scattered around the city, including National Director of Organizing Todd Amorde, who was intently watching the festivities at Fox. His comments make it clear that the Screen Actors Guild -- formed just months after iconic, and later blacklisted, writer John Howard Lawson relaunched the Screen Writers Guild in 1933 -- is very much in sync with the WGA’s contract goals, since it’ll be debating the same issues next summer. He says that SAG is encouraging its members to march with their writing brothers and sisters whenever possible.

Given the current dug-in stalemate between the WGA and its employers, SAG’s influence could be the deciding factor in any concessions ultimately made to the WGA’s demands. (It remains to be seen whether the support of Hillary and Barack -- yes, both Democratic presidential candidates expressed solidarity with the writers’ cause this week -- will help or hurt.)

The murk of the day-to-day situation extends to show runners, writer-actors and other “hyphenates” who juggle multiple roles in both TV and film and must determine which work-related duties are OK to perform during a writers strike.

“There are a lot of hyphenates on this line,” said Oscar-winning screenwriter-director-producer James L. Brooks, who’s been a member of the WGA for nearly 50 years and had no hesitation about joining the picketing as he has during previous walkouts. “I do believe that almost every hyphenate I know -- when you do your identity check you’re a writer. And almost every writer I know does the identity check multiple times a day.”

Brooks was briefly resting on a bus stop bench in front of the Pico gate of the Fox lot next to fellow “Simpsons” writer-producer Mike Scully, who made it to the line even on crutches. “There’s a general feeling of, we have to stand up this time,” says Scully, who’s been with the show since 1993. But, he admits, “we’d all rather be working than sitting on a bus bench.”

A rainy-day noodle stockpile

As the possibility of a writers strike has blossomed like a toxic mushroom over the last few months, I found myself returning to an image that struck me as funny and poignant at the time, and now suddenly as much more prescient and sad. I did a feature on David Ayer, the writer of “Harsh Times” and “Training Day,” for Premiere magazine five years ago, right after Ayer had achieved A-List status as the guy you bring in to get a script greenlighted (“The Fast and the Furious,” “U-571,” “S.W.A.T.”).

For a variety of very valid reasons, Ayer, who’s now in post-production on “The Night Watchman,” another LAPD thriller he co-wrote and directed, was a little shell-shocked and cautious about his success. He had purchased a multimillion-dollar Los Feliz home that looked, with its tiered landscaping and multiple stories, like something Pablo Escobar might have rented in Hollywood. But on a walk through an enormous but bare basement kitchen on the way to the garage, we passed an extensive metal slab of a counter that looked more suited to an autopsy room. There was a complete absence of implements -- no utensils, plates or colors. But stacked up four high, three deep and at least a dozen long were cartons of ramen noodles.

When I gestured to them, amused at the prospect of a guy who gets $1 million a gig stockpiling 49-cent, can’t-afford-to-keep-the-lights-on eats, Ayer stopped and stared at the literal and metaphoric barricade of boxes with hard eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, enigmatically. “Scary.”

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Scriptland is a weekly feature on the work and professional lives of screenwriters. Please e-mail any tips or comments to fernandez_jay@hotmail.com.