Fox has ordered a primetime comedy-variety show featuring Ozzy Osbourne and his family, and has engaged FremantleMedia North America, the company behind American Idol, to produce it. Because they wanted to hire WGA members to write the show, Fremantle contacted the WGAW to see if we would agree to a sub-standard contract. Attempting to pay as little as possible to the writers on the show, Fremantle asked to treat it as “half-scripted” and pay greatly reduced writing fees to those writers who wrote skits, interview material, intros, and “outros.”

We refused to agree to such a deal because it would drastically undermine hard-won minimums and standards. [...]

Accordingly, WGA East and West members may not write for the Osbourne variety show (working title: The Osbournes: Loud and Dangerous). Any members who perform writing services on that show do so at their own peril as they will be violating WGA Working Rule 8 and could be fined up to 100% of their compensation for that work.

We agree, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our variety-show-patter-writing brothers and sisters. If they're going to conjure up golden nuggets like:
"Sharon: Say goodnight, Ozzy.
Ozzy: Grfbbbllhlrhhh.
Audience laughter"
then they sure as hell should be paid fairly for it!

• To Our Fellow Members, [WGA.org]

• America's Got Talent [NBC]

Christopher Walken has agreed to play the ultimate bad-boy rocker — Ozzy Osbourne.

Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil told ABC News Radio in an exclusive interview that the 63-year-old Oscar-winning actor will make a cameo appearance as Osbourne in "The Dirt," a movie based on the band's controversial 2001 autobiography. [...]

Osbourne toured with Motley Crue and was friends with the band, and his antics, as recounted in the book, include snorting a line of live ants (while looking for a fix of cocaine) and taking LSD every day for a year "just to see what would happen."

Neil says that other stars are going to appear in the film as rock stars, including Val Kilmer as David Lee Roth.

We look forward to witnessing what sorts of Method madness Kilmer cooks up to capture his high-kicking counterpart; surely, he will literally become Diamond Dave both on and off the set, much in the way he brought an unparalleled level of authenticity to his "channeling" of Jim Morrison while shooting The Doors. But something tells us that it's song-and-dance man Walken and his tireless commitment to detail that will ultimately steal this show, such as his insistence, against a nervous prop master's better judgment, on snorting a parade of actual fire ants, instead of allowing the ill-fated critters to just be later added digitally in post.

• Exclusive: Christopher Walken to Play Ozzy Osbourne [ABCNews.com]