LOS ANGELES-February marks the end of the rainy season in
Los Angeles. The air is cool. The nights are chilly. A strange,
spirit-dampening meteorological phenomenon occurs out here that we on the East
Coast might call “weather”: There are entire days when the sky is filled with
rain clouds, when the glorious California sun doesn’t show itself.
This particular February, however, there is also a newfound
sense of unease in the air. A darkening, if you will, of the usual sunny SoCal
optimism. There are storm clouds on the horizon having more to do with economics
than weather: Although the rolling blackouts
and spiraling energy costs of San Francisco and Silicon Valley haven’t visited
L.A. yet (the city produces its own power and hasn’t deregulated), the
authorities forecast that the upcoming peak summer demand will push the local
power grid past its limits.
And then there is the threat of entertainment industry
strikes, with the Writers Guild’s contract expiring May 2 and the Screen Actors
Guild’s on June 30.
Wherever you go in this city, the specter of these labor
actions are Topic A. And not just at The Ivy. You hear the same questions at
Hertz, Kinko’s and the dry cleaners: What’s going to happen? Do you think
there’ll be a strike? Even the most optimistic agent I know-a woman who could
make a death sentence sound like a positive review-is feeling the malaise. “The
business has crawled to a halt,” she said. “Everyone is waiting for the other
shoe to drop.”
As a working screenwriter, I may not be the most objective
authority on all of this. But at the moment, the studios have rushed dozens of
movies into production, hoping to be finished before the Screen Actors Guild
deadline, when they would be forced to shut down in the event of a strike.
(I’ll let you guess the odds on any of these pictures receiving Oscar
nominations next year.)
And for the past month, the writers have been negotiating
with studios and networks-a.k.a. the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers. As a member of the Guild, I receive daily e-mail updates, but the
information is deliberately vague, detailing the subjects that were discussed
rather than whether any progress was made. We may be living in the Internet
era, but it hasn’t changed the theory that collective bargaining is best
conducted out of the spotlight. In either case, it’s a long, painful process.
Basically, the screenwriters want money and creative
respect. We want better payments on cable; we want better royalties on DVD’s,
video and overseas rebroadcasts; we want to rescind the lower pay scale
negotiated with the Fox network 12 years ago, when the then-new network claimed
it needed to cut costs to survive. And we want some kind of pay structure in
place for whatever the Internet brings. We made a mistake in the 80’s,
underestimating the potential revenues, profits and growth of cable and video.
This time, we’re determined not to let the profits from new media get away from
us.
From the management
point of view, there is, of course, no money. They claim that overseas
markets for American TV shows are drying up; that all of television-cable and
network-is reaching smaller audiences; and that most American films lose money.
Exactly how much of this is true is up for debate-and the point of the
negotiations. But in fact, advertising revenues are up at the networks, with advertisers
willing to pay more for specific, smaller but highly targeted audiences. New
cable channels are being founded daily, which one can only assume are not
charitable exercises. And, so far as feature-film profitability goes, there are
so many revenue streams at horizontally integrated media corporations-music,
cable, broadcast, merchandising, theme parks-that I defy anyone to figure out
whether or not a movie loses money.
(Of course, the gorilla in the corner of the feature-film
business that no one is going to discuss is the way $20 million star salaries
have thrown the economics of the entire industry out of whack. It’s affected
everything from $50,000 character actors demanding and getting $2 million to
the 22-year-old production assistant who sees the excess, says “screw it” and
begins sending Variety to her
boyfriend in Brussels every day via FedEx.)
For the writers, obviously the money is important, but the
more heartfelt issue-and the thing everyone is talking about-is creative
rights. It’s a demand for respect. We’re tired of being thought of as
disposable; we’re tired of being cut out of the movie-making process when the
filming begins, only to be rewritten on the set by actors, producers and
directors, resulting in films that all too often embarrass us. (And before you
ask, “So why put your name on the film?”, the answer lies in the fact that
residuals, royalties and production bonuses are tied to having your name on
it.) We’re not looking to direct. We’re not looking for control. We’re only looking
to play a greater role in the oft-cited “collaborative process,” which we
honestly believe will make for better, more coherent films.
The flash point for all of this has become the so-called
possessory credit-“A Martin Scorsese film,” for example-that appears before the
title in so many American films. When this first came into vogue, in the 60’s
and 70’s, studios promised that it would only be used in the most rarefied
cases where the director’s name helped sell the film. Hitchcock, for example. But
last year, it appeared on almost 70 percent of the movies released by
Hollywood.
Among the working screenwriters I’ve talked to, there’s a
grim sense of determination about this: a belief that it’s demeaning, it’s
wrong, it’s inaccurate. And the fight has put
us at odds with members of the Directors Guild, who insist it’s their divine
right and aren’t about to give it up.
This is something that I find myself surprisingly adamant
about. I can see the credit for Scorsese. Or Barry Levinson. Or Steven Spielberg,
Spike Lee, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers-even the Farrelly brothers. But not
for someone who’s little more than a director for hire.
Recently, a young unknown director-a friend who’s picture
I’d worked on gratis-decided to take the credit. I couldn’t resist needling him
about it:
“So I see you’re an auteur now.”
“Hey, I did more than just direct. I supervised everything.”
“Isn’t that the definition of the director’s job?”
“Yes, but it’s my film.”
“Oh. Pardon me. Did you write it?”
“No.”
“Did you create the story?”
“No.”
“Did you conceive of the characters?”
“No.”
“Did you edit it? Negotiate the talent contracts? Operate
the camera? Did you light it, score it, find the actors by yourself? Were you
sitting on the writer’s shoulder when she had the original idea?”
“No.”
“So, fool that I am, can you explain how it’s your film?”
“It’s my vision ,”
he said, laughing as he exaggerated the word, then adding, “You know what this
is about. It’s about power. And money. And more control on my next project… You
know, the one you’re not going to be writing.”
Having worked on enough movies-credited and not-I could
probably fill a book with tales of screenwriter woe. From the ridiculous (being
fired three times from the same picture; working with a star who never read the
script until the night before shooting, but held forth on the publicity junket
about how he worked to create his character) to the merely insulting. (On the
Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies , in
which I created a media-mogul villain, I was left out of the publicity when the
studio decided no one would be interested in anything I might have to say,
despite the fact that the screenwriter was the only one in the production who’d
ever been in proximity to a real, live media mogul.)
So will there be a strike? Is it possible to negotiate
respect?
At a recent dinner party in Los Angeles, a famous
screenwriter told me she thinks this is all Y2K:
The Movie -meaning it’s much ado about nothing. And a television writer
opined that a recession will scare the Writers and Screen Actors guilds
off-especially given the less-than-stellar gains in last year’s AFTRA strike.
At the same time, there’s a feeling that the studios
actually want the strike. Due to the force
majeure (read: act of God) clause in contracts, the studios can use the
strike to nullify lots of bad deals. It’s a terrific way of cutting overhead.
(Case in point: Last year, I was hired to write a film for a movie star with a
studio production deal. He couldn’t find the two hours to read it. Twelve
months, two bombs and who-knows-how-many millions in overhead later, the
studio’s itching for a way to get this person and the entourage off the lot.)
Among most of the writers I’ve spoken with, there’s a
feeling that the creative issues have become something of a now-or-never
proposition. It’s not, as the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky wrote, that “we’re
mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
But rather, a quiet, determined, resolute feeling that
enough is enough.
