The 1972 Writers Guild strike changed my life dramatically. There’s lots to be said about the Guild, but for the moment I’ll confine myself to the strike itself, which required me to picket outside the (then) Goldwyn studios at Santa Monica and Formosa for three hours a day, four days a week, carrying a placard. All writers are frustrated actors; now here we were, starring in our own production of Waiting for Lefty Meets On the Waterfront While Waiting for Bardot, shouldering our picket signs as though they were rifles and we, the workers on the front lines of the proletarian revolution. Writers of the world unite; we had nothing to lose but our subordinate clauses. We all picketed with a partner. After three hours walking with him or her in a long oval, with the sun beating down on the pavement (and us), we learned more than we ever cared to know about him—and vice versa, natch. I picketed with an older man named Al Beich who had written a lot of Mannix episodes. One day when our shift was finished, he invited me back to his place for a drink.
