Hollywood writers' far-from-glamorous lives

updated 8:33 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2007

LOS ANGELES - "Jeopardy!" writer Andrew Price lives in a modest home, makes mortgage and car payments and describes himself and fellow scribes as "meat and potatoes people."

Movie art director Sean Duggan, 38, rarely wears a tux and leads a life that's more regular than regal. "When they roll out the red carpet, they call me to do it," he says.

To most of the world, Hollywood is all about glitz and glamor and beautiful people — some behaving badly. But Price and Duggan belong to what might be called the real Hollywood: its industrial other half, where folks live paycheck to paycheck, drive Toyotas and stay out of trouble.

The current Writers Guild of America strike has cast a rare, international spotlight on this workaday culture of behind-the-camera jobs — known as "below the line" in production parlance.

Most WGA members lead far from glamorous lives, and seldom earn beyond five figures each year. Yet like their colleagues who build sets, apply makeup and lay cable, they're the ones who keep Hollywood cranking the content.

Or not.

Since it began Monday, the writers strike has shuttered nearly a dozen TV shows, including such popular series as "The Office," "Desperate Housewives" and "24." The feature-film pipeline could be next.

"The stars are who they are ... as a function of all those people who are unknown and keep the system going," said Elizabeth Currid, a professor at University of Southern California who studies art and culture in Los Angeles. "Stars wouldn't define Hollywood if there weren't these regular people doing their jobs behind the scenes, day in and day out."

The average salary for entertainment industry employees is $73,000 a year, a handsome income that's 80 percent higher than the national average, according to a 2006 study by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Yet most workers in Hollywood earn far less — when they even have jobs — because the MPAA's average includes multimillion dollar salaries paid to executives.

Most of the 6,000 carpenters, welders, set decorators and prop masters represented by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 44 earn $50,000 to $80,000 a year, said secretary-treasurer Elliot Jennings.

It's "decent money" that allows for a middle-class lifestyle, he said. But work is spotty and 10 to 15 percent of the membership are not regularly employed — a situation worsened by the increasing loss of film and television shoots to foreign locations, and now the writers strike.

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