SAG Hires Pisano as Chief Executive

Veteran studio executive and lawyer A. Robert Pisano was hired late Monday night as the Screen Actors Guild’s chief executive and national executive director of the industry’s largest union representing actors.

Pisano fills a void created when SAG’s first choice, former Walt Disney Co. executive John F. Cooke, abruptly bailed out of the job in July, 10 days after accepting it. The vote by SAG directors was 80 to 20 to hire Pisano.

Cooke’s departure came after a group of dissident directors questioned whether the union had gone too far in granting sweeping powers to Cooke that he believed were needed to revamp the union, which has been beset by a bloated bureaucracy and constant infighting.

SAG appears to have given Pisano wide authority in the job, the top staff position at the 98,000-member union.

In an interview, Pisano said he has “all the powers of a chief executive of a corporation” at the guild, whose previous national executive director, the retired Ken Orsatti, did not carry the chief executive title.

“Going into this, I asked for and received the executive powers I thought were necessary to get the job done and were given them by the board,” Pisano said.

Pisano’s selection by a SAG search committee came after candidates were screened by the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. Pisano declined to say how much he is being paid, but a source said it is close to the $390,000 annual salary SAG was planning to pay Cooke.

A native of San Jose, Pisano, 58, most recently worked for six years as a top executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, rising to the position of vice chairman and chief operating officer before leaving in 1999.

Before that, Pisano worked at Paramount Pictures for six years, where he was general counsel. Pisano also worked 17 years for the Los Angeles law firm O’Melveny & Myers.

SAG in July negotiated a three-year contract with studios. Last year, the union struck advertisers for six months in the longest strike in Hollywood history.