Hollywood unscripted

Work days for Bruce Helford usually begin at a leisurely 9:30 a.m. However, there's no rest for the writer after that. The days begin with an editing session on one of his three shows: "The Drew Carey Show" (ABC), "Norm" (ABC), and "Nikki" (WB).

From there, he usually drops in on one of the writing rooms for the various shows, where he will spend several hours that almost always include a working lunch. Wall monitors broadcast the working script, which is tracked by a writing assistant so writers can continue writing as they eat and discuss plot developments. Afternoons include run-throughs of shows, after which Mr. Helford hands out notes so the writers can adjust the scripts. At the end of the day, he makes the rounds of each show for additional story tinkering and editing. On a good day, he's home somewhere near 7:30 in the evening, which is devoted to his wife and two young children, ages 8 and 10.

Mr. Helford is quick to point out, however, that he gets home so early only because he's in management now as an executive producer, in addition to his writing duties. He almost always leaves his staff of writers at their keyboards. "You give up your life; the hours are horrendous," he says of television staff writers. "Most come in at 9:30 and expect to be on call until midnight to 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, especially with new shows."

This pace is a far cry from his early days in Los Angeles. He wrote his first script in 1984, fresh from a job in his family's Chicago pet business.

He moved his family to Los Angeles, determined to make it as a writer. "It was a thing I'd always dreamed of doing," he says, although the first few years were challenging. "I told my wife I'd spend a year learning about the business." He made $3,000 his first year, during which "we lived off the trivia questions at McDonald's, winning free burgers."

He was hired as a staff writer within a year, which saved the family from another move. "We made an agreement that if I hadn't made it by the time I was 35," he says, "we'd move to Montreal and live off a muffin shop."

Today, Helford is one of a small handful of writer-producers with enough clout to command $20 million, multiyear contracts. As the threat of an industry strike May 2 suddenly puts the creative industry in the national limelight, Helford is able to put his job in perspective: "The tough part about a strike for writers is that we're a highly paid group, and there's nothing particularly sympathetic about writers trying to get more money."

Unless, he adds, the demands are framed in the context of the amount of money that is being made off their work. "Writers in TV exchange a great deal of their lives and energy for their work," he says. "So it is a job that requires sacrifices like any job, and they do have the right to a fair share of the work and what management gets from the work."

An action duo forges ahead

Screenwriting partners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough got one of their biggest breaks when the producers of the Jackie Chan movie "Rush Hour" came calling.

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