A Signed ‘Seinfeld’ Finale Script, a ‘Friends’ Trophy: It’s a Strike Auction

The “Seinfeld” finale script signed by its cast and creators. A 2001 People’s Choice Award trophy for “Friends.” The chance to appear by name in a Michael Connelly novel. 

Writers on strike are auctioning off these prizes and others to raise money for film and television workers who are suffering due to this summer’s paralyzing Hollywood walkouts.  

Auction organizer Kit Boss, a TV writer whose resume includes “King of the Hill” and “Bob’s Burgers,” has spent weeks soliciting a somewhat madcap collection of donations while walking picket lines and enlisting the help of well-connected friends and colleagues. The online auction closing Sunday evening features roughly 120 lots with current bids totaling more than $100,000, ranging from memorabilia to personalized experiences with show creators, writers and performers. 

The Writers Guild of America went on strike in May, followed two months later by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The clash with movie and TV studios, networks and streamers involves contract demands about salaries, residual payments and protections against the use of artificial intelligence in creative work.

This weekend’s auction is dubbed “WGARAGE SALE,” an admittedly awkward name.  

“It’s impossible to pronounce (NOT ‘WGA Rage Sale,’ although that’s another way to look at it, and not ‘WGA Garage Sale,’ although no problem, that’ll still get you to our website, but ‘WGA-rahhj Sale’),” Boss wrote in an email. “What can I say? WGARAGE SALE looked good on a picket sign and I thought I worked in a visual medium so c’mon gimme a break.”

As the strike continues, there are questions about how Hollywood’s army of employees will weather the dry period while out of work. The auction spearheaded by writers is one of many fundraising efforts in recent weeks to support those hurt by the strikes. This particular fundraiser benefits the Entertainment Community Fund, a nonprofit that helps people working in film, TV, theater and other disciplines. Elsewhere, a starry group that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has donated millions to a SAG-Aftra Foundation relief fund. 

As word spread about the WGA Garage Rage Sale, or whatever it’s called, a 7-year-old boy got ahold of his dad’s phone and bid $2,000 on the People’s Choice Award for “Friends,” his mom’s favorite show. The bid was revoked after a frantic email from the child’s parents. The item now has a more than $4,000 bid, presumably placed by an adult. 

Greg Malins, an executive producer and writer for “Friends,” said the People’s Choice Award had been sitting in his son’s room before getting bumped to an office. The award is slightly damaged, with a chunk missing from its base. Its catalog blurb: “You can tell people you won it! By being the high bidder at an auction to help the workers who make TV shows possible!” 

Jack Handey had never donated a “Deep Thoughts” notecard before this auction. He originally composed his zany aphorisms from 1990s-era “Saturday Night Live” on 3×5 cards, typing them up and later editing them by hand. One reads: “If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ‘em go, because, man, they’re gone.” 

The writer has held on to a few hundred such cards. “I’m not sure I even get the one about keys in lava, but people seemed to find it funny,” he says. He recently burned more than 2,000 Deep Thoughts cards in the fireplace. “Not because I hated them, but because I ran out of firewood,” he says. “Also, I hated them.” The top bid for the three notecards has cleared $5,000.  

Other items range from a football helmet signed by every participating player at the NFL’s 2023 rookie premiere event to the 19th-century swivel chair owned by Robert Evans, the legendary producer and studio executive best known for classics including “The Godfather” and “Chinatown.” “If this fabulous item could talk, imagine the tales it could tell,” the chair’s description reads. “The deals made, fools played, and loves betrayed on rich, brown microsuede.”

Additions for a younger crowd include a bespoke experience with Spencer Pratt, one-time bad boy reality TV star from MTV’s “The Hills” who now sells jewelry and is deeply immersed in the world of crystals. This is the first and only reading he will do for a stranger, says Pratt, whose auction item includes a personally selected crystal. The process, while joyful, is emotionally taxing, he says. “There’s a lot of pressure to choose the right crystal because it could change their lives,” says Pratt. 

Bidders can vie for a visit with “Bridget Jones” writer Helen Fielding over a bottle of wine at a swank oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica. When she was approached about donating to the auction, she says, “of course I said yes–anything to support.” She came up with the beachfront idea, she says, because “…what’s not to like about rosé by the seaside.” (A British winner could meet her at a London pub instead, by the way.) There’s also a “Connor Roy for President” hat from behind-the-scenes of “Succession.” And for fans of “Insecure,” a virtual hangout with showrunner Prentice Penny and cast members to be named later. “I’m excited to share how the sausage was made,” says Penny.

One popular item already sold at a pre-auction: the chance for the bidder’s name to appear in a crime novel by bestselling author Connelly, who created the “Bosch” character of TV fame. The $8,200 bid winner wants the item to surprise his 76-year-old wife, who is battling breast cancer.  

Connelly, who has auctioned off about 25 character names over the years, is eager to pitch in. “It’s a very easy way for me to help out,” he says. “And sometimes you get a good name.”

Write to Ellen Gamerman at [email protected]