As Hollywood braces for the possibility of yet another work stoppage, this one by the actors' unions (as represented by their universally recognised symbol of a laughing hammer superimposed over a weeping sickle), the fallout from the last bitter labour war to hit our shores continues: In a "Letter from the Presidents" posted to the WGA's web site, Patric Verrone and Michael Winship point the end of a blood-soaked fountain pen at those members who chose to go "financial core," or fi-core as it's known in the hip-hop world, during the strike. (Recently employed by George Clooney in a tussle with the Guild over Leatherheads, it's as far as you can go towards cutting ties with the union while still being permitted to work on WGA projects.)

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Remember yesterday when we posted about how incorrigibly charming George Clooney is? Well, according to Variety, the WGA might not agree. After an arbitration hearing where the Guild failed to give Clooney a writing credit for Leatherheads, he decided to become a Financial Core member. That means he can't vote, run for office, or attend meetings, yet he still has to pay dues. But as Hollywood's most rakish bachelor explains,

"When your own union doesn't back what you've done, the only honorable thing to do is not participate."

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Due to an arcane by-law in the WGA constitution, no strike can officially be called off until one the Guild's longest-tenured and most visible members appears on television to ritualistically recite the story of Lew Wasserman's Toilet, in which the legendary Hollywood mogul supposedly dismissed the idea of paying residuals by saying, "My plumber doesn't charge me each time I flush the toilet." Thankfully, comedian and tenured Oscar gag-writer Bruce Vilanch completed this curious formality earlier today on CNN, allowing the rest of the strike-cancellation process to proceed as scheduled.

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With word arriving over the weekend that Saturday night's WGA Scribeapalooza II: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off event at the Shrine Auditorium sent TV showrunners back to work today and will return everyone else to their jobs on Wednesday pending the outcome of a strike-ending vote to be counted tomorrow night, Hollywood can safely upgrade its feelings of Cautious Optimism to full-blown This Waking Three-Month Nightmare Is Finally Over Euphoria.

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While most of you were either out tying one on or at home sleeping one off, WGA presidents Patric Verrone (West) and Michael Winship (East) were pounding Red Bulls and firing off a 3am email to their membership announcing that a tentative deal has been reached with the AMPTP. According to the email, the deal "protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery." Huzzah! All of the deal points can be found in handy PDF format here; the email sent to guild members follows after the jump.

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· Anxious that the Oscars are approaching and he still has no real idea of whether or the WGA--obviously a little preoccupied with their own issues--intends to grant a waiver for their awards ceremony, Academy president Sid Ganis begs the Guild for answers so that complicated logistical issues can be resolved. "We're running out time! [desperate punctuation ours]," wails Ganis, pleading for the sweet release of either a simple "yes" or "no." [Variety]

· Hard-to-kill Heroes cheerleader and Official Friend of the Dolphins Hayden Panettiere joins the cast of teen comedy Daydream Nation, possibly opposite a Culkin. [Variety]

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On this second day of the New Era of Cautious Optimism ushered in by Friday's "informal" bargaining session between Writers Guild negotiators and studio CEOs--when WGA West president Patric Verrone's repeated striking of Disney's Bob Iger with a foam EncounterBat™ led to a critical, tearful breakthrough on the matter of streaming video payments-- the LAT reports that the Guild's West Coast board has "reacted favorably to the outlines of a pending agreement" between the warring factions. Still, they refuse to uncork the Moët until everything they've fought for is actually in contract form and put to a vote that could--dare we say it? yes, we will dare--happen as early as this weekend:

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In case you were too consumed with your Super Bowl preparations to scroll through the scores of "THE STRIKE IS OVER!!!" e-mails filling up your BlackBerry, various reports touting "progress" fueled by a breakthrough in Friday's informal deal-chat surfaced over the weekend, filling Hollywood with the kind of cautious optimism the beaten-down residents of a crippled company town haven't allowed themselves to feel since the AMPTP's Nick Counter stormed away from negotiations after claiming that someone on the WGA negotiating team had given him "the stink-eye" back in early December, ushering in weeks of unrelenting gloom.

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· After two high-rated (but Idol-boosted) episodes of The Moment of Truth, Fox picks up 13 more episodes of their lie-detecting semi-sensation. Evil mastermind Mike Darnell renews his promise to fix the show's pacing problems, and claims that even though these first two episodes have largely failed to shock, they've still been effective enough to induce a number of planned contestants to drop out. [THR]
· Sounding a characteristically gloomy note on the State of the Strike on Day 89, Var points out that even though the WGA and AMPTP have been engaged in informal talks, no date has been picked for the start of formal bargaining, say that "some" worry that the strike will drag on long enough for SAG to walk out in July and "stay out at least into the fall" with the scribes, and claim there's a "tacit deadline" to make some progress before CEOs storm out of negotiations again. Hear that, writers? Doomsday clocks are ticking everywhere, so better take whatever deal's on on the table, whether or not it's a good one! [Variety]

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Recognizing that striking writers could really use a positive story to lift their flagging spirits after enduring so many disheartening months of marching in circles and dodging the occasional vehicular manslaughter attempt by lead-footed studio employees, this week's LAT Scriptland column relates the inspiring tale of improbably named WGA member Billy Frolick, who, by accepting "a mysterious offer" to script a Ukranian animation project, suddenly found himself transported to a kind of Bizarro Hollywood where scribes were not only not regarded with typical scorn, but treated as royalty. We join our narrative in progress, as Frolick alights in Kiev to meet his new collaborators:

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