Legal Clash Over ‘Samurai’ Credit

A simmering dispute over writing credits for Warner Bros.’ Tom Cruise epic “The Last Samurai” erupted Monday into a larger legal assault on the secretive way the Writers Guild of America settles disputes over whose name goes on Hollywood films and TV shows.

In a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, screenwriter Michael Alan Eddy alleges that arbitrators with the guild’s Western faction spurned his efforts to secure proper credit and payment for originating the film’s screenplay 12 years ago. The suit also names as defendants distributor Warner Bros. and producer Radar Pictures, as well as writer-director Ed Zwick and his production partner Marshall Herskovitz.

Eddy’s lawsuit also accuses the guild of defying an earlier appeals court ruling that declared parts of the high-stakes credits determination system a violation of due process.

A guild spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Radar and Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc.

In an interview, Zwick said he had never read a script by Eddy and didn’t believe he had even met the writer. He said he did read what apparently was a rewritten version of Eddy’s screenplay, but decided to toss it out and start over using new material.

“I chose to abandon that script,” Zwick said.

In any event, Zwick said, Eddy’s beef should be with the guild -- not with him or with Warner Bros. “I do not in any way determine credits, and neither does the studio. It’s entirely the purview of the guild.”

Clashes over credits have become a growing sore point in an industry where studios are relying more and more on multiple writers to create big-budget films. These disputes often pit lower-paid writers who frequently originate projects against richly compensated A-list writers who revamp the scripts to bring them to the screen.

Significant sums are at stake. Studio contracts often tie bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the credit on a film. Moreover, a screen credit can boost a writer’s reputation, making it easier to land lucrative assignments in an industry where writers far outnumber projects.

In guild arbitrations, the original writers enjoy a deliberate advantage in the assignment of credits, and later writers -- particularly those who also function as producers or directors -- must make deep changes in a script to have their names attached.

The suit maintains, however, that the guild favored Zwick and Herskovitz, who rose to prominence in the 1980s as the writer-producers behind the hit TV series “thirtysomething,” by blocking Eddy from even entering arbitration proceedings. “ ‘The little guy’ writer is no longer protected by the WGA,” the suit contends, “but must instead protect himself or herself from the WGA.”

“The Last Samurai” has taken in more than $90 million at the U.S. box office since its release last month. The film, widely considered to be a contender in the year’s Oscar race, tells the story of a burnt-out American Civil War veteran who becomes enmeshed in a Japanese samurai uprising. Cruise won a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a drama, with Ken Watanabe receiving a supporting actor nomination.

Before the credits dispute erupted last year, Radar executive Scott Kroopf declared that the project had originated about 10 years ago at Interscope Communications, a predecessor company. In an interview with The Times, he then called the original script a “fish out of water” story that mixed elements of American’s Old West with the Japanese warrior culture.

Extensive documentation filed with Monday’s complaint shows that Interscope paid Eddy as the original writer of a script called “Eastern Western.” Eventually, according to the complaint and accompanying documents, Interscope hired a second writer, Garner Simmons, who rewrote the script, by then retitled “West of the Rising Sun.” After that, the script fell to a third writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan.

In the mid-1990s, the complaint says, director Vincent Ward became involved with the project. Ward, according to the complaint, then gave a draft of the “Rising Sun” script to Zwick, who directed the Civil War drama “Glory.” Zwick said that first version he read involved a Westerner leading a cattle drive across Japan, rather than the solider eventually played by Cruise.

Ultimately, Zwick joined Herskovitz and “Gladiator” writer John Logan in writing the “Last Samurai” script for Warner Bros. and what had by then become Radar. Warner submitted to the guild a tentative list of credits that failed to include Eddy’s name (or, for that matter, Simmons’ or Schenkkan’s).

Ward was credited as an executive producer of the film, while Kroopf and other Radar executives shared various producer credits. Logan was given story credit for the film in a guild arbitration, while he, Zwick and Herskovitz shared the screen credit.

Monday’s suit says Eddy -- who would have been guaranteed at least shared story credit if he had been included in the arbitration as a “participating writer” -- was shut out by an impromptu process under which guild staff members had three “expert readers” decide whether his project and Zwick’s were sufficiently alike to merit arbitration.

Two readers, according to the suit, found that the projects were not related in creative terms; one concluded that they appeared to be.

Guild arbitrations are typically conducted in secret. Writers aren’t told the names of those conducting the proceedings, nor are arbitrators given the names of participating writers -- though on high-profile projects their identities are often widely known around Hollywood.

The guild typically declines to discuss even the number of such proceedings, though a New Yorker magazine story published in December said 67 feature films had been the subject of arbitrations in 2002.

The New Yorker piece chronicled a number of credits disputes, including a tense arbitration over Universal’s “The Hulk.” In that case, James Schamus, a longtime associate of director Ang Lee, contended that he was responsible for everything in the final script that wasn’t drawn from the movie’s Marvel Comics source. But he wound up sharing credit with John Turman and Michael France, who had written earlier drafts that Schamus claimed not to have used.

Although court disputes over writer pay and credits aren’t uncommon, the guild’s quasi-judicial process has generally withstood legal challenge.

In 2002, however, a pre-arbitration procedure became the center of an ongoing legal fight over the assignment of television credits. In that case, Jacobs vs. CBS Productions Inc., the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the guild’s setup for deciding who gets to an arbitration was “insufficiently formal and provided too few procedural safeguards.”

Attorney Neville Johnson, whose Johnson & Rishwain firm represents Eddy and plaintiffs in the CBS dispute, said the earlier case was set for trial this year.

Monday’s complaint asks for an injunction blocking further distribution of “The Last Samurai” until Eddy is given at least a “story by” credit. It also seeks punitive damages and demands that the Writers Guild be blocked from “making up rules on an ad hoc basis without permission of the membership.”