The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  Ask any showrunner on any network and they will tell you that the level of control now exerted by network executives—over script, direction, cinematography, costumes, even the color of sets—is unprecedented in the history of the medium. . . . Eccentric choices that went into making thirtysomething the groundbreaking show it was would absolutely never be permitted today. . . . The independent producer no longer exists in television. . . . Consolidation of media is turning our artists into employees, and make no mistake, the result will be harmful for our society. I’m of the belief that storytellers matter, that art matters, that art helps a society define itself. The consolidation of media inherently endangers the storyteller, because, to that conglomerate, the story has no inherent value other than as an asset to be exploited.66

  Following this eloquent and candid testimony about the need to support Hollywood’s creative crafts through diversity of media ownership, the PGA, the WGA East and West, the DGA, AFTRA, and SAG had a proposal. They asked the FCC to ensure that 25 percent of television primetime programming would be designated for truly independent production companies and producers who were working outside of the oligarchy.

  In this rare moment of cooperation, producers, writers, directors, actors, and composers demanded that federal regulators open their eyes to—and take a stand against—media conglomeration. This time, the voice of the media industry was not that of the owners or the corporations. Rather, Washington was listening to American media workers who described the damage that deregulation had unleashed. In the subsequent months and years, WGA leaders, staff, and members began to testify more frequently before government officials in Sacramento and Washington, DC, in hopes of distinguishing their needs from those of management, developing political clout, and forging political alliances through advocacy, outreach, and the new WGA West Political Action Committee.

  If the event had been scripted, this FCC hearing would have been the dramatic turning point when the historic underdogs finally had their chance to speak and where their heroic, united action against the giant beasts gobbling up the media industries would herald a clear shift in the narrative. In reality, after a nationwide, multiyear listening tour, the FCC commissioners released their report on February 4, 2008, three months to the day after the Writers Guild had gone out on strike. The majority opinion determined that limits on television ownership, radio ownership, and radio-television cross-ownership should not change. Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate wrote for the majority: “Many wanted us to go further in repealing the ownership restrictions, but we have chosen a measured and cautious approach. We recognize the changing dynamics of the media market, but also give due consideration to the weight of the record before us.”67 Two commissioners, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, expressed anger with the decision. Copps wrote in his dissent: “So even as it becomes abundantly clear that the real cause of the disenfranchisement of women and minorities is media consolidation, we give the green light to a new round of—yes, you guessed it—media consolidation.”68 Although Washington remained unmoved by the plight of media artists and creators, this moment of unity hinted that changes were underway, as writers and the Writers Guild began to see the advantage of coalitions of talent working together toward a common cause.

  In response to the growing number of members who were scripting video games, both branches of the WGA formed divisions to handle gaming contracts, and the Guild created an outreach program designed to assist writers who were working with video game companies and wanted their work to fall under WGA jurisdiction. In 2003, the video game industry was worth $11 billion.69 Just four years later, the Entertainment Software Association declared that video game sales had reached $18.85 billion, with $9.35 billion spent on consoles and $9.5 billion spent on software.70 The WGA also began honoring these writers with an annual Game Writing Award. (Unfortunately, only games created by signatory companies were eligible, which left out the vast majority of the most popular games.) Members formed a New Media Writers Caucus, which offered associate membership to any working video game writer. Given the vast potential audience switching their home television sets to auxiliary modes, this film- and television-based media union could no longer ignore the significance of a growing labor force. Furthermore, the video game industry was one of the only media sectors actively hiring a significant number of writers at the time.71 The industry was changing rapidly, and the Guild, as always, wanted to remain relevant.

  Organizing the Membership

  I never worked harder, being out of work.

  —Bill Scheft, writer on Late Night with David Letterman, interview, 6 April 2012

  The WGA’s new leadership was particularly astute in crafting a top-down approach to energize their membership base in the lead-up to the 2007 negotiations. Part of this strategy involved the mobilization of key individuals, notably A-list writers, who functioned as ammunition against the AMPTP. Here, notions of hierarchies and authorship were used to the advantage of the entire writing community. These key writers used their celebrity to influence public opinion and to encourage other writers to join the Guild’s campaign. The Guild’s leadership targeted television showrunners and well-respected feature film writers, inviting them to join the board and the contract negotiation committee. Executive Director David Young understood the unique power of showrunners: “Our television screenwriters operate the most successful franchises in this industry. . . . They are in this quasi-management role and yet, because of the history and culture of this organization they came out of a writing room. . . . We have paid a lot of attention to that. Not because I wanted to be elitist . . . but because I just analyzed the situation and said, these people can almost make or break us in a strike situation.”72 At a dinner hosted by the WGA for 120 writer-producer hyphenate members, these prominent showrunners realized that many among them had been asked to create “promotional” web shorts for the studios without compensation. This gathering galvanized key members, and they agreed that if a strike were to happen, the hyphenates would walk out. Reversing the stance they had taken in previous Guild struggles, most hyphenates now agreed that the two jobs could not be separated.

  The WGA used the power that successful writers held in board rooms, writers’ rooms, and programming meetings not only to build awareness and visibility but also to remind the AMPTP of the creative labor it would lose in a walkout. David Goodman, a member of the WGA’s board and negotiating committee, emphasized that the Guild “made a concerted effort to get A-list people half in TV, half feature [film]. By doing that . . . we were telling the companies that this was something to be taken seriously, not just by Guild activists but by rank-and-file Guild members, and by rank-and-file I mean important members, members who have big earnings and who the companies can’t not be in business with. Setting that example in the negotiating committee got us a few steps further down the road in terms of organizing both sides, feature and television, than we could have been if we had just gone with Guild activists.”73 The committee included a showrunner from each of the networks as well as Oscar-winning writers from virtually every major studio, including Ronald Bass, John Bowman (writer on Saturday Night Live and Murphy Brown), Marc Cherry (creator of Desperate Housewives), Bill Condon (who adapted Chicago and Dreamgirls for the screen), Carlton Cuse (showrunner for Lost), Stephen Gaghan (who wrote Traffic), Carl Gottlieb (writer of Jaws), Susannah Grant (who wrote Erin Brockovich), Carol Mendelsohn (showrunner for CSI), Marc Norman, Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield), Ed Solomon (who wrote Men in Black), and Larry Wilmore (creator of The Bernie Mac Show), among others. Putting these members in positions of authority was a strategic step in building the membership’s trust in the board and the negotiating committee. In years past, some of the most egregious infighting during negotiations and strikes came from high-profile writers who felt their needs were not being served. When these writers defected, others followed, and the AMPTP would take advantage of the weakened Guild to make a deal beneficial to the companies.74

&
nbsp; The WGA East used a model of strike captains, each of whom was responsible for galvanizing a group of writers.75 The East also sent veteran writers to the negotiating table, including Terry George, writer of In the Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda, Brian Koppelman (Ocean’s Thirteen), and Raphael Yglesias (Fearless). The diversity of well-respected players sitting across the bargaining table from the AMPTP sent a message to both the membership and the studios that the union was mobilizing its community for the fight ahead.

  In the months leading up to the strike, the whole industry was hopeful that a walkout could be averted. But from very early on, there were signs that an agreement responsive to the writers’ demands would be virtually impossible without a standoff. In mid-July 2007 the AMPTP told a group of national journalists, “We want to make the deals. We want to share in success with both the networks and our creative partners, but we just need some time to figure out what those business models are going to look like.”76 Whatever desire the studios claimed to have “to share in success” was absent at the preliminary contract negotiations later that month. Rather than offering the Guild a point of entry into digital compensation rates, the AMPTP put forward proposals that partially revoked rights to residuals previously won by the WGA. According to Mark Gunn, who was on the WGA negotiating committee, that hard-line tactic ended up helping the writers to unite: “The AMPTP had every opportunity to split us. All they had to do is make us a low-ball offer and a chunk of our membership would have said, ‘Take it, we can’t afford a strike.’ Instead they made us a series of ridiculous offers that no reasonable member of the Writers Guild would say yes to—thus forcing us to go on strike.”77

  As the months allotted for negotiations dwindled down to weeks, the Guild conceded key issues, but the AMPTP held its line. The WGA contract would expire on October 31, 2007, but the Guild’s plan was to stay on the job until the following summer so that writers could walk out together with the Screen Actors Guild and possibly the Directors Guild. (AFTRA’s MBA was up for renewal in January 2008, and the SAG and DGA MBAs would expire on June 30, 2008.) Then came an idea from the East. At one of the East’s negotiating committee meetings in late September, Susan Kim remembered screenwriter Adam Brooks (French Kiss) asking, “What if we go out [on strike] now?” meaning when the WGA contract expired rather than waiting until June.78 The studios were planning to stockpile scripts all winter. Warren Leight, then the showrunner for Law & Order: Criminal Intent, told the group that a November strike would instantly end his show’s ability to run new episodes. The East talked to the West, and the two boards decided that if the writers were going to have to strike, they would go out when the WGA contract expired. Michael Winship, senior writer of Moyers & Company, who had assumed the presidency of the WGA East in September 2007, saw surprise as key to success. The strike “really caught them flat-footed, which will never happen again, but in that instance, they caught them totally off guard.”79

  The strike authorization passed with an astonishing 93 percent of the membership of both branches of the Guild giving approval. With negotiations going nowhere, a walkout suddenly seemed inevitable. On November 5, 2007, the 12,000 members of the WGA began a strike that would last 100 days.

  The decision to harness the power of the celebrity writer was crucial to the Guild’s strike plan. Television showrunners—not just those on the negotiating committee, but all head writers—became key players in spreading the right message about the strike. This outreach was highly successful: showrunners encouraged their staff writers to join them on the picket line, and those writers then informed others about the action, thus building a network of strikers who felt connected to their picket teams. “It was an absolutely intentional strategy for a number of reasons,” David Goodman explained. “There would be people out in the world who may not know Carlton Cuse, but they may know ‘Carlton Cuse, executive producer of Lost’; you may not know Marc Cherry, but they know ‘Marc Cherry, creator of Desperate Housewives.’ The general public knows those names.”80 The WGA could not indemnify showrunners from the possibility that studios would sue them for breach of contract, but it was unlikely the studios would mount lawsuits. They needed their showrunners back as soon as the strike ended and were disinclined to create ill will with these indispensable employees.

  On the first day, 3,000 WGA West picketers circled the sidewalks in front of Fox, CBS, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount, and Disney. Their red union T-shirts against the blue California sky and white studio buildings created perfect images on the covers of newspapers, on television screens, and on websites. On average, 1,500 WGA West writers walked every weekday for three months.81 In the East, the Guild coordinated its members to picket at a different corporate headquarters or studio each day. The images of WGA East members picketing the conglomerates in the freezing cold and snow struck a different chord and gave the group an aura of gravitas.

  The two branches of the Guild displayed their unique styles on the picket line. Bill Scheft of the East remembers, “The difference between the East and the West? They had Alicia Keys and we had the not-yet-disgraced John Edwards.”82 But getting Edwards was actually a major coup. After standing with the East, Edwards refused to cross a picket line to take part in a presidential debate at CBS on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The other candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, quickly sidestepped also, and the debate was canceled. “That was very effective,” according to Winship. “It fell on that very slow news day just by accident. So it got this huge amount of coverage.”83

  IMAGE 24 Striking writers in front of the iconic Paramount Studio gates on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (2007).

  Photo by author

  The AMPTP placed a series of full-page ads in the business trades and national newspapers. In response, the WGA turned to its own membership to assemble a communications campaign for the strike. In addition to using phone banks and traditional press releases, the WGA exploited digital communication to access members, the Hollywood community, the press, and the general public by way of private e-mail and public blogs. Writers recognized, as did the AMPTP, that positive public relations and media attention would help sway professional and public opinion. Roger Wolfson, a television writer for Saving Grace and The Closer, remembered the third day of the strike, when the WGA realized how tough this war of words would be:

  When all seven media companies responded by consolidating their PR operations under the guidance of Sony’s Jim Kennedy, a former White House spokesman—and eventually, Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, two of the highest paid and previously most sought-after media consultants in America—Guild members bolstered the Guild’s communications department with a media room of its own. At 4:00 on Thursday, November 8th, we put out a call for writers with PR, political, or journalistic experience. Within an hour, the room was staffed by a rotating group of thirty WGA members, many having worked for national campaigns or major newspapers, and they worked nearly fulltime for the rest of the strike.84

  The importance of e-mail, especially for a membership dispersed across the country, should not be underestimated. The leadership was able to coordinate with and spread official word to Guild members more cheaply, simply, and efficiently than ever before.85 Strike captains regularly sent out e-bulletins to update members on the state of negotiations or picketing schedules. The Guild also launched a number of e-mail campaigns to promote government support and public awareness. They asked that writers encourage their friends and family to spread information about the strike and invite them to get involved through support campaigns.

  Blogs offered a less structured and more public approach to disseminating strike information and opening lines of communication between writers and the larger community. A variety of websites became popular, two in particular being United Hollywood, created by the WGA, and Deadline Hollywood Daily, run by a sympathetic media reporter. These sites provided a centralized space for immediate access to information about the strike and about negotiations that was un
available through traditional print and broadcast media. Blog visitors could access, update, or comment on content instantly, day or night.

  To develop United Hollywood, a group of WGA strike captains worked with what the site itself describes as “advocates for working people in the entertainment industry facing the digital revolution.”86 Dante Atkins, an Internet outreach adviser for progressive causes and Democratic candidates, helped design the site. Its name, he admits, “may have seemed like an odd choice for a website devoted to protecting the interests of the WGA, but in truth, the name fit right in with one of the principal messages the WGA captains were trying to communicate: that the fate of the WGA in these negotiations over Internet royalties would set the bar for negotiations with other Hollywood unions like the DGA and IATSE.”87 With frequent updates, rapid responses to negative statements by the AMPTP, extensive video links, and blog entries by writers of popular films and television series, United Hollywood quickly gained a large audience of followers and on-site commentators, and it provided an important voice to counter the AMPTP’s public relations machine.

  Deadline Hollywood Daily was born out of entertainment reporter Nikki Finke’s weekly column “Deadline Hollywood” in the free alternative paper LA Weekly. A year before the strike, Finke created an online version of her column in which she editorialized on the politics and culture of Hollywood business practices. Finke’s access to insiders, her frequent news scoops, and her relentlessly pro-labor attitude toward industry business made her site popular for information and debate among WGA members and supporters in the months before and during the strike. Courtney Lilly remembers walking the picket line during the first week of the strike and checking Finke’s blog every twenty minutes on his iPhone to see whether the strike would end.88 Los Angeles Times television reporter Scott Collins derided the unprofessionalism and sensationalism of Finke’s blog but admitted that it was a key weapon in the WGA’s artillery against the conglomerates. “Blogs are, in fact, the chief difference between [the strikes of] ’88 and ’08. Blogs replicate, amplify and sometimes distort stories in ways that simply weren’t possible 20 years ago. And no blogger left a bigger footprint on strike coverage than Finke.”89 Deadline Hollywood Daily reported the latest news from the negotiation tables, picket lines, and backroom meetings and provided a space for labor to discuss and debate the news—even the facts.