(See WGA unofficial reaction below...) I'm told there's a secret meeting of some top screenwriters -- the really, really successful ones known as the A-listers -- coming up this weekend and their intention is to band together and make a powerful coalition that will force the WGA leadership to accept whatever deal the DGA makes with the AMPTP. Many of these big movie scribes are hyphenates who carry cards for both the writers guild and the directors guild. They're confident the DGA will make a deal that the two guilds can live with. (But even if it means they'd abandon a better streaming or electronic sell-through or even DVD residuals formula? Remains to be seen...) Besides the top screenwriters, some TV showrunners plan to join this coalition. They're all weighing their options about how to convey their unified message and best exert pressure for this strike to be settled. One of the steps might include their taking out a trade ad. I'll report more when I get additional news on this big development. Everything is very hush-hush. Stay tuned...
UPDATE: A member of the WGA board had this to say: "Anyone, A-list writers or not, who would posture in public, in advance of a DGA deal, as willing to take the DGA deal before they even make it... who as DGA members would compromise the DGA's leverage by announcing this before hand... has awarded themselves the Darwin Award for the world's weakest negotiators."
I’m all for the DGA being the heroes here (and the WGA negotiating team has said they are too), but don’t expect the WGA membership to just do whatever these “top” screenwriters say. These are the same guys who make a living rewriting their fellow screenwriters scripts just enough so they can win the arbitration process and have their name on the script and not the original writer (the original low-level writer.) If they can help, that’s wonderful. If they want the rest of the membership to take a bad deal so they can go back to making millions rewriting the rest of the membership, well, then not so much.
Comment by WGA Writer — January 2, 2008 @ 9:18 am
I hope this is just another planted story. But in the end, it’s no longer the big screenwriters who are making the big impact in this — it’s the showrunners and top TV writers. The studios can keep making movies for another year. It’s television where their feet will be to the flame.
Comment by Anonymous — January 2, 2008 @ 9:18 am
Ho Hum. And wow. So no matter what the DGA accepts or rolls over with in their negotations, the big boys are willing to take it? I don’t think so.
Comment by big boy — January 2, 2008 @ 9:19 am
Thanks for helping to keep it hush hush, Nikki.
Comment by Andy Reaser — January 2, 2008 @ 9:22 am
The reassuring structure of the business dictates that the directors are the mature fathers who will make sense of everything for the rest of us. Unfortunately, the DGA may not make a deal that the memberships of the WGA and SAG find acceptable. The really, really successful screenwriters do not make deals without understanding the details within.
Comment by Big Boy Now... — January 2, 2008 @ 9:25 am
That’s not actually called “settling.” That’s called selling your future in the name of all the bank you’re making now. Which, for some, is a large sum, sure. But that doesn’t make their actions any less shortsighted. Or, of course, greedy.
Comment by Harley — January 2, 2008 @ 9:30 am
One more thing. As we wait for ‘whatever deal the DGA makes’, it is probably worth repeating that this is a union that primarily serves the needs of UPMs and Assistant Directors. Not Directors. Their ability to cut quick, easy, and less than formidable deals in the past is not due to an excess of ’sagacity’ — a canard that poor Alec Baldwin has fallen for lately — but rather due the fact that the union’s interests have little to do with those of writers or actors. Or even, sad to say, directors.
Comment by Harley — January 2, 2008 @ 9:36 am
It’s pretty clear at this point it won’t take a coalition of big-shot writers to force the WGA to swallow what the DGA & AMPTP cook up for them. All it will take is the even the most tenuous grip on reality… Ok, maybe it will take the coalition.
Comment by tenpercenter — January 2, 2008 @ 9:37 am
I would look forward to hearing any such implied approach to the general membership. “We’ve made so much money we don’t need some piddly Internet residual. Heck, let the future writers shift for themselves.” I’ll believe it when I see it.
Comment by Lorelei — January 2, 2008 @ 9:39 am
“May the force be with them!”
Comment by Stuck in the Middle — January 2, 2008 @ 9:53 am
Oh really? What if the DGA deal includes the writers not getting any credit? No one has any idea what the DGA deal is going to be or IF it’s going to be at all. I’m suspicious of the source of this story and your source’s motives.
Comment by Anonymous — January 2, 2008 @ 10:04 am
Yikes. The world is about to go down in flames if this is true. I desperately, desperately want the strike to be over. But. . .that can’t work, can it? Well, I mean, it can, but things would totally fall in on themselves. That’s basically betrayal and I doubt it’ll be seen any other way. I. . .gah. I should hope it’s not true right now, just because any more raging anger right now, from myself or anyone, is going to make me literally put my head through a wall. And that is rude, horribly so. It is unfair. And yet, I hope there is some way to get the DGA a deal that the WGA will accept, and fast. I don’t see why their negotiations are seen as so bad. If they can end this thing, fan-freaking-tastic. If they can’t, the strike goes on just as it would have otherwise, as there will be no material to direct anyway.
Comment by Caitlin — January 2, 2008 @ 10:05 am
Take whatever the DGA agrees to? Sorry, no.
Take what the DGA agrees to if it’s a good deal? Of course.
Let’s eliminate the breathless melodrama and stick with the facts.
Comment by dodger — January 2, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Of course this is exactly what the AMPTP wants so the DGA and the writers trying to help out should take heed since I doubt the AMPTP has the best intentions in mind for any of the guilds. Most probably they are only going to settle once they’ve determined the major issues with all three guilds and then bottom feed to force a deal on the other two. Probably not the best strategy for the guilds to follow.
Comment by LPY — January 2, 2008 @ 10:15 am
The DGA is known for rolling over in negotiations. Not the best idea for the full WGA membership but great for A-Listers.
Comment by ReelBusy — January 2, 2008 @ 10:24 am
Let’s not get tricked into another round of raised expectations and dashed hopes. The strike will end on the day Brad and Rupert and Sumner and Petey and Barry and Les want it to end.
Comment by Archie Berman — January 2, 2008 @ 10:28 am
Good. I was getting afraid the Guild had been sleeping with the enemy so long they’ve lost the cajones to negotiate.
Hey, A listers… put down a new deal point on the side of the writers, will ya? I want to retain copyright. Yeah. You heard me. Just like playwrights and novelists and other authors everywhere. If I’ve got to put in an extra few weeks to novelize my scripts, fine. THIS is the real sell out for the writers, and it’s the weird bugaboo the business has to negotiate around with our deals all the time. It’s so clear. Authors (of all stripes) deserve their own copyrights.
Pull the plug on this basic (and forgotten) legality with the studios and we have the upper hand, as we should. (All script writers know that what we do is actually HARDER than prose because of that pesky three act structure, so it only seems fair. ) How come the studios get my copyright? We sold it out in the 1930’s? I don’t get it. Was this basic injustice done because screenwriting evolved from the silent era’s “scenarists”? Probably. Well, we aren’t just title writers anymore. It’s been 80 years since the first Talkies.
Studios need to rethink it all, or I’m thinking Supreme Court case. Truly. Screenwriters unite.
Comment by Coopered — January 2, 2008 @ 10:32 am
Why is it that the more successful a writer is, the less courageous he is?
Comment by Mike — January 2, 2008 @ 10:34 am
If this is true, is there any chance the rank and file will accept this given the rhetoric of the WLG so far?
Comment by rjjrojhn — January 2, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Does it seem a little obvious that the writers who get the highest upfront fees, and have the most power to negotiate things on their own would care the least about the minimums?
Is it me, or does this seem like an utterly selfish move by the richest among the WGA?
What am I missing?
Comment by Jimmy — January 2, 2008 @ 10:39 am
That’s disgraceful.
Comment by Blarneyman — January 2, 2008 @ 10:51 am
I don’t think it’s really great to publish this story mid-strike. It would be better to hold it for an after-the-strike story - the behind-the-scenes tale of how the strike was settled.
And I think it would be really bad for any coalition of writers to take out a trade ad or otherwise publicly humiliate the WGA leadership. It would be damaging to the Guild itself, not just to its reputation, to have such a split broadcast to the world.
As many have said about the 1988 strike, such a move might actually prolong the strike by emboldening the AMPTP to exploit the split. Since the WGA operates by democratic rules, there’s still a requirement to win support of a majority of the members to any settlement, and not just a preponderance of earning power.
Comment by Stuart Creque — January 2, 2008 @ 10:57 am
Interesting. I’m not sure if there’s really a split, but I do know many regularly working writers who are starting to get a little fed up with the “we’re winning” types who act like they wouldn’t mind this strike going on forever because they rarely if ever work to begin with (see Writer Action).
Comment by Chris — January 2, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Then it’s a good thing the guild represents more than just a selfish few of us.
Comment by B-Lister — January 2, 2008 @ 11:05 am
It’s great you can get all this inside skinny Nikki, but do you ever worry that by reporting stuff that’s hush hush, days in advance, will scuttle the meeting/discussion? I’m not meaning that in a rude way, I’m just asking.
This strike is killing me.
Comment by Chris — January 2, 2008 @ 11:06 am
I don’t know about this….it’s a long time between now and the weekend, and this could fall apart extremely quickly. And I wonder if they should wait and see if there can be some headway made with the late night shows- a few weeks of Letterman/Ferguson trouncing Leno/O’brien could cause NBC to rethink this…
Comment by DW — January 2, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Well, it’s not that hush-hush if you’re outing it here now, is it? Maybe this situation would be better served if every little detail wasn’t leaked on this site. If the producers know everything WGA is planning, that kinda reduces the writers’ advantage, doesn’t it? Or is it more important that this site get credit for breaking every piece of news? I don’t have the answer, but I’m posing the questions.
Comment by Billy Bob — January 2, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Patric and David can keep repeating it until they actually start to believe it, but at this point — and we can second-guess how we got here until the cows come home — the unavoidable truth is that whatever deal the DGA strikes will serve as the template for SAG and the WGA.
We will not, therefore, be “abandoning” a better sell-through or streaming formula by tying ourselves to the directors. The moment we let the DGA get to the table before we could get back to it was the moment, for better or worse, that we signed on to whatever deal Ken Ziffren can make. Listen up, folks: THE DEAL IS THE DEAL IS THE DEAL.
Now it’s just a question of do we take that deal in February or in June. I, and thankfully more and more writers I know, vote for February. Accordingly, I wish the A-listers the best of luck.
Comment by Common Sense — January 2, 2008 @ 11:21 am
It seems to me that many of the big-name screenwriters and TV showrunners labor under the impression that they are “partners” with the studios, that they are not only valued as creators and skilled workers, but as people. They have “relationships”, they insist, and they “know” the people in charge. I’ve had a few films produced (but am by no means an A-lister), and I know the drill well enough by now: There’s wining (and whining) and dining and a lot of glad-handing, and everyone walks away feeling quite good about themselves and the Hollywood ladder they’ve managed to scale.
Unfortunately, while the current A-listers may have had dinner at Alan Horn’s house and played racquetball with Jeff Zucker (yeah, I’d pay money to see that, too), they mean absolutely nothing to the multinational corporations who, at the end of the day, are truly running the show and these negotiations. Look no further than Philippe Dauman’s reference to Spielberg as immaterial to Viacom’s bottom line — an accurate one, at that — to realize that Hollywood isn’t the town it was 30, 20, even 10 years ago.
There are no real relationships that matter in a labor dispute. There is simply money, and the anticipation of more or less of it in the future.
Now, if the DGA actually gets a workable deal, then of course we’d be foolish not to take it. We all want to go back to work, that’s for damned sure. But to try and force the WGA’s hand, to blanket-accept whatever deal the DGA makes just to take a deal, is shortsighted at best and disastrous at worst.
Comment by Eric — January 2, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
The A-Listers’ premature declaration of surrender will only undercut the DGA’s ability to negotiate from full strength. They should cancel their meeting and merely work by phone, behind the scenes, to insist that the WGA membership have a chance to vote to accept/reject the DGA deal, if/when there is one. Only when we get to that point should the A-Listers can feel free to lobby/threaten for ratification.
Comment by B-List — January 2, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Bottom line here is… the “television” writers have f*cked us. Perhaps, if they would have created a TV season worth “saving” we might not be in this predicament. Look no further than the embarrassing “Viva Laughlin”, “Moonlight”, and “The Bionic Woman”. I can’t think of anything of quality, outside of the SUPERB (and vastly superior) shows on pay cable like “Dexter”, “Entourage”, and “Californication”.
Maybe the DGA and Ken Ziffren can still save us. Ziffren isn’t a “srike happy commie” and a leader in his field and this industry. The feature film industry is “booming”… so why should we be at the mercy of a union that seems only to be interested in the welfare of bad TV writers? Let THEM starve… they deserve it. We don’t.
Comment by Feature Film Writer — January 2, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Wow! What a bad idea! Let’s undermine all our “bad cop” leverage right before the “good cop” enters the interrogation room. Thanks for throwing away two months of hard work by your guild, a-list-holes.
Comment by Concerned Party — January 2, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Grabbing all the rewrite work before the strike wasn’t enough for these jackasses.
But I still feel a little stupid reading this. I thought that the showrunners would play the role of Brutus. I haven’t been giving them enough credit.
I like the idea of a trade ad. My AMPTP unity ad on the dartboard is ripped to hell and more scotch tape than paper at this point.
I will be looking carefully at the A-list gods’ ad containing their commandments to see if it lists undersigned names that have the irony of also being on the WGA’s “Not a Word” ad.
2008. The new 1988.
Comment by The Only Surprise was Who - Not If — January 2, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
As a young writer with several projects in development (both in features and TV), I am strongly in favor of this. But I imagine it will take a heck of a lot of pressure on our union leadership if they’re going to agree to let another guild do the negotiating for them, which is essentially what accepting the DGA deal would amount to.
Comment by Comedy writer — January 2, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
So…a group of rich guys who have no real stake in guild minimums (since as A-listers they can get much higher terms), are going to try to force a potentially bad deal for all the regular working writers? How is this different from the self-serving (and short-sighted) showrunners that split in ‘88 forcing the WGA to cave?
Comment by A viewer — January 2, 2008 @ 12:52 pm
The top tier of writers can force a “position” on the body of the WGA, but these writers do not have control of the ratification process. If the interests of the very few do not represent the whole, then the “position” of these top writers will be voted down by the body of the Guild. That’s democracy.
Comment by Frustrated Bystander — January 2, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
So in other words PENCILS DOWN now means WE’RE READY TO GO BACK TO WORK! proving this strike was poorly timed from the start. Verrone and Young need to be impeached for their lousy strategy. They got everyone ginned up and they completely underestimated how happy the moguls were to have this strike. Alec Baldwin has a post today on HuffingtonPost where he writes how happy the networks and studios are with this strike.
WGA needs to fold temporarily don’t take any bad deal and everyone should go back to work for six months then strike again on July 1st in tandem with SAG. That is when real gains will be won. To continue picketing now is a waste of time and money. There will be mass groups going fi-core by the end of January. Nobody will want to continue picketing when they can start making money again for the next six months.
A double guiild strike actors and writers in July will bring massive increases in residuals everything will be back on the table and AMPTP will have to accept all of it for both guilds. Let the DGA do their deal now. WGA should return to work sharpen those pencils as the A-listers are now doing and in September real money will be given to us by those same moguls who are enjoying our suffering now.
Comment by Anonymous — January 2, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
Does the WGA have an equivalent to the Logan Act?
Comment by Ted Striker — January 2, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
Regarding the WGA Board member’s comment, it would seem this award for world’s weakest (and most misguided and just generally ineffectual) negotiators might seem to more accurately be bestowed on our leadership, given the present situation: a strike entering its third month, with no negotiations imminent, utterly sidelined and rendered essentially irrelevant as another guild takes up the producers’ time and attention.
Comment by disgruntled — January 2, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
Good!!! I’m glad someone told these Bennett Arnolds that facts of life. Stop running your mouths off and get with the program.
No one knows what the DGA deal will be, they might not even get a deal, yet…since Big Media wants to break the unions.
It’s called a strike and the DGA deal has better be something all the unions can live with, not just DGA or when SAG goes out, you’ll still not have anything to celebrate.
Comment by boo — January 2, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
Let’s just replace “really, really successful ones” with “really, really rich ones” that don’t in any way need a deal for new media, and apparently have no interest in seeing the majority of their fellow writers that do need that money get a fair deal just so the multimillionaires can go back to making even more millions.
Frankly, I’d take the AMPTP guys to dinner before I’d so much as shake hands with these selfish hacks…
..if it’s even true. We’ve seen completely unsubstantiated rumors on this website before that have been proven alarmingly wrong before — without a retraction or even a mea culpa. Remember how there was a “done deal, basically” just a day or two into the November talks?
Overselling a small unhappy faction that probably voted against the strike anyway, Nikki, is no better than the crap Variety writes.
Comment by Paul William Tenny — January 2, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
No ad hoc group of would be oligarchs is going to “make” the rank and file (which includes this writer) to do anything or accept anything we don’t like. The last time I looked, the WGA still worked on a one member, one vote basis. Inflated salaries and inflated egos get them no extra say in the final outcome. Any agreement WILL be voted on by the general membership: you know, those people who may actually need residuals in the future.
And the “Darwin Award” remark is dead on. These people have the business acumen of fresh-water mollusks.
Note to Nikki: there are hundreds of successful writers out on the picket lines who support our Negotiating Committee. Get out there and FIND some of them! Oh, right…that’s “dog bites man.” Not interesting. “Writer bites Guild” now THAT’s news!
Comment by scribeguy — January 2, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
This was kinda bound to happen. At the end of the day, the talking points of the strike largely benefit the writer who has only sold one or two teleplays or screenplays in 10 years who will continue being paid for their work on ‘new media’ platforms. It’s not REALLY for the writer who’s been writing 10 episodes of ‘Law & Order’ every year for the last 15 years as he isn’t exactly hurting for cash, it’s more of an added bonus.
It is a bit surprising to hear them take a ‘take whatever is thrown at us’ position as you normally get way less than what they were willing to give. It’s all a shame. Internet residuals should be paid, but it just seems like the enmity on both sides was allowed to boil for FAR too long resulting in the current cluster ‘F’
Comment by MTvA — January 2, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
Coopered: you don’t get to retain copyright, just like journalists or technical writers or software developers or any other employee. Because that’s what you are - employees. (Playwrights and novelists and the other types of writers you’re thinking of aren’t employees, so they get to keep their copyright.)
If you weren’t employees, the WGA and the MBA would be illegal anti-competitive practices on a massive scale. (Oh, and you wouldn’t get health care either, unless you paid for it yourself. As for your industry-wide minimum pay scales, well there’s a word for that - “collusion”.)
Also, you should be lucky your job isn’t like software development - if it were, any clever new plot idea you came up with would be promptly patented by your employee and you’d never get to use the same idea elsewhere again without paying them money. Thankfully, plot elements aren’t patentable yet, though the same thing was once true about software, and mathematics.
Comment by Aidan Thornton — January 3, 2008 @ 6:28 am
The only thing this will accomplish is making the rank and file hate the A-list writers…and probably make it LESS likely that the DGA deal will be approved by the WGA. Every hot headed outsider crowing about impeaching Verrone or a “split” between the membership must have missed the part where the vast majority of the membership voted the last two elections not only for Verrone but for every single candidate he supported. They also voted 90% for this strike. And not many of us thought it would be a short one.
Comment by Yet Another WGA Writer — January 3, 2008 @ 7:27 am
Actually, MTvA, the talking points of the Strike to benefit the working writers. Since it’s all about the Internet and residuals. As a working television write,r who has been on staff for eight years running, I can tell you that those green envelopes with residual checks make a huge difference, especially when you’re on a show that gets cancelled and you’re not getting any other paycheck for six or seven months.
Make no mistake about it: in the past, the WGA has sometimes been pushed by the non-working membership. That’s not the case this year. Just look at our Negotiating Committee. A-list showrunners like Neil Baer, Carlton Cuse, Carol Mendelson. A-list feature writers like Stephen Gaghan (Oscar winner), Marc Norman (Oscar winner), Bill Condon (Oscar winner), and so on.
The Guild board and the Negotiating Committee are made up of some of the most prominent working writers in the Guild today. Any attempt to somehow paint them as non-working writers is easily proved wrong by a glance at their names. At that big meeting at the Convention Center, the Thursday before the strike began, I remember sitting looking up there thinking, well, all right, these are some heavy hitters. And so they are.
Comment by Anonymous — January 3, 2008 @ 8:37 am
I’m sorry, I’m having real trouble buying the anti-TV writer and anti-guild leadership statements of Feature Film Writer and others. So, now that we’ve held strong for over 2 solid months and gotten our message on the airwaves like never before via the Letterman deal, a small majority wants to create a feature/TV divide? Please. Witness the AMPTP, people. This is a bread and butter play in their playbook. And if there really are A-list feature writers trying to preemptively force the DGA deal on the guild, it’s a misguided handful and not worth letting chip at our resolve, or break the strong TV/Feature unity that has kept us so united throughout this ordeal. Call me paranoid, but these posts are getting overrun by shills.
Comment by Skull Leader — January 3, 2008 @ 8:54 am
These posts starkly reveal the unfortunately fundamental split in this membership: between working and non-working writers. It’s self-evidently regularly working writers who are bearing the economic burden of this strike and whose withholding of their labor is the mechanism by which its effectiveness, if any, is felt. That many of these people are starting to feel restlessness and exasperation as the strike drags on, with negotiations presently dead in the water, is to be expected. This isn’t a crusade, it’s a labor dispute. About money. When the amount stood to be gained pales beside the amount being sacrificed, a situation that every working writer faced right from the outset — and a gulf that only widens with every passing week — you’re going to get people evaluating their personal economic stake. This is called common sense. It’d be swell if we got what we were asking for on the internet. Is it worth giving up six months’ income for? No. Not close. Sorry.
Comment by working writer — January 3, 2008 @ 9:51 am
I’m with Coopered. Let us writers cut to the chase and insist on keeping our own copyright, as is our right under the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8. Then the studios can come beg us, money in hand, if they wish to use our works on the internet, or whatever new medium comes along.
Wonder if this system would work out well for the writers? Ask J.K. Rowling.
It would also solve once and for all with the directors the question of whose film it is.
Writers need to wake up to their own power.
Comment by -Writer-Creator — January 3, 2008 @ 9:53 am
I am not in the industry but what I want to know is this:
Do you think that those in the DGA who paid $1-2 million dollars for a 12-18 month long study on where the money is going to be in the future (specifically online) and how much is in each niche are going to say to the AMPTP: “We’re grateful for anything you can spare us kind sirs and will sign any old thing you put in front of us?”
No one can willingly or forcefully suspend that much disbelief ladies and gentlemen.
So I wouldn’t count out the DGA just yet (even though some of the are UPMs and ADs who I’m sure didn’t put up much of the money for the study and the report but are happy to go along for the ride). So that’s strike one against the DGA and by extension the WGA getting a bad deal.
Beyond that the points made above about the WGA being a ‘one person one vote’ organization plus the substantial amount of time and investment the rank and file writers have put into the strike says to me that if they think the DGA deal smells, a tiny *minority* coterie of the well heeled A-listers will not be able to ram the deal down the throats of the rank and file guild membership.
If you throw in the support of the 100,000+ members of SAG and the number of times the TV showrunners have shown off their cojones then you of course should be calling BS on this story…
…unless of course Nikki printed it just to rile you up and keep you fighting for your rights in which case it seems to be working and Nikki is to be commended for rallying your rededication to your cause.
Comment by VDOVault — January 3, 2008 @ 12:06 pm