Credits: April 2005 Archives

Want to anger screenwriters? Show them the summer movie preview in the recent issue of Premiere Magazine. They tell you that Tim Burton directed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but they don’t mention that John August wrote it.

Here’s the usual explanation for this all-too-typical omission.

“No one respects screenwriters.”

Baloney. If you were to ask the editors of Premiere or Newsweek or the L.A. Times or Film Threat, I’m pretty certain they’d all express an honest respect for screenwriters…particularly those of John’s caliber.

No, if you want the real answer, take a look at the entry for the upcoming skateboard movie Lords of Dogtown. The WGA credit for that film is “Written by Stacy Peralta”, but Premiere candidly points out that director Catherine Hardwicke did a rewrite.

How much of a rewrite? A little? A lot? Who knows? Not the media. Not the readers.

The real reason that publications typically avoid giving screenwriters their due is because they do not trust our credits.

I was speaking the other day with one of our union’s most prominent writers (and he’s a famous director to boot). He’s a true-blue union man, and he believes in the WGA and the promotion of writers. A few years ago, he took on an initiative to try and get writers better publicity in the media. What he heard time and time again was, “Gee, we’d love to, but we’re not in the business of printing lies that come back to bite us in the ass.”

You might scoff at the notion that entertainment reporters have any concerns with credibility or journalistic standards, and if you’re talking about The Star, you’re right. What about Premiere, though, which hires and features “real” journalists like Peter Biskind? Or Time and Newsweek? Or The New Yorker? Or even the much-maligned New York Times?

These magazines and papers don’t like the idea of printing someone else’s version of the truth. If the government says that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the media’s job is to question that rather than accept it (you may argue that they failed in that task, but that’s another debate).

The reason periodicals promote the director is because they know that person is the director.

They do not know who really wrote the movie. They read the same stories we do. The Mike Rich “Miracle” debacle. Julia Roberts thanking Richard LaGravenese at the Oscars.

Some writers insist that the solution is “one writer per movie”. My belief is that this is an impossible pipe dream, and I’ll write about why another day. Let’s stipulate for now that this isn’t likely any time soon.

So what then?

Maybe the answer is end credits. Maybe the answer is a more inclusive series of credits guidelines.

One thing’s for sure. Our credit system isn’t passing the sniff test with the rest of the world, and the victims aren’t just the writers who really have written the movie.

We’re all suffering. Stop complaining about the anonymity, folks. It’s our own fault.

We have a number of credits guidelines that I consider “bad”, but one stands out as truly awful. Why? Because I don’t think it’s good for anyone.

There’s basically two philosophical credits camps among WGA writers. One camp believes that the first writer (particularly in the case of original or spec material) must be more protected than they are. The other camp believes that these kinds of preferences are irrelevant, and the rules ought to be the same no matter what the hiring chronology is.

Our current rules state that if you write an original screenplay, anyone who comes along and rewrites you must ultimately show that they contributed at least half of the final shooting script in order to even receive shared credit. Any amount less than half and you get zippo. The rule states:

In the case of an original screenplay, any subsequent writer or writing team must contribute 50% to the final screenplay [in order to receive screenplay credit].

For everyone else…meaning the first writer of an original or any writer involved in an adaptation…the threshold for screenplay credit is 33%.

This means you could contribute the same amount of material for two different movies, but only receive screenplay credit for one of them. Personally, I think that’s nuts, but that’s not the worst rule we have.

Here’s another rule. If you’re a “production executive”, which basically means director or any kind of producer, and you do some rewriting, you always have to show a 50% contribution (even in the case of adaptations). Why? Well, producers and directors have influence over the hiring and firing of writers, and so some argue they ought to be held to a higher standard. I think that’s also ridiculous (given that a contribution is a contribution no matter who makes it or for what reason), but hey, it’s still not the worst rule we have.

Remember how if you write an original screenplay, subsequent writers must show a contribution of at least 50% to share credit? Well…what if you write an original and you’re a producer on it? Here’s the rule:

In cases where the Arbitration Committee finds that the production executive has made a sufficient contribution to the final script to warrant screenplay credit, any other writer or writers employed may, at the discretion of the Committee, share screenplay credit for any substantial contribution without necessarily meeting the usually required percentage.

What that means is that if you sell a spec and are a producer on your spec, you get penalized. The subsequent writers no longer have to meet a 50% threshold. They don’t even have to meet a 33% threshold. They can pretty much get credit for “any substantial contribution”.

This is the worst credit rule we have.

Why? Well, if we believe in protecting the first writer, why are we punishing them for being entrepreneurial? The entire point of protecting the first writer is to discourage rewriting, reward the origination of the material and hopefully…in the end…enhance the prestige of the screenwriter.

Personally, I don’t think social engineering our credits guidelines will ever do that, but hey, if you believe in that sort of thing, then why the hell would you punish the first writer for getting more control over his or her project by serving as a producer???

Now, if you don’t believe in protecting the first writer at the expense of other writers but you also don’t think writers should ever be penalized for being producers, this is one limited way you can at least achieve some small progress. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of the 50% protection for first writers, so hey…here’s a chance to at least preserve the ability to safely produce movies for some writers.

If you have to show a 50% contribution to get screenplay credit as a subsequent writer on an original screenplay, then that’s that. It shouldn’t matter if the first writer is a producer or not.

What do you think?