Welcome!

Today is a great day at the Writers Guild Foundation: It marks the inauguration of PROFESSOR FIRSTDRAFT'S GOODTIME SCRIPTORIUM, our blog exploring the history of screenwriting, television writing and the stuff that makes us swoon. FOR INSTANCE. Did you know that the WGF archive has a surviving copy of RED CHANNELS, the anti-Communist pamphlet that "helpfully" disseminated all the names of writers, artists, musicians and others placed on the Hollywood Blacklist (no, not that Black List)?

Did you know that we have incredible scripts from 70s TV variety specials like THE PAUL LYNDE COMEDY HOUR, GREASE DAY USA and MONTY HALL AT SEAWORLD? And did you know that the kitsch value of a given artifact is sometimes in direct proportion to its historical value?

Did you know that we have the complete collection of every Billy Wilder script ever produced? Like, right from Billy Wilder's desk? And they're still in amazing condition? Or that we have every script for the original HAWAII FIVE-O series, including studio notes? Or that we have (on loan) the Academy Award that Eric Roth won for FORREST GUMP?

This is the kind of stuff we'll be detailing in this blog. And we might even offer some useful tips for those of you writing television specs! After all, we do have a whole library dedicated to this stuff.

We'll be updating every Tuesday and Thursday. So tune in this coming Thursday for an incredible post by our Rosenthal Fellow Stephen Danley about science fiction maven Leigh Brackett!