Dear Member,
On Thursday, March 1, the Writers Guild of America and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke off their contract negotiations. I’m sure you share my disappointment at this unfortunate development, and join me in hoping that both parties will soon return to the bargaining table.
As you know, in addition to their economic agenda, the WGA has made demands concerning writer participation and credit issues. These demands have served to unnecessarily divide our two guilds at this difficult time.
The DGA’s leadership, along with our Creative Rights Committee and 150 of our Director members, have worked for nearly one year to produce a thoughtful set of recommendations in the areas raised by the WGA, but which unlike the WGA proposals would help rather than injure us and the filmmaking process. Although the DGA does not have a seat at the bargaining table, we drafted a set of proposals—including possessory credit proposals—and gave them to the AMPTP at its request.
Both the AMPTP and the WGA emphasized last week that their talks broke off over economic issues, not the writer participation and credit issues. The studios stated publicly that the DGA’s contributions served to help make progress on these issues.
Unfortunately, after noting that progress had been made in the “creative rights” area, the WGA chose to list their demands in detail, including their possessory credit proposals. We were pleased to see that many of the writer participation issues where progress was noted came from the hard work of the DGA leadership team. Our proposals were based on the concept of “preferred practices” suggesting how the writer-director relationship ought to work, rather than contractual provisions attempting to mandate the relationship. We also included preferred practices addressing issues as to how television writers (including writer-producers) ought to work with directors. While the WGA may have adopted our approach to many of these issues, it is clear that the WGA and the DGA remain far apart on the possessory credit issue.
The WGA’s Possessory Credit Proposal
The WGA’s current proposal as spelled out in a statement released to the media Thursday, March 1, calls for:
- “grandfathering” the possessory credit; that is, all directors who have already received this credit may continue to do so;
- placing a cap on the possessory credit, limiting it to no more that 10% of WGA-covered films, in addition to those covered by the grandfather clause;
- allowing directors of another 10% of WGA-covered films each year to receive a new credit in the form of “A Film Directed by” without triggering a WGA compensatory credit;
- making it the responsibility of the DGA to establish the standards to meet the WGA’s proposed 20% goal.
The idea that the possessory credit should be subject to arbitrary percentages and not freely negotiable is unacceptable to us. In addition, everyone involved in the negotiations knows full well that the WGA’s “grandfathering” idea is an old one. In fact, the WGA tried to put a similar clause limiting the possessory credit with a “grandfathering” provision in its contract over 30 years ago but it was resoundingly rejected by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Frank Capra, Robert Wise and Fred Zinnemann, among others. The reason to reject this notion remains the same today: we are not going to sell out the future for the past.
Frankly, the WGA’s attempt to control the possessory credit has always seemed to us to be hypocritical. Simply look at the fact that the WGA contract mandates that only writers can receive the “Created by” credit in series television, along with the WGA’s acceptance of the proliferation of undeserved producer credits taken by series writers. Or consider that the WGA’s contractual control of writing credits has already led to unfair rules that set tougher standards for a director or producer of a feature film to earn a screenplay credit than for someone who is just a writer.
The WGA possessory credit proposals are unacceptable, and we have made our feelings known in these negotiations. In fact, the Directors Guild will not accept any provision in the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement that affects what credit a director may take.
However, we know from our meetings with our feature film directors that most do feel that current industry practices have served to lessen the significance of the possessory credit by awarding it to directors without discrimination or determination of merit. The proposals we have developed, if followed by the studios, would make the possessory credit more meaningful and restore its value to those who have earned it. Moreover, they would preserve the important principle that the WGA should not control a credit, which in the free market has largely been awarded to directors.
The Directors Guild has found a way to promote a settlement in the WGA negotiations, to improve the prospects of avoiding a strike while protecting directors’ interests. The DGA will continue to do whatever we can to help advance constructive dialogue on these issues. We remain hopeful that the WGA and AMPTP will renew their negotiations soon, that a fair economic deal is negotiated, and that all these issues will be resolved in time to keep our industry working.
Best regards,
JACK SHEA
President
