The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  The script is the first step toward a leap of faith that the cast, the crew, and ultimately the audience must willingly make to enter into the universe of a filmed narrative. Even when a writer delivers the work, the plan is only partly detailed. A screenplay does not equate to a film, nor does a television script amount to an episode. As Philip Dunne, screenwriter of The Last of the Mohicans, How Green Was My Valley, and Pinky, remarked, “The true analogy of script to picture is that of architect’s blueprint to finished house. Without the first, the second could not exist. No director can make a good picture out of a bad script, and it takes a very bad director indeed to ruin a good one, though it has been done.”8 Paul Schrader, who scripted Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, echoes this analogy: “A screenwriter is not really a writer; his words do not appear on the screen. What he does is to draft out blueprints that are executed by a team.”9 Screenwriters, then, are architects who might never visit the construction site. If a writer is not also the producer on a project, often the job ends after the planning phase. Writer Charlie Kaufman parodies this phenomenon in Adaptation when Charlie Kaufman the character arrives on the set of Being John Malkovich. Not only does the crew fail to recognize him as the film’s writer, they even find Charlie’s presence distracting and ask him to step out of the way.

  Although writers dream of crafting scripts that are ready to be shot as written, in reality they are often called back, or others are hired in their place, for multiple rewrites. Sometimes a script is purchased and then shelved. If a project moves forward, cast and crew build upon the blueprint, collaborating to realize plot and characters. In the early days of the industry, most writers worked under long-term contracts with studios. Now, more often than not, a writer works script by script. The time it takes to move from script to screen varies depending on the medium. Norman Lear found pleasure in both short and long formats: “You can have an idea on the first of the month and by the eighteenth, deliver it to . . . sixty million people [in television]. . . . But a movie, you can complete and make love to it for a year.”10

  If a writer lands on a successful television show, the work, no matter how satisfying, can become a routinized act of multitasking. Saul Turteltaub, who wrote on Candid Camera, The Carol Burnett Show, and Sanford and Son, dismissed any notion of his work as glamorous: “I’ll tell you the truth, a job is a job, and having a job was the most important thing. And bringing home a check . . . and supporting my family. . . . One show led to the other. As far as the work was concerned, it was just the same work, sitting down, then at a typewriter, and typing, and turning it in, and hoping it was performed.”11 As Turteltaub acknowledged, the writing itself is creative, but the task of writing a formulaic episode each week becomes habitual. Elias Davis, writer on M*A*S*H* and Frasier, provided a similar perspective: “You write for TV, you sit down and basically every week you’re doing about three or four things at once. You’re breaking the stories for new scripts, you’re writing a script, you’re rewriting another script, and you’re working on a script that’s onstage that week. And at the end of that week, one of those is . . . done. And then everything moves up on the checkerboard one square. . . . You come into the office every day, five days a week, sometimes six. . . . It’s a lunch-pail kind of job.”12 Television writers parcel out their weeks between writing alone, hammering out scripts in the writers’ room (more so if they are writing a comedy), and, if they are also producers, tweaking lines on the spot as needed. The work is varied and collaborative. And, as Turtletaub said, it is often rote.

  IMAGE 2 Writing staff of Caesar’s Hour in the office, c. 1955. Left to right front: Gary Belkin, Sheldon Keller, Mike Stewart, Mel Brooks. Back: Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart.

  Mel Tolkin Collection, Writers Guild Foundation Archive, Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles

  Many writers try to seek a balance, making the most of their talent and passion while complying with the needs and expectations of the executives who pay them. Feigning the former rarely works on the page. William Goldman, who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and The Princess Bride, insists that writers should work only on stories they are passionate about, not ones they think will sell. “This sounds so rabbinical, but you can only write what you give a shit about. And you have got to keep doing that. For example, if you don’t like special effects movies, don’t try to write one, because it will suck. . . . I don’t like special effects movies. . . . It would be ridiculous for me to try to write one. You have got to try to write about something you care about—that sounds really corny, but it’s true.”13 Alvin Sargent, writer of Paper Moon and Ordinary People, echoed this sentiment when touting the superlative skills of a peer: “Well, I shouldn’t say this because he’s a friend of mine—but I wish I’d written Cool Hand Luke. But I can’t write that stuff. There’s a kind of muscle in Frank Pierson’s work. He’s extremely articulate. He’s a very, very bright guy with a history, in every way, as a journalist, a fighting Marine. I’m a nice guy. I did write [for] Naked City. But in my Naked City, the writing was nice.”14

  Many television writers make their way in the industry by emulating the voice of a series creator. Courtney Lilly, writer on Arrested Development and The Cleveland Show, explained how television writing often means learning to be a brilliant mimic: “You are writing in somebody else’s voice for a living. There are people that make a living with that as their primary skill set. And there are people like David E. Kelley [who originated Ally McBeal] who just create shows, and that’s kind of their thing. . . . And the people with the most versatility are the ones that have the most opportunity to work. It is a job. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s great. But just like anything else, it’s not like ‘Ah, I’ve arrived! It’s perfect!’ It’s not like that.”15 The bureaucratic structure of the industry does weigh heavily on many writers, making them feel they must disengage with their own creative visions and become team members in order to succeed.

  Since very early on in motion picture writing, producers have brought in supplemental writers as specialists to doctor scripts according to their areas of expertise, whether writing action sequences, comedic scenes, genre pictures, or key revisions. Studios often view writers as interchangeable talent. There are instances of directors, actors, or cinematographers being replaced midway through a project, but they are rare. Writers, on the other hand, regularly step in for a portion of the work without necessarily getting screen credit. Sandra Tsing Loh, who worked on the television series Clueless and contributed dialogue to Chicken Little, joked that she either gets called in to do “little jewels of jobs, quick little mini-tartlets” or to work with other writers to boost the comedic elements in a feature. She describes these group punch-up sessions as “yelling funny lines at the screen” while “locked in a room with ten white male comedy writers named Josh.”16

  Studios sometimes contract ace writers to deliver several sequential drafts of a script based on a pitch. They will pay these scribes up front, knowing that to reach a shooting script the production team will need to work through multiple rewrites. While these so-called multi-step deals were once the bread-and-butter of the post–studio system era, they have become increasingly rare. Michael Oates Palmer, a writer on The West Wing and a WGA West board member, understands the financial incentive for the decline of step contracts. Yet he thinks the retreat “penny wise and pound foolish,”17 arguing that contracting for a single draft of a script fails to capitalize on the collaborative process to reach the best possible version of the narrative.

  Today, most writers—from novices to industry veterans—prepare “spec” (speculative) scripts, that is, uncommissioned screenplays written for possible future sale. They are gambling months or years of labor if the script goes unsold. A spec script can serve as a calling card from the writer to a prospective agent and, in turn, from the agent to a hungry producer. Some established writers draft specs for the pleasure of bringing an idea to fruition, some do it out of financial nece
ssity, and others want to establish themselves in a different genre.

  My use of the term “labor” might seem incongruent with the creative process of writing. Even though writing calls for a great psychic effort, the work of hammering words onto paper does not rise to the level of manual labor in the traditional sense. Since the 1930s, with few exceptions, professional screenwriters have been college educated. In recent generations, many have earned graduate degrees, though not necessarily in fields related to film or television. Most working writers emerge from the middle and upper middle classes; most are white; and the majority, most strikingly from the 1930s through the 1970s, have been men.18 Today, many women make a living as professional writers, but longitudinal studies have found that their scripts are far less likely to make it to the screen.19

  Sociologists Joan Moore and Burton Moore mapped the sweeping changes in the screenwriters’ labor conditions: “The studio writer of 1923 was most often a paid employee who worked a regular day in a specified place. By 1970, the writer was most likely to be working in combination with a producer and director ‘developing a property’ which [would] ultimately be sold as a ‘package.’ . . . The director is always the writer’s client—the person to whom he delivers his work and whom he must please.”20 Whereas film writers cater to the needs of a director or a producer, television writers have the additional burden, in some cases, of having to comply with the demands of a sponsor or network.

  Although the work of a writer is inarguably part of an assembly-line production, it appears to the outsider more akin to white-collar labor. Andrew Ross, who studied the contemporary Silicon Valley labor force, designates these New Economy creative types as “no collar” laborers.21 This terminology suits screenwriters in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century; they belong to the flexible hours, work from home or a coffee house economic class. It would require a carefully tailored fit for any labor organization to represent such an unwieldy cohort.

  Over the years the Writers Guild has shouldered this complex task. Eighty years into its project, the Guild is the bargaining agent for writers who create film, television, news, animation, streaming media, and video game scripts for American signatory companies.22 For the writers under its protection, the Guild convenes and mobilizes members, addresses their concerns, negotiates and enforces contracts, lobbies on behalf of its members, represents the face of screenwriters to the outside world, and preserves the craft of screenwriting.

  This final directive, to preserve the art of writing, illuminates the subtle difference between a craft guild and a union. During moments of crisis, writers feel compelled to choose sides based on how they interpret the terms guild and union. Bob Barbash, writer on Zane Grey Theater, explained how this perception played out during a strike in 1960: “A tremendous amount of people in the Guild . . . resent the word ‘union.’ . . . [Every] morning I had to be carrying a picket sign in front of MGM. Now that is not a Guild. That’s a union, man. When you are walking there and you are trying to stop people from crossing the line. We are an unusual group because we like to think of ourselves as [part of a] super, upper [tier of] intelligence. That we don’t work on a loading dock . . . but if you are going to have a union, you are a union.”23 In contrast, the term guild implies a focus less on working conditions and more on championing the artistry of the profession. Agreeing on terminology is not merely semantic: it has resulted in a recurring tug-of-war across the entertainment industry between writers and sometimes even within an individual writer’s mind. The battle over self-definition will be a recurring theme in this book. The internal friction is captured in the very concept of “creative labor.”24

  IMAGE 3 The revolution will be downloaded. Rally on Hollywood Boulevard during the 2007–2008 WGA strike.

  Photo by author

  Writers must join the Guild if they have surpassed a certain quantity of work with a company that has signed as a contractual partner on the Guild’s collective bargaining agreement. A signatory company can be as vast as a multinational corporation or as limited as a small pro-union production company. An associate writer amasses units to gain full membership, and today writers must belong to either the WGA East (which uses the acronym WGAE) or the Writers Guild West (which prefers WGAw), depending on geography. The Guild’s stated objectives are voluminous. It contracts minimum rates for specific types of work, determines writers’ screen credits, ensures payment of residuals, provides pensions and health benefits for members, engages in national policy debates that concern writers’ interests, and provides continuing education for members and the community. Some writers have seen their induction into the Guild as a sign of having “made it” in the industry. Others have felt membership to be a weighty burden foisted upon them. And still others have paid little attention to what membership means. Then there are those who view membership as a life raft. Barbara Corday, creator of Cagney & Lacey, expressed deep gratitude for the benefits afforded to veteran writers: “First of all, having residuals. Lifetime medical insurance as a backup to Medicare, as a secondary insurance. How many people outside of Congress have things like that? It’s just phenomenal.”25

  Corralling this disparate group of workers, however, is an arduous task. The Guild brings together thousands of individuals who predominantly perform solitary work. As Hal Kanter, creator of the series Julia, noted in the 1970s, “We writers are, collectively, a strange group of creatures and it’s a frequent source of amazement to me that the Guild is such a well-run zoo!”26 John Furia Jr., writer of The Singing Nun and president of the WGAw from 1973 to 1975, laughed as he pointed out, “We are the most individualistic group to band together.”27 Phyllis White, who worked on writing teams for various television series from the 1950s through the 1980s, noted the paradox of singular writers with unique voices aligning for a collective cause: “It’s a Guild of individuals as no other union is. You’ve got the Teamsters and there are a certain number of Teamsters who do the same job. . . . They do the same hours. They do the same thing. We don’t. . . . Trying to amalgamate this group . . . [of] nearly 5,000 into one union now is horrendous. It’s amazing that it works at all.”28

  The Guild’s daunting task is further complicated by the reality that many writers also hold membership in at least one other trade union. Specifically, the other groups that negotiate with signatory companies include the Directors Guild of America (DGA), which represents directors, assistant directors, unit production managers, and production associates; the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which represents actors, extras, broadcast journalists, and puppeteers, among others; and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents a diverse set of industry workers, from electricians to set carpenters, makeup artists, prop masters, cinematographers, editors, and art directors.

  Peer organizations, studios, and the press regard the Writers Guild as the enfant terrible of the industry. Although writers have not consistently mobilized for social justice or workers’ rights, the Writers Guild has always been the most politicized among its fellow organizations. Many chalk up this reputation to writers’ eccentric personalities. But the reason writers are better equipped to drum up support for an issue is that every Guild member performs the same labor: putting words on paper. The other three organizations service vastly larger constituencies with needs so diverse that a united front proves tricky—especially when it comes time to negotiate with the monolithic Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

  The AMPTP is a powerful bargaining unit that digests the concerns of hundreds of production companies, networks, and studios and then delivers a proposal—representing the united group’s interests—to the negotiating table. Whereas in standard bargaining a union tries to garner advantage by playing one company off against others, the AMPTP positions itself so that the various unions must jostle with each other, grabbing for scraps at the table. This tactic, called “reverse pattern bargain
ing,” forces each guild into what one member called “a kind of a chess game between the three unions.”29

  Since its formation, the Writers Guild has gone on strike six times, in 1959–1960, 1973, 1981, 1985, 1988, and 2007–2008. Three of these industrywide walkouts were protracted, lasting for many months. SAG has endured a total of five strikes. In marked comparison, DGA’s members have walked out only one time since the guild’s formation in 1936. That strike, in 1987, lasted three hours and five minutes. IATSE has never once gone on strike over filmed entertainment.30 In 1945, members of the short-lived Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) picketed their employers and literally took a beating. Despite screaming matches, lost jobs, and finger pointing among its members, the Guild still enjoys greater cohesion than other entertainment unions.

  Three Recurring Themes

  As I interviewed writers and began weaving their individual recollections into the larger narrative of the American media industry, I noticed three overarching issues. I will call attention to them in the following chapters, and so I want to pause here and explain each one briefly. They are: the shifting definitions of ownership and authorship, the meaning of a writer’s name on a screen credit, and the perception of writers being outsiders within their own professional communities.

  Authorship, Ownership, and Control

  Writers are at once creative artists and employees. Frank Pierson, former president of WGAw and of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and writer of Cool Hand Luke and Dog Day Afternoon, explained the absurdity of work-for-hire rules, which have plagued writers since the earliest days of cinema. “Work-for-hire says that Pope Julius II and so on painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria wrote Wagner’s operas. . . . [T]he employer is deemed to be the author. And that’s the source of our problem.”31 Long before the time of Guild’s first contract, writers had lost control of copyright. The US Copyright Act of 1909 states: “the word ‘author’ shall include an employer in the case of works made for hire.”32 As creative workers churning out stories for studios, writers have no ownership. Not until 1960, after a long-fought battle, did they begin to receive residual payments for subsequent screenings of their work. Profit participation for creative workers began in the 1950s: the writers’ pay rate is generally at 2 to 10 percent of net profit points, although a minority of writers have brokered deals for gross point profits. Screenwriters are paid for a script and for rewrites (plus a production bonus if and when a film based on the script starts principal photography) and for residuals on ancillary sales.