Giving Credits Where Credits Are Due

Moviegoers may barely notice the change, but a switch in the structure of films’ opening credits has touched off an angry reaction by a group of top-ranking Hollywood producers and reopened an ongoing industry controversy.

As a result of an agreement reached in late May between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the positions of credit titles for screenwriters and producers have been swapped, bestowing the more prestigious position just before the directors’ credit to the writer or writers of the film.

Movies out this month will begin to reflect the switch, though some production companies had already taken it upon themselves to revise the credit positioning.

Some screenwriters welcome the change, while others dismiss its importance. And a group of about 75 big-name producers has taken legal action, charging it demeans the role of the producer.

“Frankly, I don’t think they were expecting the kind of reaction they got from the producers,” said a lawyer close to the case, who requested anonymity. “Producers are traditionally a group of loners. Until this issue they hadn’t really seen common issues as being more important than their individuality. But this coalesced as an issue and caused all these very significant people to come together around it.”

But a Writers Guild member who was instrumental in the passage of the policy said it was intended as an acknowledgment of the creative contributions of writers, not as a slap in the face to producers.

“In contemporary filmmaking the writer and the director are the creative authors of the movie and they should be placed together in the credits,” said Roger Simon, who was the head of the guild’s creative rights subcommittee. “It’s not intended to devalue producers. We like producers. Many of us are producers. But theirs is a business function primarily. This is about the creative authorship of the movie.”

Simon (“Enemies, a Love Story,” “Scenes From a Mall”) said the move will accord writers more status inside and outside the industry and inspire reviewers to pay more attention to the role of screenwriting in the making of a film.

However, not all screenwriters feel the move is a step in the right direction.

Joe Eszterhas (“Basic Instinct”) said he laughed when published reports named him as the first to receive the switched credit, in MGM-UA’s “Showgirls,” due Sept. 22.

As it turns out, that film has only end titles and no opening credits.

“I never even paid attention to the order of credits; it’s completely meaningless to me,” Eszterhas said.

Eszterhas is annoyed not only that this policy has insulted producers, but that it has deflected attention from an issue more important to him: that of the “Film By” credit given routinely to a film’s director. The real issue has been dodged, Eszterhas said.

“It’s an obscenity to have the directors’ ‘Film by’ credit because the film is a collaborative process. . . . The only way to solve possessory credit is with a full-scale, stand-up, heads-on confrontation with the Directors Guild.”

Eszterhas said he believed that Writers Guild members (a substantial number of whom are writer-director hyphenates and members of both unions) wanted to avoid taking on the Directors Guild.

“Writers’ best allies are the producers and they are the victims of this dodge,” Eszterhas said. “Producers are as upset by the ‘Film by’ credit as I have been. Now they see themselves being used as a kind of punching bag when the real target is once more ignored.”

Simon, a 20-year Writers Guild member, argued the credit change was a significant one.

“If it were completely meaningless why would the producers be yelling and screaming about it,” said Simon. “It’s a huge change. It’s going to be noticed. . . . It will elevate the status of writers.”

Simon added that the “Film By” credit was a key issue up for discussion during the same negotiations, but that both sides reached a stalemate on the topic.

“It was one of our first demands,” said Simon. “[But] this is a union town and there are competing forces. . . . The studios have to deal with us and the DGA. And even though the studios tacitly acknowledge our point, they’re reluctant to get in the middle of it because this is a hornet’s nest.”

The “Film by” credit has evolved from an action taken about 25 years ago for a handful of auteur-directors like Alfred Hitchcock who the industry acknowledged could draw large audiences. Most Writers Guild members today believe it should be reserved for the contemporary equivalents of Hitchcock like Steven Spielberg or for those who both write and direct a film.

“It’s become not only an insult to writers, but to everyone else who works on the movie,” Simon said. “They give this credit to some guy just out of film school who did his first movie, when someone else might have been working on the screenplay for five years. It’s just a vanity credit.”

The writer vs. producer credit controversy began last March when some heavy-hitter producers--including Richard and Lili Zanuck, Dawn Steel, Robert Rehme and Arnold Kopelson--filed suit against the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, claiming that they had not been informed the issue was up for a vote.