Credits, continued

I am writing in response to Marshall Herskovitz’s March 11 letter titled “Producer’s Credit” [which sought to defend the Producers Guild of America’s process for deciding who would be eligible as a producer of “Crash” for this year’s Academy Awards].

Herskovitz questions both the need for openness in the credit determination process and John Horn’s “biased” article [“Credits on a Collision Course,” March 4]. Of course, when we are the ones making the decisions, authoritarianism, covert hearings and secret evidence are quite appealing and worthy of our support. Herskovitz challenges Horn’s usage of “persuasive e-mails” to describe evidence I submitted to the PGA and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are persuasive because they are factual and Horn is an unbiased third party, not an officer of an organization intent on telling others what a producer does.

In defense of the secrecy-shrouded decisions by the PGA and the academy, Herskovitz -- for the first time revealing some detail of the hearings -- references 15 people “associated with ‘Crash’ ” as contradicting my claims and documentation. However, all the job titles he offers are personnel engaged solely during the production phase. Per PGA criteria, the production phase constitutes only a minority of a producer’s required involvement, and a producer can fully qualify under these standards without being on set during the production. So how can these persons definitively negate a producer’s qualifications? All that they could attest to would be their own degree of communication with me and not the degree of authority or indirect contact I may have had. My submissions clearly documented the required involvement. That is why open scrutiny and a chance to respond to testimony is critical to fairness.

But let’s cut to the chase. I have a very fair proposal for the PGA and the academy, since they seem highly confident of the proper conclusion of their secret sessions as outlined by Herskovitz. I propose that we submit our respective evidence to an independent third-party arbitration. If the result is that I had properly met the academy standards for producer, the PGA and the academy will publicly apologize to me and will both agree to change their credit determination procedures to be open, fair and compliant with accepted standards of “due process.” If the result is that I had not met the academy standards for producer, then I will publicly apologize to the PGA and the academy and dismiss my lawsuit. If the PGA and the academy refuse this offer, however, I ask that their officers refrain from further defamatory allegations and wait for the courts to determine the truth.

BOB YARI

Westwood

Yari was one of the six producers listed in the credits of “Crash.” The PGA did not recognize him and three others as a producer in its credit determination.