Hollywood is working on a cliffhanger which will reach its climax tonight in one of five ways, which include its film and television actors being left speechless.
The 11,500 members of the Writers' Guild of America may strike now, defer action until the summer, win or lose the battle, or arrive at a compromise with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
A strike would test the Cheers writer and producer Rob Long's assertion in Conversations With My Agent, his insider's account of screen industry bedlam, that "the main reason television sitcoms are so bad is that too many educated people are involved in creating them".
On the big screen an eventual return to work might resemble the world of F Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby Stories, the sour 1930s satires about a washed-up hack writer trying, none too hard and none too successfully, to get back into the business.
"It could be a disaster all round if a strike should hold," said Paul Schulman, president of Schulman/Adanswers, a New York media-buying company. "Some people will desert permanently, finding other things to do with their time: on the internet or with programming, other than network programming."
Neither side was speaking to the press yesterday but the feeling was that neither wanted to risk a strike when the economy is slowing down, or to repeat the 1988 stoppage which is estimated to have cost the industry $500m (£347m).
On that occasion the writers made their point by picketing studios with wordless banners.
Richard Riordan, the mayor of Los Angeles, has produced a study which estimates that a strike would cost the city $6.9bn (£4.8bn) in business and 130,000 jobs, raising the unemployment rate from 4.8% to 6.9%.
Negotiations between the parties broke down in March and resumed at the weekend.
The main issue for film writers is respect for their craft: they want to curb directors who like to put their names after the phrase "A film by", even though they may not have written any of it.
The television writers are more concerned about money: they want a bigger share of the residuals, the payments received when shows are sold abroad or on tape or DVD, or are rerun on television.
If there is a strike, cinema-goers and television viewers will not notice much of a difference at first.
The studios have accelerated production and have 76 more films on general release than at this time last year.
Television shows such as Sex in the City would not be affected because the summer schedules are completed. In time, however, the small screen might have to run more script-free "reality" shows such as Survivor, and firm producers might turn to old unproduced scripts or foreign films.
"Imagine if the networks' Monday line-up was essentially Survivor, Millionaire and Weakest Link, and then on Tuesday Survivor, Millionaire, and Weakest Link," said Doug Lieblein, a writer-producer of the CBS comedy Yes, Dear.
"The networks may pretend that won't kill them, but it will."
There was little television production planned until the summer, he said.
