Writers Pen a Real Soap

As usual, Hollywood’s writers are spinning tales of greed, power and ego. Only this time, they’re talking about each other.

The Writers Guild of America, the last union to shut Hollywood down when it struck for 22 weeks back in 1988, is locked in a series of bitter internal feuds, with tensions boiling over last week as film and television writers in the East torpedoed a contract their western counterparts had just approved, albeit amid strong internal opposition.

It’s a wonder any script writing got done late last week, with letters alleging election shenanigans, power grabs and potential lawsuits seemingly clogging the fax machines of every writer in town.

The two sides of the argument boil down to this: One believes that guild leaders in the West, who effectively ride herd during negotiations because they represent a lot more writers, have deftly leveraged the threat of a strike and used a more cooperative negotiating posture to squeeze good contracts out of producers and TV networks the last nine years without erecting a single picket line.

Leading that faction is executive director Brian Walton, a London-born lawyer who serves as chief negotiator for the guild and who argues that the negotiating tactics, although not foolproof, have worked better than the more traditional, confrontational approach. Forget about the 11th-hour brinkmanship that often characterizes labor disputes because you can get more out of the studios and networks when you treat them as partners.

“The guild is not solely an army whose task is to march on the castle at the top of the hill,” Walton says. “In the past, it has been necessary to have that army and to make that march. But now we have had nine years of uninterrupted labor peace, and progress--insufficient progress--but progress.”

The counter argument is that many of the 10,000 writers nationwide are getting shafted in the booming cable and foreign TV market because Walton and other union leaders have been too cozy with producers since 1988. They question the value of a union that doesn’t have the stomach to mix it up with producers every so often.

To wit, critics cite a clause in the current agreement that effectively tables until a later date the issues of cable and foreign residuals.

“If you can’t get residuals negotiated when you have a real deadline, it certainly is going to be impossible to negotiate when the guild can exert even less pressure,” said Mona Mangan, executive director of the eastern group. “What kind of negotiating is going to go on in a meeting when you have less leverage?”

As the tension has grown, the arguments have gotten personal. Critics say guild leaders on the West Coast are inflexible and monolithic, more interested in preserving their power within the union than in getting the best deal.

“This guild is being smashed on the anvil of Brian’s vanity,” says prominent writer Larry Gelbart, a dissident member of the western faction. He refers to the union sarcastically as “Walton’s Guild of America.”

Walton replies that he’s only out to get the best deal for writers. And, he notes, such criticism ignores a number of other issues he works on for writers, such as fighting the Los Angeles home-business tax, working on copyright issues, helping restore credits for blacklisted writers from the 1950s and working to get rid of “vanity credits,” where directors proclaim that a movie is “a film by” them.

What no one disputes is that the guild is now facing what may be its biggest internal crises ever.

“There are a lot of worst-case scenarios, and I would have to say that we’re in one right now,” said “Beverly Hills Cop” screenwriter Daniel Petrie Jr., newly elected president of the western bloc.

Last week, western leaders, in a move that shocked members and labor experts, decided to go it alone without their eastern colleagues. The western leaders will resubmit essentially the same contract to their members, and leave the East to fend for itself.

The eastern and western factions are separate guilds, but they historically join at the hip when it comes to negotiating and ratifying new contracts. In a letter to members, Petrie said the decision was difficult, but necessary if the West guild’s leaders are to look after the well-being of its own writers.

Gelbart calls the action a “Draconian, Nixonian move.” Members of the eastern wing argue that it probably violates labor law and are threatening to sue. “It’s divisive and ultimately plays into management’s hands,” said TV movie screenwriter Albert Ruben, vice president of the eastern group.

At the heart of the problem is the changing nature of the television business for writers. Not long ago, large numbers of network shows were sold into syndication, where the money was plenty and writers enjoyed lucrative residual checks. As an example, the writer of a half-hour comedy now gets about $8,300 per episode when a show airs in syndication and lower, but still lucrative, payments for reruns lasting into perpetuity.

Now, newer networks such as WB, Fox and UPN are crowding out reruns with original programming. The rich aftermarket that once existed is much tighter, so a lot more shows are being sold to cable channels, where the money isn’t as good.

Under a deal made when cable was a fledging business with an uncertain future, writers get 2% of the price a show is sold for to a cable channel. Making matters worse is the era of “vertical integration,” where lots of studios own cable channels that they sell their shows to in what amounts to taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another.

In the booming foreign TV market, it’s even worse. A writer would get 35% of that $8,300 over the first three reruns and zilch after that. With foreign broadcast, satellite and cable exploding, U.S. shows are being increasingly used to fill programming slots.

So writers are restless. But supporters of Walton and his group say the eastern writers and dissidents are naive. If they raise the issue of improving the rates for cable and foreign residuals, the networks will no doubt want to reopen what they believe are overly lucrative payments writers now get for syndicated shows.

Relations between the two guild factions have always been strained. Writers in the West complain that the East comprises mostly news writers or unemployed writers because the vast majority of episodic television is written in Los Angeles. The East says that’s a bum rap, and that their membership includes a host of highly paid screenwriters who choose to live in New York.

In the view of western guild officials, eastern writers are easily alienated, something they don’t deny. Petrie notes that the movie business and most TV production is centered in Los Angeles, so writers based in New York “feel like they can be marginalized easily.”

For now, no one is sure if the split is reversible, whether the rift is due more to philosophical differences or personality clashes. Members don’t want it to end up in court, but at this rate, that’s where it could land.

“I think what will happen eventually is that we will get back together in a little worse shape than when we started. It’s just as well it came to a head now. I’m sure this would have happened eventually,” said “The Grifters” screenwriter Donald Westlake, a member of the eastern guild’s council.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Conflict, They Wrote

The Crisis:

East Coast film and television writers, represented by their guild leaders in New York, overwhelmingly rejected a new Writers Guild of America contract ratified by writers in the West, represented by their guild in Los Angeles.

The East Coast vote swung the overall results so that the contract was rejected by just 16 votes. Stung by the reversal, leaders on the West Coast voted to negotiate by themselves without their counterparts in the East. The two guilds are separate groups but for decades have united to negotiate and ratify contracts.

The issues:

* Eastern writers and some dissidents in the West believe the guild’s negotiators, dominated by leaders in the West, have failed to get writers the best deal for residuals when their work airs in the booming cable and foreign TV market.

* These critics favor a more aggressive negotiating approach. They believe the West has compromised too much in talks with producers and networks.

The arguments:

* Western leaders say they have successfully used the cooperative negotiating method, as well as the threat of a strike, to get good deals that include better payments on residuals. They argue that traditional, 11th-hour negotiating ploys don’t work anymore.

* Eastern leaders say that the union has become too cozy with producers and the networks and that its current leaders are using scare tactics by suggesting to members that a tougher negotiating posture will result in strikes.