How low has Hollywood sunk? Entry-level screenwriter jobs dry up as Trump plans tariffs

Since the start of the year, Brandy Hernandez has applied to nearly 200 entertainment jobs. The 22-year-old film school graduate said that for most of those applications, she never heard back – not even a rejection. When she did land follow-up interviews, she was almost always ghosted afterwards. “I knew that I wouldn’t be a famous screenwriter or anything straight out of college,” said Hernandez, who graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 2024. But she thought she would at least be qualified for an entry-level film industry job. “It shouldn’t be this hard,” she kept thinking. Since the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a widespread production slowdown, the entertainment industry’s recovery has been delayed by the dual Hollywood strikes, some of the costliest wildfires in California’s history and an industry-wide contraction. This week US President Donald Trump announced a 100 per cent tariff on foreign-made films, a move intended to bring filmmaking back to the United States, including California. Studios scrambling to cut costs amid the turbulence were quick to slash low-level positions that historically got rookies in the door. “You almost feel cursed,” said Ryan Gimeson, who graduated from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in 2023, in the early days of the writers’ strike. While screenwriting has always been a competitive field, industry veterans attested that the conditions have rarely ever been harsher for young writers. “In the past 40 years of doing this, this is the most disruptive I’ve ever seen it,” said Tom Nunan, founder of Bull’s Eye Entertainment and a lecturer in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Theatre, Film and Television. The landscape is especially bleak in television writing, according to a jobs report released last month by the Writers Guild of America. TV writing roles dropped 42 per cent in the 2023-2024 season that coincided with the strikes, the report said. About a third of those cuts were to lower-level appointments. If you have a job, it feels like you’ve got one of the lifeboats on the Titanic, and you’re not willing to give up the seat Liz Alper, Los Angeles-based TV writer-producer It is a far cry from the TV business Liz Alper broke into 15 years ago. Alper, a Los Angeles-based writer-producer and co-founder of the fair worker treatment movement #PayUpHollywood came up in the early 2010s, when opportunities in scripted television were still plentiful. The CW Network, for instance, was putting out three original one-hour shows a night, or about 18 to 21 original pieces of programming a week, Alper said. That translated to anywhere between 100 and 200 staff writer slots. But in the last five years or so, the rise of streaming has essentially done the opposite – poaching cable subscribers, edging out episodic programming with bingeable on-demand series and cutting writing jobs in the process. The job scarcity has driven those in entry-level positions to stay there longer than they used to. A 2021 #PayUpHollywood survey found that most support staff were in their late twenties, several years older than they were on average a decade ago. Without those employees moving up and creating vacancies, recent graduates have nowhere to come in. “I think if you have a job, it feels like you’ve got one of the lifeboats on the Titanic, and you’re not willing to give up the seat,” Alper said. The entertainment job market has also suffered from the ongoing exodus of productions from California, where costs are high and tax incentives are low. Meanwhile, young creatives are questioning whether Los Angeles is the place to launch their careers. Peter Gerard, 24, moved to the city from the US east coast state of Maryland two years ago to pursue TV writing. After graduating with a data science degree from the University of Maryland, he sensed it was his last chance to chase his dream. Within weeks of arriving in Los Angeles in April 2023, he landed a handful of job interviews and even felt hopeful about a few. Then the writers guild went on strike. “I came moments before disaster, and I had no idea,” he said. During the slowdown, Gerard filled his time by working on independent films, attending writing classes and building his portfolio. He was fine without a full-time gig, he said, figuring Los Angeles would work its magic on him eventually. Such “cosmic choreography” touched writer-producer Jill Goldsmith nearly 30 years ago, she said, when she left her job as a public defender in Chicago to pursue TV writing. After seven trying months in Los Angeles, her luck turned when she met NYPD Blue co-creator David Milch in line at a Santa Monica chocolate shop. Goldsmith sent him a script, the show bought it and she got her first credit in 1998. Ran into the wonderful Camryn Manheim today on the picket line, and reminisced about making some television. #thepractice pic.twitter.com/5nUc1iVNpN — jill goldsmith (@JillGoldsmith1) August 22, 2023 Goldsmith, a lecturer in the UCLA Master of Fine Arts programme in the School of Theatre, Film and Television, said she tells her students such opportunities only come when they meet fate halfway. But hearing veteran writers mourn their lost jobs and Los Angeles’ bygone glory led Gerard to question his own bid for success. “I felt sorry for them, but it also made me realise, like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of people who want to do this, and a lot of them are much further along than me, with nothing to show for it,’” he said. As the youngest staff writer in her current writers’ room, Lore Olivera, 26, has got used to her senior counterparts waxing nostalgic about the “good old times”. “I think they’re definitely romanticising a bit,” she said, “but there is some truth in there.” Olivera landed her first staff writer job in 2023, a year after graduating from Stanford University. The process was straightforward: her reps cold-emailed her samples to a showrunner, he liked them, she interviewed and got the job. But Olivera said such success stories are rare. “I was ridiculously lucky,” she said. Still, getting a staff job is no finish line, she added, just a 20-week pause on the panic of finding the next gig. I hope that we move into an era of film where it’s new, fresh ideas and new perspectives Jolaya Gillams, a 24-year-old film school graduate Olivera is also the only staff writer in her current room, with all her colleagues holding higher titles like editor or producer. It is a natural consequence, she said, of showrunners facing pressure to fill limited positions with heavy hitters already proven capable of creating hits. Olivera said she knows not every 26-year-old was getting hired a few decades ago, but even her elder peers agreed the industry has lost a former air of possibility. “It’s definitely a slap in the face when you get here and you’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be a few miserable years, and then I might not even make it,’” Olivera said. “‘Not even because I’m good or bad … but just because the industry is so dead and so afraid of taking chances.’” Jolaya Gillams, who graduated from Chapman’s Dodge college in 2023, said that her class had talent in spades. But the industry has not given them anywhere to put it. Instead, studios are pouring money into remakes, the 24-year old said, even as consumers have displayed their appetite for original material. “I hope that we move into an era of film where it’s new, fresh ideas and new perspectives and having an open mind to the voice of our generation,” Gillams said. Until then, the filmmaker said, she will continue to create work for herself. During the strikes, Gillams and a production team with no budget made the short film Sincero, which won the audience award for short documentary at the 2023 Newport Beach Film Festival. As she continues the search for a distributor for the documentary, she already has another project in the works. Weary from the “black hole” of job applications, Hernandez said she, too, is focused on bringing her own work to life. In an ideal world, that leads to a film festival or two, maybe even agency representation. But mostly, what drives her is pride in the work itself. “If I’m successful in my mind,” said Hernandez, “I’m content with that.”

How low has Hollywood sunk? Entry-level screenwriter jobs dry up as Trump plans tariffs

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}‘It shouldn’t be this hard’ for rookie screenwriters to get work in Hollywood, where effects of pandemic, actor and writer strikes linger

‘It shouldn’t be this hard’ for rookie screenwriters to get work in Hollywood, where effects of pandemic, actor and writer strikes linger