Post by inrogers29 on Sept 3, 2009 12:28:50 GMT -5
Quotes from PowerSlam Magazine interviews of former and current creative team members...
New writers learn that a creative team survivor is a writer who understands that the McMahon family's faith in their employees is fickle, and impossible to restore when lost. The key to survival is simple: caution, caution, caution. Always agree with the McMahon’s and their favourites, relentlessly curry their approval, never draw attention to yourself, never complain and never take a bold or risky step because a single stumble can be fatal.
"Wrestlers are very paranoid by nature and feel like, if you haven't paid your dues in the ring then you're not a part of the family," said Hollywood writer/producer Chad Damiani, who worked as a WCW Magazine and website writer and backstage fix-it man for WCW in the last few years of its existence under Time Warner ownership.
"I just assumed that wrestling would be like any other business - but there's a cliquish high school social structure,".
The test starts on the first day at work, when wrestling's age old etiquette requires a new employee to personally approach and introduce himself to every wrestler in the company with a limp handshake. To newcomers, unaware that this is compulsory in every wrestling promotion, it feels like an exercise in humiliation, whereby a nervous tryout is compelled to approach clearly uninterested icons like The Undertaker and make small talk, or interrupt the eerily intense pre-match rituals of obsessive professionals, or endure the put-downs and snubs of the openly hostile John Bradshaw Layfield and Hardcore Holly. As he runs this unremitting gauntlet, an outsider with real world accomplishments must be careful at all times to appear meek, lest he be branded forever as a "snob" by wrestlers. Someone with actual wrestling knowledge, meanwhile, has toi surpress the career-killing reaction of "marking out" and "clamming up" when he meets his idols.
Dr Ranjan Chhibber a life-long fan hired to the writing team in 2004 based on his award winning academic career, risked being tarnished with both stigma. Chhibber remembers Pat Patterson, cutting off his introduction the first time they met with a scowling "You ain't one of those Hollywood guys who want to ruin wrestling?". When Chhibber took a differnt tack and tried to offset his outsider status by informing flattered Senior Vince President of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis that he was a fan of his All Japan matches, Stephanie McMahon reprimanded him for "acting like a mark",
Chhibber also said "Wrestlers feel like anyone who wishes to belong to their club is too lame to be accepted."
"Vince is absolutely, incredibly intimidating, " said former WWE producer Domenic Cotter. "He's tremendously close to his on-screen character: he's just this big, tall guy with this big booming voice, with huge balls"
Dominick Pagliaro, who worked as a WWE writer and Stephanie's assistant for more than a year in 2003-2004 said: "I remember I once asked (Vince) how he made it so big, and he just told me: "I've eaten s*** from everybody, every day of my life. That's all I do: I eat s***.". Flabbergasted, Paglairo had no idea how to respond.
Madigan said he was with WWE on the European tour when his wife had a miscarriage and his father in law died so he had to come home. While at the funeral, he says, he got a call from WWE asking Stephanie asking him to come back to Europe for a meeting on Tough Enough. She was actually yelling at him over the phone while he was standing by his father in law's graveside.
After the initial trial period, the writer's main interaction with Vince and Stephanie comes during the weekly Thursday/Friday writing team meetings in which the plans for the next week are thrashed out. According to more than one former WWE writer, these meetings added digestive discomfort to the usual brew of social and professional discomfort, since only the McMahon's were allowed to eat during the marathon sessions.
"It was just brutal. There was never any food provided in the writers' room - but it wasn't their place to feed us said one former WWE writer. "You did get hungry after three hours, especially when Vince and Stephanie would have their respective assistants bring them lunch and they would eat in front of us".
Vince always ate in the meetings. . . He had some sort of beef wrap with ketchup," added Domenic Cotter. "The meetings usually ran the entire day (without food)."
To this day, no refreshments are provided to WWE writing staff.
New writers learn that a creative team survivor is a writer who understands that the McMahon family's faith in their employees is fickle, and impossible to restore when lost. The key to survival is simple: caution, caution, caution. Always agree with the McMahon’s and their favourites, relentlessly curry their approval, never draw attention to yourself, never complain and never take a bold or risky step because a single stumble can be fatal.
"Wrestlers are very paranoid by nature and feel like, if you haven't paid your dues in the ring then you're not a part of the family," said Hollywood writer/producer Chad Damiani, who worked as a WCW Magazine and website writer and backstage fix-it man for WCW in the last few years of its existence under Time Warner ownership.
"I just assumed that wrestling would be like any other business - but there's a cliquish high school social structure,".
The test starts on the first day at work, when wrestling's age old etiquette requires a new employee to personally approach and introduce himself to every wrestler in the company with a limp handshake. To newcomers, unaware that this is compulsory in every wrestling promotion, it feels like an exercise in humiliation, whereby a nervous tryout is compelled to approach clearly uninterested icons like The Undertaker and make small talk, or interrupt the eerily intense pre-match rituals of obsessive professionals, or endure the put-downs and snubs of the openly hostile John Bradshaw Layfield and Hardcore Holly. As he runs this unremitting gauntlet, an outsider with real world accomplishments must be careful at all times to appear meek, lest he be branded forever as a "snob" by wrestlers. Someone with actual wrestling knowledge, meanwhile, has toi surpress the career-killing reaction of "marking out" and "clamming up" when he meets his idols.
Dr Ranjan Chhibber a life-long fan hired to the writing team in 2004 based on his award winning academic career, risked being tarnished with both stigma. Chhibber remembers Pat Patterson, cutting off his introduction the first time they met with a scowling "You ain't one of those Hollywood guys who want to ruin wrestling?". When Chhibber took a differnt tack and tried to offset his outsider status by informing flattered Senior Vince President of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis that he was a fan of his All Japan matches, Stephanie McMahon reprimanded him for "acting like a mark",
Chhibber also said "Wrestlers feel like anyone who wishes to belong to their club is too lame to be accepted."
"Vince is absolutely, incredibly intimidating, " said former WWE producer Domenic Cotter. "He's tremendously close to his on-screen character: he's just this big, tall guy with this big booming voice, with huge balls"
Dominick Pagliaro, who worked as a WWE writer and Stephanie's assistant for more than a year in 2003-2004 said: "I remember I once asked (Vince) how he made it so big, and he just told me: "I've eaten s*** from everybody, every day of my life. That's all I do: I eat s***.". Flabbergasted, Paglairo had no idea how to respond.
Madigan said he was with WWE on the European tour when his wife had a miscarriage and his father in law died so he had to come home. While at the funeral, he says, he got a call from WWE asking Stephanie asking him to come back to Europe for a meeting on Tough Enough. She was actually yelling at him over the phone while he was standing by his father in law's graveside.
After the initial trial period, the writer's main interaction with Vince and Stephanie comes during the weekly Thursday/Friday writing team meetings in which the plans for the next week are thrashed out. According to more than one former WWE writer, these meetings added digestive discomfort to the usual brew of social and professional discomfort, since only the McMahon's were allowed to eat during the marathon sessions.
"It was just brutal. There was never any food provided in the writers' room - but it wasn't their place to feed us said one former WWE writer. "You did get hungry after three hours, especially when Vince and Stephanie would have their respective assistants bring them lunch and they would eat in front of us".
Vince always ate in the meetings. . . He had some sort of beef wrap with ketchup," added Domenic Cotter. "The meetings usually ran the entire day (without food)."
To this day, no refreshments are provided to WWE writing staff.
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