Family Ties

NEW YORK- Rebecca Shubert looked a little young to be on the picket line.

“I’m 14,” she said, holding her “On Strike” sign firmly as she paced in front of Silvercup Studios with two dozen writers last week. “My dad works at the Dave Letterman show.”

Her father, Steve Young, acknowledged it was “an unusual father-daughter experience.”

“My wife said, ‘Rebecca doesn’t have school tomorrow, maybe you should take her picketing,’” he said. “And I thought yeah, that’d be pretty cool.”

“But they didn’t make me,” the ninth-grader hastened to add. “He offered and I said sure. I think they’re fighting absolutely for a good cause. I think it’s worth it, whatever it takes.”

Young has been a writer for Letterman for 17 years and said he’s bracing for “a tough economic impact in the medium to long-term.”

“But we’d rather take the hit, if it means getting the writers in the right position for the years and decades to come,” Young added.

His daughter said she’s not too worried yet.”It’s just strange to see somebody out of work suddenly like that,” Rebecca said. “But I think it’s worth it, because this will not only affect the writers guild, but other unions who are looking at this and seeing if this is going to work out. So I think it’s worth it. But it’s a little weird.”

Nearby, Bryan Goluboff walked the picket line with his three daughters - at least their likenesses.

Goluboff held up a rain-streaked sign with a blown-up photo of his daughters, ages 8, 5 and 22 months. He said he made the poster with them the night before to underscore why the writers need a better deal.

“Some writers don’t get a million shows on the air; they get one,” he said. “You need all the residuals while you’re out looking for other jobs, and those residuals pay for education, pay for food. This is the way we make our living.”

Goluboff is a writer for HBO’s “In Treatment,” which is completed and set to air in January, and was working on a pilot for NBC until the strike was called. He said he’s not immediately concerned about being able to pay the bills.

“We’ve saved some money; I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “My worry is that a fair model be put in place. I watch television on the Internet now, and there’s advertising on it. I just don’t understand why writers don’t share in this new media, in this new wealth. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

In the meantime, Goluboff said he hopes the work action doesn’t poison the relationship between the writers and the studios.

“The thing I don’t like is all this us vs. them. The truth is, they’re our creative partners, we work with them every day. We don’t hate them. When this is over, we have to go back and raise the baby together. So we don’t want this to get too long or too nasty. It’s counterproductive.

--Matea Gold