Mendelsohn and Donahue Talk New Deals

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue, the two highest-paid women writing television drama, both said that female writers in Hollywood have a much easier time now than they did 20 years ago.

"Lee Majors once said to me, `Where did you learn to write like a man?' That was a compliment," Mendelsohn recalled in The New York Times last weekend. "A lot of times when all the guys went to lunch, the door would literally slam in my face. I would go to lunch with the assistants, who were women."

Mendelsohn, a former lawyer, has worked on CSI since the pilot. She hired Donahue, whose work she had admired on Picket Fences.

The two writers jointly negotiated their deal because they consider themselves partners in the franchise. Executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer has described them as "the backbone of the shows."

"We sometimes spend 20 hours a day on these shows," Mendelsohn said.

Of their current success, Donahue noted, "I still can't believe it...the fact that no one told us [this would happen] is why we're here."

The two women recently struck a deal with CBS and Atlantic Alliance which guarantees each of them as much as $20 million if CSI and CSI: Miami both run through the 2007-8 television season.

The writers said that the deal is "not only a validation of their years of struggle and false starts but also a testament to the way television, in only a few years, has altered the treatment of female writers."

To read more on Donahue and Mendelsohn's backgrounds and views on the industry, see the complete article.

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