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(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.”
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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.
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.
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.
Thanks for helping to keep it hush hush, Nikki.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“May the force be with them!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
The DGA is known for rolling over in negotiations. Not the best idea for the full WGA membership but great for A-Listers.
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.
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.
Why is it that the more successful a writer is, the less courageous he is?
If this is true, is there any chance the rank and file will accept this given the rhetoric of the WLG so far?
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?
That’s disgraceful.
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.
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).
Then it’s a good thing the guild represents more than just a selfish few of us.
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.