Writers Guild Flap: What’s in a Name?

A screenwriter who apparently thinks he has been, well, abused by the Writers Guild is seeking to give himself a vulgar synonym for sexual intercourse as a pen name.

After all, reasons the screenwriter, Jerico Stone, the word is commonplace in the movies these days: It is uttered several dozen times in the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 1990 film “GoodFellas,” Stone wrote the Writers Guild of America, West, in seeking to register his pseudonym.

Stone made his novel request after losing an arbitration to Charlie Haas over screenplay credit for the movie “Matinee.” (Haas and Stone share credit for “Matinee’s” story idea, although the order of their names has yet to be determined by the guild.)

Screenplays are frequently rewritten by different people, and it’s not uncommon for the credit on the final version to be disputed. In such cases, the contesting writer will ask the Writers Guild--the screenwriters union--to step in and determine the appropriate credit for the finished film. A credit enhances a writer’s status and potential for future earnings.

But according to Joe Dante, director of “Matinee,” which stars John Goodman, Stone “made the first pitch” on the project several years ago and wrote the first draft, but when Haas became involved, the story changed. “The basic plot is not the original one,” said Dante, describing the movie, now in post-production, as a coming-of-age story set in Key West, Fla., against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis. The movie is scheduled to be released next year, according to a spokeswoman for Universal Studios, its distributor.

Haas, the third writer on the project, said he created a new story and characters, leaving “one page, maybe a little more” by Stone.

“I gather he’s upset and I certainly understand anybody being upset about being replaced on a picture, and I imagine that’s the reason he wants the pseudonym,” said Haas, who has never met Stone.

So far, Stone, who has screenwriting credit under his first name only for the 1988 movie “My Stepmother Is an Alien,” has been unsuccessful in his effort to adopt the unusual pseudonym. The guild staff turned him down, but he has the right to appeal to the board.

Guild spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden declined to discuss Stone’s case on confidentiality grounds, but she said that although writers are allowed to register any “suitable” pseudonym, “epithets of international recognition would not be considered reasonable.”

In Stone’s view, the guild is guilty of hypocrisy. “They don’t allow the word . . . to be used for a writer’s credit because they say it’s obscene,” he said, “but what is truly obscene is an original writer not getting screenplay credit.”

The screenwriter, who said he plans to appeal the guild decision on the pseudonym, described it as “the most beautiful word in the English language. It depends on how it’s used. I’m not using it in a derogatory manner or a negative manner.”