The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  Although this book pulls from previous film and television histories, trade journals, memoirs, and documentaries, I have focused much of my scholarship around 155 personal interviews with American film and television writers. I conducted 60 formal interviews between 2008 and 2013. I sat down with professional writers for around three hours each to discuss their careers and their experiences in the Guild. (I also recorded five interviews with industry executives and WGA executives and directors about their work with the Guild or with writers.) All but a handful of these conversations were conducted in person.

  In the process of doing research at the Writers Guild Foundation Library, I uncovered transcripts compiled for an oral history project carried out under the auspices of the WGA in 1978 and 1979. The Guild History Committee and its two-person staff conducted 104 interviews with prominent WGA members and executives. A copy of each transcript was sent to the interviewee for corrections or amendments, although the committee hoped to preserve “the flavor of conversation” rather than achieve “a pure literary presentation.”6 Transcripts were returned unedited or with a letter that acknowledged approval. They were then stored and forgotten in the Writers Guild Foundation library. Now brought to light, these oral histories provide a personal perspective from which to understand changes in the media industries and cultures of production.

  By placing media ethnography in conversation with industry history, The Writers provides a qualitative analysis of industry history. As Mark Williams says, “oral history can demonstrate to us and reacquaint us with the fact that the personal is not only political, but historical and dialogical as well.”7 Each writer’s story provides the context for my discussion of aesthetics, technology, politics, and individual experience within this cultural and industry history. During our interview, Craig Mazin offered this warning: “Writers are the most dangerous people to try to discern history from, because we’re particularly good at lacing together the narrative we want you to hear, and those narratives always flow toward a purpose or a point, the dramatic intent of the narrative.”8 As I wove this history, I parsed the competing narratives presented by subjects who often care passionately about their personal narrative and history.

  My research demands an integrated methodology, combining archival research, media industries analysis, and production studies methods in order to understand the fluctuations in the economic, political, and discursive dimensions of this cultural history, and then measuring these factors against the memories and observations of my interviewees. Todd Gitlin states that the language of media practitioners provides “a sense of the ambiance and texture of the industry’s life-as-it-is-lived.” Anecdotes become a part of industry speech, especially among writers, since it is their job to create stories. Gitlin describes Hollywood as a “place where many of the practitioners are brighter and more engaging than their products, and the story of the making of the show more revealing than the show itself. I think these stories, once scrutinized and interrogated, are the royal road to the industry’s workings.”9 Like Gitlin, I found my subjects as compelling as most screen characters. I use these writers’ accounts as verification, testimony, or personal insight into a larger history I ground in historical research.

  My use of oral history is in part practical: the work of writers lends itself well to conversation rather than observation. I can observe subjects at pitch meetings, in the writers’ room, or at Guild meetings, but watching writers actually write proves too distracting to my subjects and less useful to me as a scholar.10 Oral history is also a particularly rewarding method for studying media practitioners whose central tools are words. In my career as a scholar I have interviewed a number of film, television, and digital media workers. Not surprisingly, writers as a group have been among the most deliberate speakers; they are not just aware of their position and role within the industry but are also uniquely articulate in their analysis of that role. Their facility with words ensures that their observations and their choices of terms withstand exploration and analysis as scholarly data.

  American film historian Robert Sklar points in his work to Paul Veyne’s concept of “lengthening the questionnaire,” and I find this concept apt as well. Because my work has depended so much on interviews and oral history, the analogy is particularly prescient. Veyne notes, “Like the art of design, history is descriptive knowledge: the reader of a history book feels, when he sees the springs of human affairs working, a pleasure of the same order as a Florentine amateur observing the form and the play of each muscle, each tendon. . . . The heartfelt cry of the historian, like that of a designer or of a naturalist, would be, ‘It is interesting because it is complicated.’”11 In deciphering history, one is always searching for the truth, which entails a process of constructing and adding multiple plots. This book is a story of storytellers. And while, in their work, finding satisfying conclusions is part of the trade, as a historian, I look more to the serial and its multiple intertwining plots than the clear and closed narrative.

  This book has been a deep collaboration with film and television writers to make sense of their careers and of their community. Some of my subjects are aware of my community as well. Many screenwriters work within colleges and universities, teaching the art and craft of writing as they work on scripts. James Schamus, writer of The Wedding Banquet and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, points to parallels between screenwriters and scholars. Both know “full well what it means to work in large institutions whose existences depend on the production and marketing of intellectual properties, and where, as a rule, ‘making sense’ is a ‘collaborative’ process—one in which intelligibility requires succumbing to protocols and dictates that are often in great tension with the original thoughts and inspirations that motivate our work.”12 We write intellectual property for a living, we pitch our ideas, and we work within vast organizations.

  My interest in screenwriters first emerged as a love of the films and television series they wrote—the great narratives, compelling characters, and crackerjack wordplay of the best of American media. I grew up in Los Angeles, where the stories of the industry were embedded into of the fabric of the city. During the lead-up to what became the 2007–2008 strike, I started to see that, in compelling ways, the history of the screenwriting profession mirrored the larger trajectory of the American film and television industry. It was then and there that my work on this book began.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  The following chapters are populated with the names of writers, only a few of whom are immediately recognizable. Yet many of them are instantly recognizable by their credits. Thus credits provide a shorthand to identify these writers, providing some landmarks for readers to identify films or series a writer worked on or to note the era when she or he was active in the industry. The first time that I mention any writer, I identify him or her generally with one title, sometimes a few. As the following pages will detail, since their earliest days of organizing as a group, writers have fought for their names to be attached to the films that they scripted. In respect for this primary struggle, I offer an appendix of writers mentioned in this book for reference. I do not make note in the body of the text if a writer has co-written a screenplay or is a co-creator of a series, but these notations are made in the appendix, as are other details, such as whether a writer’s career was affected by the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s or whether he or she served one of the writers’ guilds in an official capacity.

  1. Nick Counter, long-time president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), frames the issue similarly: “While the past is not necessarily prologue for the future, it is evident that technological advances have fundamentally changed the economic landscape for the survival of the motion picture and television industry.” J. Nicholas Counter III, “Foreword: Key Issues Facing Producers and Distributors in the Motion Picture and Television Industry,” in Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment, ed. Lois S. Gray and Ronald L. Se
eber (Ithaca and London: ILR/Cornell University Press, 1996), vii.

  2. Elihu Winer, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 22 June 1978), 20; Larry Markes, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 18.

  3. Quoted in Bob Thomas, Thalberg: Life and Legend (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 183.

  4. Mel Brooks, interview with the author, 15 August 2013.

  5. George Axelrod, interview with Patrick McGilligan in Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 59.

  6. Robert Towne, “On Moving Pictures,” in Chinatown and The Last Detail: 2 Screenplays (New York: Grove Press, 1997), ix.

  7. Cheri Steinkellner, interview with the author, 12 August 2013.

  8. Philip Dunne, Take Two: A Life in Movies and Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 43. Also see Howard A. Rodman’s wonderfully witty character study of the screenplay, “What a Screenplay Isn’t,” Cinema Journal 45, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 86–89.

  9. Paul Schrader, quoted in Marc Norman, What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting (New York: Three Rivers Press/Random House, 2008), 397.

  10. Norman Lear, interview with the author, 20 August 2013.

  11. Saul Turteltaub, interview with the author, 16 August 2013.

  12. Elias Davis, interview with the author, 29 September 2009.

  13. William Goldman, The Writer Speaks: William Goldman, DVD, 27 May 2010, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

  14. Alvin Sargent, interview with the author, 25 August 2009.

  15. Courtney Lilly, interview with the author, 16 May 2009.

  16. Sandra Tsing Loh, “Punching Up the Chicken,” in Doing It for Money: The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing and Surviving in Hollywood, ed. Daryl G. Nickens for the Writers Guild Foundation (Los Angeles: Tallfellow Press, 2006), 95.

  17. Michael Oates Palmer, interview with the author, 12 August 2009.

  18. Lizzie Francke tells the story of the many successful female screenwriters working in early Hollywood. Francke, Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood (London: BFI, 1994).

  19. I will discuss data on women writers in chapter 4. For some information on contemporary television, see Neely Swanson, “Women Can’t Create and White Men Can’t Jump,” Baseline Intelligence, 4 February 2010, http://www.baselineintel.com/research-wrap?detail/C7/women_cant_create_and_white_men_cant_jump.

  20. Joan Moore and Burton Moore, “The Hollywood Writer” (unpublished manuscript, c. 1970), 15, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library Archives, Los Angeles.

  21. Andrew Ross, No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 10.

  22. This book focuses on the American screenwriting industry. Some scholars concentrate on writers in other countries, in particular, Eva Novrup Redvall on television screen authorship in Denmark and Bridget Conor on British screenwriters. See Redvall, Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From “The Kingdom” to “The Killing” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Conor, “Subjects at Work: Investigating the Creative Labour of British Screenwriters,” in Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures, ed. Petr Szczepanik and Patrick Vonderau (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and Conor, Screenwriting: Creative Labour and Professional Practice (London: Routledge, 2014).

  23. Bob Barbash, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 24 February 1978), 7.

  24. Here I am indebted to David Hesmondhalgh’s rich scholarship on this topic. See David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (London: Routledge, 2011), and David Hesmondhalgh, The Culture Industries, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012).

  25. Barbara Corday, interview with the author, 30 August 2013.

  26. M.W., “Kanter Adds Dimension to Hyphenated Career: Writer-Prod-Dir-Emcee,” WGAw Newsletter, December 1967, 7.

  27. John Furia Jr. and David Rintels, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 3 May 1978), 44.

  28. Robert White and Phyllis White, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 22.

  29. Marc Norman, interview with the author, 9 June 2011.

  30. See Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in Hollywood 1930–1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, & Trade Unionists (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). I will cover these strikes in chapter 2.

  31. Frank Pierson, interview with the author, 15 February 2011.

  32. Copyright Act of 1909, Pub. L. No. 60–349, 35 Stat. 1075, § 62 (4 March 1909).

  33. Erik Barnouw, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 11.

  34. David Harmon and Nate Monaster, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 15 February 1978), 14–15.

  35. Ernest Kinoy, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, spring 1978), 14–15.

  36. Hortense Powdermaker, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist (New York: Norton, 1967), 227–228.

  37. Max Wilk, Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversations with Hollywood’s Classic Screenwriters (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004), 7.

  38. Stirling Silliphant, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 1 March 1978), 5.

  39. Maurice Tombragel, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 23 May 1978), 27.

  40. William Ludwig, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 16 May 1978), 3.

  41. Catherine L. Fisk, “The Role of Private Intellectual Property Rights in Markets for Labor and Ideas: Screen Credit and the Writers Guild of America, 1938–2000,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 32, no. 2 (2011): 222.

  42. Howard A. Rodman, interview with the author, 15 February 2011.

  43. Sam Kashner, “Who’s Afraid of Nichols and May?” Vanity Fair, January 2013, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/01/nichols-and-may-reunion-exclusive.

  44. Robert Towne, directed by Sarah Morris (undistributed documentary short, 2006), 35mm and DVD, http://sarah-morris.info/?/Films/RobertTowne/.

  45. On March 24, 2010, the MPAA filed joint comments with AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and SAG. See “Regarding Development of First Joint Federal Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement,” letter to The Honorable Victoria A. Espinel, US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, US Office of Management and Budget, 24 March 2010, http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/0c72c549–89ce-4815–9a71-de13b8e0a26f.PDF.

  46. Mark Deuze, Media Work (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007), 20–27.

  47. Craig Mazin, interview with the author, 12 June 2011.

  48. Regarding research on local auxiliary support, see Allen J. Scott, On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), and Tom Kemper, Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

  49. Moore and Moore, “The Hollywood Writer” (unpublished, c. 1970), ch. 1, 1.

  50. Arthur Ross, interview by the Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 19 April 1978), 16.

  51. Ludwig, Oral History Project, 3.

  52. Erica Rothschild, interview with the author, 16 May 2009.

  53. Harmon and Monaster, Oral History Project, 40.

  54. Jorja Prover, No One Knows Their Names: Screenwriters in Hollywood (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1994), 14.

  55. Robin Swicord, interview with the author, 16 February 2011.

  56. Betty Ulius, interview by the
Writers Guild Oral History Project (Los Angeles: Writers Guild Foundation, 12 April 1978), 1.

  57. Darnell M. Hunt, The 2007 Hollywood Writers Report: Whose Stories Are We Telling? (report commissioned by the Writers Guild of America West, Los Angeles), 6, http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/HWR07.pdf.

  58. Ibid., 7.

  59. Ronald Bass, interview with the author, 13 June 2011.

  60. Susan Kim, interview with the author, 9 April 2012.

  61. Felicia D. Henderson, “The Culture Behind Closed Doors: Issues of Gender and Race in the Writers’ Room,” Cinema Journal 50, no. 20 (Winter 2011): 151.

  62. “Flipping the Script: Beyond Homophobia in Black Hollywood,” panel discussion sponsored by the Writers Guild of America West, Los Angeles, 23 March 2010.

  63. Dava Savel, interview with the author, 26 November 2013.