Thanks for Nothing

Re “From Here to Cologne” (by Paul Brownfield, June 2): I am one of several American screenwriters working in Germany for the past 10 years, with nine produced TV movies.

While these “writers of a certain age” were collecting residual checks every week, many of us working writers who were never accepted in our own country wrote in Germany, France and elsewhere to make a living. We don’t have the benefits of residuals, “reparations” or the WGA. We have to write to eat.

Now your article has opened the floodgates for every mediocre writer to get on the phone with anyone who sounds vaguely German. I don’t believe one can write German stories in Malibu by simply changing the names to Heidi and Hans.

But then, those cultural differences would require these writers to actually live there, do the work or, worse yet, to think.

DOUGLAS SCOTT HESSLER

Montrose