Writer's Strike, Copyright and New Media

I found this article by an anonymous writer on strike who brings up some great points about how the problem with the Hollywood studio "shit factory" is that writers don't retain control of their copyrights. He also discusses how new media will democratize writing and hopefully allow greater creative control so new and innovative stories are told.

A Writer's Blog: From the Picket Lines - "Is Hollywood a Shit Factory? The Cause and The Cure"

by A.E. Vogler

The WGA strike has thrust the film business into the limelight these past weeks. It’s stimulated a lot of healthy scrutiny and questioning, within the industry as well as without. And there’s one sentiment that’s resounded. Hey guys, you say, while you’re striking, why not take a look at the elephant in the room? The more insistent problem, the one none of you ever seems willing to look at, the one that just keeps getting worse all the time: Hollywood is a Shit Factory. Sure, every once in a while a good one slips through the cracks. But only once in a while. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The majority of studio releases are total and utter shit.

So many smart people, people who have killed themselves to get here, people who sacrificed everything for their love of movies. And yet still, most movies are shit. How could this happen? The answer is as complex as the movie industry itself. But it’s my belief that it ultimately boils down to one simple cause. It’s the reason we are entitled to residuals in the first place, and the reason we get paid so much money. Copyright.

In my last entry, I explained the concept of residuals in depth. Residuals, along with larger up front fees, are what we writers receive to compensate us for the fact that the studios retain legal copyright (i.e., authorship) over our work. What does that mean? It means that once we turn in our scripts, the studios can do whatever they want to them. On an overwhelming preponderance of projects, they bring in a new writer to give our scripts an overhaul, directing this second hired-gun to focus on specific elements. Beef up the action, or spruce up the dialogue, or how about instead of the lead character going on the pilgrimage to save a village of African refugees, he does it because – just spit balling here – because the super hot girl he never got in high school is about to marry some other guy? And say, while you’re digging around in there, could we end with a gun fight at a strip club? I know it sounds silly, but it would really help us at the box office. And so on.

Once this second writer has done the studio’s bidding, often a third writer is brought on to address whatever remaining elements the studio feels the first two writers didn’t deliver on. Sometimes four, five, six writers. The Flintstones movie famously credited 32 writers. And those are only the ones we know about! Not all writers who work on a film ultimately get credit.

This process is called “development.” It’s managed by studio executives whose titles are “Director of Development,” or “VP in Charge of Development,” or “Creative Executive, Development.” Now, lest you assume I’m going to bash these people, let me state up front that most of the development execs I’ve worked for are extremely intelligent people, knowledgeable about film and educated in story. They know what they’re doing. And they care about film. Individually, they’re not the problem.

The problem is the system. Because it’s not just a single exec who oversees the development of a script. It’s a whole chain of executives. Just as the writer feels that his job is to make the exec who hired him happy, that exec, in turn, feels that his job is to make the more senior exec who hired him happy. Up it goes, all the way to the studio head. (And these days, even the studio head answers to a parent company.) This means that each and every creative decision that’s made becomes not about what’s right for the film, what’s fresh and new and exciting and truthful – but about what the boss is going to say. That’s pretty much the sole criterion in the development process: anticipating the reaction of the big kahuna. And since most bosses are as unpredictable and impatient as they are shrewd and successful, everyone under them tends to default to playing it safe. Avoid anything untried. Do what’s worked before. Stick with proven formulas. And what happens? Anything new and original is weeded out. And everything turns to shit.

Now here’s the part my brethren in the Writers Guild don’t want to acknowledge: we’re complicit in this process. Why? Because like an abused wife who keeps crawling back to her no-good husband, we keep crawling back for those big paychecks. See, when we work, we get paid. I made more money on my first studio assignment than I did in my first ten years of struggle put together. We get those big up front fees in exchange for our copyright. And I’m here to say: we have to stop.

We have to retain copyright. Not because we’re smarter or more capable of shepherding scripts to greatness, but because WE WORK ALONE. Film is a collaborative medium. But writing isn’t. Writing is solitary art, born not of a system, but of a single mind. Tony Gilroy couldn’t get Michael Clayton financed inside the system (or maybe he just didn’t want to), so he went outside and struck a deal with a single investor, a real estate developer from Boston. I’m not privy to the nuts and bolts of Gilroy’s deal, but I’m going to venture a guess that he took less money in fees in exchange for creative control and a larger piece of the back-end. If the movie succeeded, so would he. If it didn’t, c’est la vi. But most importantly, he was free to make an original and compelling film.

This is how movies should be made. It’s my hope that with the advent of new media – ironically, the very platform we’re striking over – the film industry will democratize. Digital technology will provide easier access not only to production, but to exhibition via the Internet. In ten years, or maybe less, most households will have dynamite home theater systems, and new movies will premiere over the Internet on 75 inch HD TV’s in glorious surround sound. And here’s the thing. The studios have no control over Internet exhibition. What does that mean? It means in ten years filmmakers won’t need studios at all. Like Tony Gilroy, instead of going to the conglomerates for cash, we’ll go to venture capitalists. We’ll retain greater ownership and control of our work. And movies – mark my words – will get better.

I’ll be the first to admit this is a vastly over-simplified model, and that there are an unfathomable number of steps that must be taken to get there, many of them involving painful sacrifice on the part of the artists who make movies. But I believe that it’s an inevitability. So I say – screw four cents. If we’re going to go to war, let’s go to war for something that matters. It’s time to take movies back and make them matter again.