Here They Go Again

By Ted Elrick - DGA MAGAZINE, November 1999

Steven Spielberg on the set of Schindler's List

32 years ago the Writers Guild was successful in negotiating away the rights of not only directors, but of all film artists, to negotiate for a possessory credit. Only a threatened strike by the DGA restored this right. Could it happen again?

There is an insurgency smoldering in the film industry, challenging the role of the motion picture director. During the recent election for President of the Writers Guild of America, west, two of the candidates, John Wells and Beth Sullivan, made opposition to the primacy of the director in motion pictures one of the cornerstones of their respective campaigns. Wells was the winner of the election. What follows are some of his comments made during the campaign as well as some relevant facts. Wells' comments appear in italics and are followed by relevant data.

JOHN WELLS: "A film by. When did this particularly nasty bit of narcissism become enshrined as industry practice?"

Many film scholars point to the 1915 release of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation as the first use of a possessory credit. Since that time there have been numerous instances of possessory credit including, but not limited to Cecil B. De Mille's Ten Commandments (1923 & 1956 versions); King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925); Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946); George Stevens' Annie Oakley (1935) and Shane (1953); Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960); Doctor Zhivago, A Film by David Lean (1965); Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971); Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part II (1974); Chinatown, A Film by Roman Polanski (1974); Taxi Driver, A Film by Martin Scorsese (1976). Each of these, and thousands of other possessory credits, whether they be "A Film by" or indicated by an 's after the filmmaker's name before the title, was the result of an individually negotiated contract. The DGA is a longtime supporter of the position that a possessory credit is achieved through individual negotiation and that any person involved in the motion picture should be allowed to negotiate for this credit.

JOHN WELLS: "By claiming sole creative authorship the director denies all other artists involved in the motion picture their rightful due. The writer is the author of the work, the creator. You can't elevate the contribution of one without demeaning the contribution of all the others."

JOHN WELLS: "A painting by Picasso, yes. One artist and a canvas, creating. A Few Good Men is "A Film by" Rob Reiner? No, it's an award-winning play written by Aaron Sorkin, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, directed wonderfully by Mr. Reiner. And that's a hell of an accomplishment, one that I admire. Directing is damn hard work. But A Few Good Men was written by someone else, photographed by someone else, scored, acted and edited by others." [Editor's Note: See Rob Reiner's reply to Wells' statement on page 71]

It does not derogate the work of the screenwriter or the other artists who contribute to a film to recognize that films often reflect the vision of the director. The director is the one voice most responsible for the final film. The director selects the best talent available to achieve his or her vision of a writer's or group of writers' screenplay. The screenplay can be wonderfully written, but it is not a film. The director will make hundreds of decisions each day that will result in what the audience experiences when they view the finished film.

As many directors, including director/writers, have said in this magazine, "You could give the same script and probably the same cast to 10 different directors and each of their films would be completely different." When a director begins to work on making a film, he or she makes decisions about the script, cast and locations, which cinematographer, editor, composer and production designer to use. The director makes decisions on wardrobe, makeup, blocking, camera angles, lighting, special effects and thousands of other details.

Frequently, the director will also make numerous changes to the screenplay based on what he or she feels is the underlying premise. He or she might shift scenes around, write new scenes, make changes to scenes while working with the actors, cut pages and maybe even hire other writers who specialize in certain areas.

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And in the editing room, the director will again see what does and doesn't work. He or she will again shorten scenes, shift them around, delete passages or entire characters, sweeten moments and change sounds and more in order to accomplish his or her vision. Just as screenwriters are not bound by the original source material for their screenplays, neither is the director bound by a screenplay when he or she makes the film.

For instance, in the Feb./Mar. 1994 issue of DGA Magazine Steven Spielberg is quoted saying, "On Schindler's, I had a great script by Steven Zaillian. The action in the ghetto in Steve's script is only about a page long. But in the film, it's about 20 minutes, about 20 pages of script. I kept finding out more and more information about the action. I wanted to make that a defining set piece in the retelling of the pogrom. I couldn't explain what a liquidation is like in under 20 minutes. I just went to the history books and the witnesses who were there. And they began telling me these amazing stories of the logistics on how it was accomplished. That sequence was constructed based on living witness testimony."

Schindler's List is "A Steven Spielberg Film." It was a film that used a screenplay by Steven Zaillian, who adapted the original book by Thomas Keneally.

JOHN WELLS: "Directors tell us that their collaborators don't object to their taking the film by credit. Don't mistake silence for approval. Feudal Kings and Earls claiming the right to sleep with the bride on her wedding night were met with silence from the groom, not because he was honored to have the King screwing his wife. He took it because he didn't want to be beheaded."

It is worth remembering that this expression of passionate outrage comes in the context of a political campaign statement.

The possessory credit issue is the banner which the Writers Guild intends to take into battle in their next contract negotiations. They are working hard at inflaming emotions over the issue. But the screenwriters' insistence that they are the "authors" of the film reveals that their fight is ultimately over their desire to be accorded more creative control.

JOHN WELLS: "We have objected to the 'Vanity Credit' for years. The Companies have promised to remedy it for years. The time has come, it must be changed. It demeans all artists, but it is particularly galling to writers. We are the authors of the work [emphasis added]. We can never regain the respect of our collaborators when the act of creating is claimed by others. If the companies refuse to address it at the negotiating table, we will fix it on the picket line. Period."

Again we see the hypocrisy of the earlier claim that "By claiming sole creative authorship the director denies all other artists involved in the motion picture their rightful due."

Clearly the writers themselves have no problem saying, "We are the authors of the work," even though by this logic it obviously "denies all other artists involved in the motion picture their rightful due."

The WGA insists that writers are the "authors" of films, period, without concern for the fact that a screenplay may have been based on source material such as a novel. Using this logic, why isn't this as demeaning to the writer of the original material as Wells says the director's possessory credit is to the screenwriter?

And doesn't it follow that if the screenwriter is the author and creator of a screenplay, even though the screenplay may have been based on a novel, then the director is the primary author and creator of the film that is based on that screenplay? Maybe the comparison between these two would be clearer if the "Written by" film credit were replaced with a "Based on a Screenplay by" credit.

A faction of the Writers Guild has continued to raise the possessory credit issue for over 30 years. In 1967 the Writers Guild held secret negotiations with the AMPTP and was successful in negotiating away the rights of not only directors, but of all film artists, to negotiate for a possessory credit. Suddenly directors and producers were no longer able to negotiate fairly for a credit that they had been able to receive for decades.

Director Martin Scorsese (left) with Robert De Niro (middle) and Albert Brooks (right) on the set of Taxi Driver.

The Directors Guild immediately protested on behalf of everyone. When the threat of a strike over this issue by the DGA became a very real possibility, the Writers Guild offered a compromise in an attempt to split the DGA membership. They attempted to swing the outcome by approaching those directors who had already received a possessory credit. The Writers Guild said that directors such as Hitchcock, Capra, Ford, and Stevens, could continue to receive their credit. But, from that point on the Writers Guild would decide who would be qualified to receive a possessory credit. The Writers Guild would be the sole determining body as to who would get a possessory credit.

Not one director bought the WGA ploy to divide the membership. In fact, the DGA agreed to strike so that anyone would be able to freely negotiate for a possessory credit, continuing the practice begun in 1915.

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The recent "Vanity Credit" moniker is, of course, a direct attempt to degrade something that has been in existence for decades. The same degradation that tarnished the producer credit in television which has, ironically, actually become a "Vanity Credit" in many instances for writers.

It is important to keep in mind that significant portions of the group behind this campaign are the same television writers who have damaged the credibility of television credits by routinely taking unmerited producer credits. While there are legitimate producers who earn their credits, this credit has been diminished by the writers who receive a production credit in lieu of additional compensation and, when pressed, are unable to say what that production work actually is. Led by those who claim to call for legitimacy in credits, the producer credit has become tainted in television.

In addition, the WGA's Minimum Basic Agreement entitles writers ‹ and only writers ‹ to credit as "creator" of television series. Where is their concern for all the other talent involved in production when only their members can get these credits?

JOHN WELLS: "Screenwriters and long-form television writers are dismissed as secondary figures, refused the most basic creative rights due. It's intolerable that the author of the work can be barred from the set of his own project. It's a disgrace that the author of a film is not included in press junkets and invited to premieres. It's unpardonable that the author is not invited to the read-through of her own work, provided with dailies, given a daily call sheet... It is long past time that these creative rights be fully addressed in our MBA. If we can't achieve them in negotiations, we will achieve them on the picket line."

This clarion call for a WGA strike should put to rest any doubt about the real agenda of the possessory credit campaign, and the significance of the claim to "authorship" for screenwriters.

The WGA wants new contractual rights in their MBA mandating that a writer be invited to read-throughs, allowed on the set, given dailies, etc. In other words, they want contractual guarantees that will strip directors of decision-making power, guarantees that very likely would invite chaos into the production process, and inevitably drive up production costs.

A director does too many things and has too much responsibility to be wasting his or her time squabbling with a writer on the set. In addition, such arguing would surely both confuse and demoralize actors, cinematographers, costume designers, and everyone else on the set who depends on there being one overarching vision to unify them. The truth is that the "rights" sought by the writers are really directors' decisions to make. Forcing a director to accept them would destabilize the historic productivity of the filmmaking process.

In truth, the WGA would like to reinvent the movie business to allow their members to become "showrunners" of motion pictures as many of them are in television. Even better in their view would be the adoption of a Dramatist's Guild approach to moviemaking that completely undermines directorial authority. And, unfortunately, the tenor of the recent campaign for WGA, w President suggests that they will try to strike to achieve it.

The agenda of the writers who complain loudest about the possessory credit is to put a taint on the credit in order to challenge the reality that the director is ultimately in charge of what the audience sees on the screen.

The fact is that audiences associate many directors with a certain quality of film. This often translates into initial box-office draw because of an audience's past experiences with a filmmaker's work. This is why the possessory credit has become an important credit for which anyone may negotiate. But again, it has never been limited solely to directors. A few of the possessory credits that writers have negotiated for and received include Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Stephen King's The Stand and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

If the great filmmakers of 1967 had yielded to the WGA, there might never have been "A Steven Spielberg Film," "A Film by James Cameron" or, the one Wells mentioned, "A Film by Rob Reiner." Had the film giants of that era compromised, today's filmmakers would have had to negotiate with the Writers Guild, instead of the film studio, to attain a possessory credit.

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