Before it found its home online, OnWriting had a life as a print publication…
Long ago, in a distant universe called the 1990s, the Writers Guild East offices were on West 57th Street (in the same building as “60 Minutes”) and the Internet was just beginning to truly flourish.
For the most part, we still typed our scripts on paper and faxed, messengered or had them delivered by Federal Express. And the Guild had a committee on publications – print publications – led by a wonderful guy, writer and producer Marc Siegel.
One day, sitting around the Guild conference room, the committee—including Marc and my dear funny friend, the late SNL writer and screenwriter Eliot Wald—kicked around ideas for a new WGAE journal. I remembered a magazine the American Film Institute used to intermittently publish called “Dialogue on Film.” In it, Hollywood professionals, including directors, actors and writers talked to one another. They discussed their careers and the art and craft of making movies.
We thought we could do something similar thing here in New York, with screenwriters talking to other screenwriters about their lives as storytellers—facilitated by an editor/interviewer. The Guild’s Marsha Seeman set the wheels in motion, and the logistics and interviewing were overseen by our able editor Arlene Hellerman.
The print editions were superseded over the years by an online version and its current incarnation as a podcast, but now you also can read those early print issues here on the WGAE website.
Enjoy – and stay tuned, as the Guild will have the rest of the print archives online in the near future!
— Michael Winship
Browse the Archive
- Issue #07 – Ring Lardner, Jr., Maurice Rapf, introduction by Doug McGrath
- Issue #18 – Aaron Sorkin
- Issue #20 – 2004 Election
- Issue #22 – Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, James Schamus, Tony Kushner
- Issue #24 – Remembering Herb Sargent
- Issue #25 – Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman
- Issue #26 – Paul Haggis, Douglas McGrath, Jeremy Brock, Doug Wright
- Issue #27 – Marshall Brickman, Tom Stoppard
- Issue #28 – Paul Auster, Mike Figgis, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake
- Issue #29 – 2008 Election
- Issue #30 – Walter Bernstein, Jeremy Pikser, the Screenplay for THE FRONT
- Issue #31 – Christopher Hampton, John Patrick Shanley, Patricia Marx, Theresa Rebeck
- Issue #32 – Joey Mazzarino, Norman Stiles, Peter Hirsch, Susan Kim