The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (30 page)

While Brooks was incensed by the Guild’s choice to abandon the rights of the hyphenate, he was absolutely clear in his belief that a director who is not also a writer should not be given a possessory credit. The hyphenate was someone that both guilds should value.

The directors, they can’t do anything without the script. . . . I’m a director and a member of the Directors Guild, and a big director. Directors feel—incorrectly so—that they are the author of the movie or the author of the television piece. They’re not. . . . And without the writer, they are not even the director. They’re a guy looking for a job. . . . The writer
gives birth. The writer has always been the true genius of everything that happens in our business. . . . They should bow to hyphenates! . . . The Writers Guild has to bow to it. . . . You’re angry about it? Become a hyphenate! Become a director. Become a producer. Just don’t stay in your little cocoon and expect the same excitement.
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There are far more writers who would love to become hyphenates on successful projects than ever get the chance do so. Not everyone possesses the sheer talent, longevity, and luck that Brooks has had in his career, and competition for such coveted roles within studio productions has only become more difficult. Still, Brooks’s point is compelling: by placing writers and directors in adversarial roles, the two guilds have denied rights to some of their most celebrated members. Other hyphenates have either refused the possessory credit or felt ambivalent about it. When asked about his use of this credit, Carl Reiner was easy: “Oh, . . . I guess my agent figured that one out. They just asked me [if I wanted the credit] and I said sure.”
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With the credit, hyphenates can brand themselves and secure a particular level of remuneration, not just for one project but for all subsequent ones.

Feuds about the possessory credit have played out for decades between the two guilds. The DGA states clearly that it has never tried to obtain sole rights to credit and that “everyone involved in a motion picture is eligible” to negotiate for credits above the compulsory minimum.
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There have even been rare examples of a possessory credit given to novelists—Margaret Mitchell for
Gone with the Wind
or Alex Haley for
Roots
—when their work is adapted. But most seekers of the credit are directors.
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Ownership is rarely if ever at play, given that legal authorship is always in the hands of a production company. Not even a producer has sole authorial rights.

The history of determining credits is rife with battles over ego, branding, and notions of agency within production. After its failed attempt to control the possessory credit in the 1960s, the WGA has argued that the “film by” credit obscures the collaborative nature of production. Some hyphenates refuse the credit out of support for their fellow WGA members and their antipathy for the auteurist notion of cinema. Woody Allen, for example, has called the credit “pretentious and unnecessary.”
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But if many film hyphenates felt frustrated and abandoned by the Guild during the 1970s, the situation was even more contentious for television hyphenates.

The Television Hyphenate

My dad’s joke was always that he used to come into my bedroom when I was an infant and lean over my crib and say, “Produce! It’s the only way to protect your words!” And he was right.

—Chris Levinson (writer and producer on
Law & Order
and
Those Who Kill
) talking about her father, writer-producer Richard Levinson, interview 14 August 2013

By the 1960s, the writer-producer hyphenate was securely in place as an essential and unique voice within American television production. Studios and networks realized that writers who created a series and who became producers were economically desirable because they would have the determination to ensure that the final product was a success.
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Herb Meadow clarified, though, that his work as a producer would not give him ownership of series he created: “This is not really so much a question of control of your material, because in the end you don’t really have control of your material. It’s some jerk executives somewhere up on the fourteenth or fifteenth floor of some building that have control of your material.”
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Only the rare hyphenate—for example, Aaron Spelling in his early career, or Stirling Silliphant, or Norman Lear—would own a series outright. But the power was exciting, as collaborators William Link and Richard Levinson recalled:

[M]any writers, who would not otherwise commit themselves to the brutal treadmill of series production could be seduced by a greater salary and the title of ‘Producer.’ . . . He can write not only with words, but with wardrobe, with music, with editing, and especially with casting. . . . The television writer has at the very least a chance to become the
auteur
of the finished film, be it a segment of a series or a television movie or a mini-series. The terrain is scattered with booby traps, and the networks have absolute veto power, but the writer, if he is lucky, need no longer be an impotent outsider, provided he’s willing (or able) to move back and forth between the typewriter and the producer’s desk.
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From the 1960s to the 1980s, a television writers’ room generally included a hyphenate writer-producer, who was often also the creator of the series, a small team of two to four writers, and a story editor. In addition, freelancers
might be hired piecemeal to write a couple of episodes. Freelance writers were a majority in the Guild, and many jumped from series to series for their entire careers. Levinson and Link found freelance work to be drudgery: “Writers were tailors, cutting bolts of cloth to a rigid set of expectations. They would be provided with an existing group of characters and a format, and any flexibility within these parameters was severely limited.”
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David Isaacs, who wrote on
M*A*S*H
and
Frasier
, recalled audio taping an episode of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
to pick up the rhythms and style of the series before writing a spec script.
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When freelancers were hired, they would be given access to a show bible and scripts. Cheri Steinkellner explained, “It’s very valuable to read [a script], especially if you’re creating new work, because that’s how your work is first going to be seen. So it’s apples to apples. You read it and then you write what you read. As opposed to, you watch it and then you’re writing to what you see, it’s been through a very different process.”
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Steinkellner said a script is a blueprint for a series episode rather than something final in its own right. Sometimes freelance writers would be hired as staff writers, and sometimes a staff writer would take over for a hyphenate if the hyphenate left the show to work on another series.

Each episode of a series would be assigned to a writer by the hyphenate or the head writer. Once the episode was drafted, the head writer or hyphenate would edit or rework the episode to make sure that the writing was consistent with the series style. Ron Clark, writer on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
and of
High Anxiety
, described the work of a hyphenate: “You not only wrote, but you got other people’s material and rewrote that. Or asked them to rewrite it. Or showed them how to rewrite it.”
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Frank Pierson concurred: “That’s true of any really successful television series. And anything that [the hyphenate’s] going to be working on, he’s going to wind up doing the bulk of the writing himself.”
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Even if they did substantial rewrites, hyphenates would generally leave the original writer’s name on an episode and solely take a producer or executive producer credit. Because the writing credit was tied to residuals, sharing credit would mean that only half of any payment would go to the writer. George Eckstein, writer on
The Fugitive
and three
Perry Mason
television movies, described the relationship: “The writer’s primary goal in most cases is to preserve his material as he wrote it. The producer’s primary goal is to put the best possible show in front of the camera and on the air.”
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In a perfect world, those outcomes would be one in the same; but the reality was that hyphenates regularly reworked scripts,
and some were troubled by the Guild tradition that the original writer should receive sole credit. Ernest Kinoy, a hyphenate himself, did not envy the Guild leadership: “The whole problem of the merging of the managerial ranks with writers is a terrible problem.”
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Much of the tension within the television membership of the Guild was between hyphenates and freelancers. In 1967, Hal Kanter was irritated by the assumption some writers made about the motivations of hyphenates: “It’s also a myth that when a writer becomes a hyphenate, he becomes the enemy . . . no longer a fellow writer. Almost every man who gets up to scream about the injustices being done to him as a freelancer would grab at the chance to be a hyphenate—a story editor, producer, whatever would be offered to him. Does this disagreement then boil down to envy? That’s hardly a sound basis for good judgment.”
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Some freelancers, many of whom were hired by hyphenates, found it disquieting that their supervisor at work could also be on the board of directors for their rank-and-file union, especially during negotiations. Carey Wilber, a writer on
Rawhide
and
Star Trek
, expressed his outrage at the idea that a union would allow someone in management to decide critical Guild matters. “Listen, for Christ’s sake, old man Hearst had cards in half a dozen different types of newspapers unions. He had a card in the typographical union, but they sure as hell weren’t asking him to sit around in a decision-making capacity.”
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Writers who were particularly incensed about hyphenates believed that there should be no place for them in the setting of Guild policy. As Ben Roberts, writer on
Mannix
and creator of
Charlie’s Angels
, put it, “There is a strike and push comes to shove, the writers are not going to back you simply because they consider you the enemy. Most writers who’ve worked for us—we consider them our friends. . . . But when it comes to their livelihood, to their families and themselves, I think it becomes a battleground.”
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Problems came to a head for hyphenates and their relationship with the WGA in early 1973. At stake during negotiations that year were improved health and welfare benefits, salary increases for television writers, and a share in supplemental markets and scales increases for income from these markets (including pay TV and newly introduced videocassettes).
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As the Guild teetered on the precipice of a strike, the weight of hyphenates on both the labor and the management sides became a crucial factor in seeking a solution to the labor dispute. In anticipation of a strike, the WGA distributed rules to its entire membership, including members who were currently working on series as writer-producers. Among the key provisions was a
broad prohibition against any member crossing a WGA picket line, even to perform producing or directing work. In addition, writers could not resign from the Guild during a strike to continue their supervisory roles. Sy Salkowitz, a longtime freelancer on such series as
Naked City
and
Ironside
, remembered, “That night . . . was the first dawning on the hyphenate that he was no longer safe. That he would have to stay out of work. They were aghast. There was an outcry of rage and all kinds of things. However, we held firm.”
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As in the 1960 strike, the studios expected their writer-producers, writer-directors, and writer-story editors to continue their duties on the management side during the walkout. The WGA sent letters to hyphenates who continued to work, threatening them with penalties. The Guild issued disciplinary sanctions for approximately thirty hyphenates and stripped nine additional hyphenates of their union membership, including David Victor, creator of
Marcus Welby, M.D
., and Jack Webb. The strike lasted sixteen weeks (from 6 March to 24 June), but the feud ignited between the Guild and hyphenate members would blaze for another five years.

Hyphenates were alternately bewildered and outraged by their censure. Virtually all of them considered themselves writers first and foremost; the daily experience of working was not that of wearing two entirely different hats, but rather of one role providing a seamless transition to performing the second role better than anyone else could. Sherwood Schwartz said about being a hyphenate, “I don’t believe they’re separate. I think that writing and producing—if the same man is involved with both—are a unit. It’s not two separate functions [like] . . . a producer with credits. I have been a producer since 1963. I have rewritten every script because you have to.”
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One group of hyphenates, outraged that their peers had been fined and expelled from the WGA for working as producers during the 1973 strike, created a new organization. It was first called the Hyphenate Committee and then became the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors. Leonard Stern, a founding member of the hybrid organization, believed that its role was to protect hyphenates from being exploited or betrayed by any one union.
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Although the organization never had much legal power, over the years it developed into a lobbying group, becoming the “moral conscience” of the industry and tackling causes such as the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, ageism, violence on television, and media consolidation.
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There was also some talk at the time that hyphenates might leave the WGA and join the Producers Guild of America (PGA), which had united the Screen Producers
Guild and the Television Producers Guild in 1962.
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Ultimately, the WGA was able to hold all of its writers together. As the Guild leadership now understood, hyphenates were some of the most successful working writers within the union and brought the most money into Guild coffers. The WGA could not afford, politically or financially, to cut them off.