From KCRW in Santa Monica, I'm Matt Holesman, sitting in for Claude Brodessa Ackner, and this is the business.

So you still want to do the show business, and you think that you got what it takes.

I mean, you really got a rap and be all at.

But prepare yourself for the brakes, check it out.

To understand the current writer's strike, you need to understand the long and contentious relationship between screenwriters and the people who write their checks.

This week on The Business, Part 2 of our conversation with Oscar-winning scribe Mark Norman about his new book, What Happens Next?

A History of American Screenwriting.

Plus, while the writer's strike, video games rock on, literally.

Stick around, it's the business from NPR.

The writer's strike is dragging on, and to do our part to end the unpleasantness, we begin our

show with these wise words from TV writer and producer Rob Long.

A few years ago, I heard this story from a friend of mine. He's got a kid in elementary school.

And one day, in his oldest kid's second grade classroom, suddenly, without warning, all of the kids started to throw up.

Just cascades, apparently, and for no discernible reasons.

So they shut down the school. They sent everybody home, they called out the hazmat crew,

and they sent in the guys in the spacesuits to sniff around and measure stuff

and check for gas and chemicals and e-coli and anything else that might make 26, 7-year-olds,

hurl and hurl and hurl, and hurl, and they found nothing.

That's right, nothing. See, apparently it was just that one of the

kids, only one, had been suffering from a slightly upset stomach that morning, had suddenly

felt queasy, and had yacked all over himself in his desk. Now, the sight, and let's be

honest, the smell of which had inspired one or two of his closest neighbors to suddenly

...