A NEW GAME PLAN FOR MOVIES

The idea came to me in the midst of Tuesday’s 15-minute strike by the Directors Guild of America. What the film industry should do to overcome its labor problems is dump its contracts, every cubic ton of them, and adopt the structure of major league baseball.

Think about it. The two pastimes have more in common than the Doublemint twins.

Both are obsessed with home runs. Both rake in billions of dollars a year by anesthetizing the masses. Both are living on their past glories. And between them, they contribute more inconsequential detail for Trivial Pursuit players than dreaded geography, history, science and nature combined.

Imagine being asked five years from now to name a Judd Nelson movie, or the third-base coach for the Angels, and you’ll know what I mean.

What I am suggesting is simple. The studios--the majors, the minors, the major independents--should form a league and choose sides. Directors, actors, writers, cinematographers, ego massagers--the names of everyone with an employable skill would go into a talent pool and the owners, by turn, would draft them.

The once-proud MGM Lions, choosing first because they need help most, would probably take producer/director (player/manager) Steven Spielberg and immediately offer him a signing bonus worth 70% of the company’s annual grosses, plus an adobe spread wherever he wants it.

The DEG Dinos, De Laurentiis’ expansion team desperate for a home-run hitter, would use its No. 2 draft pick to take Eddie Murphy, while the Paramount Oilers would be flipping a coin to decide which of “Top Gun” producers, Don Simpson or Jerry Bruckheimer, is the better hitter. Other players certain to go in the first round would include producers/directors Sydney Pollack and John Hughes, actors Tom Cruise, Bette Midler and Paul Hogan, writer Robert Towne and agent Michael Ovitz.

In the most surprising first-round move, Columbia Classic would take Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Cannon, going for credibility, would draft Siskel and Ebert and grab headlines by signing them on the back of a ticket stub.

The owners would negotiate individual multiyear contracts and own the players like cash cows for up to five years. At that point, players unhappy with their salaries or playing conditions could declare themselves free agents and find out what they’re worth on the open market.

If the player and the studio were unable to agree on contract renewal terms, they would go before an independent arbitrator (I volunteer to serve) whose judgment would be final. (“I’m sorry, Mr. Beatty, based on your last movie, management’s offer of $100 a week seems generous.”)

What’s right with this system for the studios?

It would take away the power of the agencies, which have done more to run up film costs and run down film quality than Sylvester Stallone combined.

It would assure studios of a steady supply of in-house scripts and a ready skill pool from which to draw compatible production teams to make them.

It would give them a chance to recruit and develop young talent under the supervision of their own people--actors training actors, production designers training production designers, directors training directors. (Imagine how good Alfred Hitchcock impressionist Brian De Palma would have been if he’d actually studied under the master.)

What’s right for the players?

It would provide nearly full employment, and careers wouldn’t necessarily end after one bad season. Even the Huycks behind “Howard the Duck” would get another chance.

It would give them specific targets for their grief. They could blame insensitive studio moguls instead of flailing away at “the idiots in this town who don’t read anymore.”

They would have wage-earner benefits--health and life insurance, a pension fund. This won’t mean much to Spielberg, but it ought to be a comfort to Rob Lowe and Justin Henry.

What’s right for moviegoers?

It gets rid of the boredom and confusion of the various guild/management negotiations. We won’t have to feel guilty for not understanding the importance of ancillary markets--cable this, pay-cable that, pay-per-view-per-video-per-etc. And no more grousing about residuals! Why, we ask, should people be paid in 1996 for home runs hit in 1982, unless they are asked to refund money for their strikeouts in between?

It would put an individual stamp on each studio’s product. When the Disney Characters por the 20th Century Foxes release films, we would have an idea what we would see. Movies about dwarfs and nerds.

Hollywood would be in the business of making movies instead of making deals. Key production jobs would no longer be filled by lawyers and ex-agents skilled in the art of negotiation, but by creative people skilled in the art of cinema. The movies would almost certainly be better.

There are many other reasons why management and the guilds should convene a constitutional convention and adopt these radical measures. But as reasonable as this proposal is, neither management nor the unions will ever consider it.

The people running the studios with law books would make themselves obsolete and the talent wouldn’t risk cutting themselves out of profits that their next movie may show in the 21st Century. Their agents wouldn’t let them if they wanted to.

The most preposterous thing about it is this: It has already been tried once, and it worked.

MOTION PICTURE LEAGUE STANDINGS

If the film business were run like baseball, here’s how a future standing might look.

Team Hits Flops Grosses MBL (in millions) (money behind leader) Columbia 6 2 $890 $-- Warner Bros. 4 3 770 $120 Disney 3 0 640 250 20th Century 4 4 530 360 Paramount 2 6 440 450 Orion 1 7 410 480 MGM 3 1 215 675 UA 2 4 140 750 Universal 4 9 130 760 Cannon 0 14 5 885