The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (56 page)

97
. David Isaacs, interview.

98
. Will Tusher, “Producers Once Again Unified,”
Variety
, 8 February 1982, 1.

99
. Ibid., 12.

100
. Grace Reiner, interview with author, 23 June 2009.

101
. Ibid.

102
. Dale Pollack, “Writers Pondering Strike Issue,”
Los Angeles Times
, 15 February1985,
http://articles.latimes.com/1985–02–15/entertainment/ca-3397_1_strike-issue
.

103
. Standard & Poor’s,
Industry Surveys
1985, L18, as cited in Holt,
Empires of Entertainment
, 16; Alan J. Scott,
On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

104
. Susan Christopherson, “Labor: The Effects of Media Concentration on the Film and Television Workforce,” in
Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry
, ed. Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 160.

105
. Peter Lefcourt, moderator, “Seven Letters to the Editor: A Roundtable Discussion on Politics in the Writers Guild of America,”
Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West
, April 2005,
http://www.wga.org/writtenby/writtenbysub.aspx?id=872
.

106
. Ibid.

107
. Edmund Morris, letter to the editor,
WGAw Newsletter
, May 1985, 26–27.

108
. Grace Reiner, interview.

109
. Ernest Lehman, “From the Guild President,”
WGAw Newsletter
, November 1985, 1, 8–9.

110
. Howard Rodman, interview with the author, 15 February 2011.

111
. Cheri Steinkellner, interview.

112
. “Writers Strike Chronology,”
Los Angeles Times
, 4 August 1988. Accessed at
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-04/news/mn-10237_1_writers-guild
.

113
. See Chad Raphael, “The Political Economic Origins of Reali-TV,”
Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media
, no. 41 (May 1997): 102–109.

114
. The WGA made slight gains on creative rights and foreign sales. The AMPTP secured a sliding residual scale for hour-long reruns.

115
. Chuck Slocum, interview with the author, 14 January 2010.

116
. Marc Norman, interview.

117
. George Axelrod, interview by Patrick McGilligan,
Backstory
3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 69.

118
. Ronald Bass, interview with the author, 13 June 2011.

119
. Joe Eszterhas, interview by Michael Fleming, “Playboy Interview: Joe Eszterhas,”
Playboy
, 1 April 1998, 58.

120
. Ronald Bass, interview.

121
. Caldwell,
Televisuality
, 105.

122
. Saul Turteltaub, interview.

CHAPTER 5   CONFEDERATION

1
. Tom Fontana, interview with author, 23 October 2009.

2
. A series of film-worthy twists, turns, mysteries, and dramas led to leadership upheavals within the WGA West, including the successive departures of two presidents, Victoria Riskin (
My Antonia
), the first female president of the WGAw (2001–2004), and Charles Holland (
Murder One
), the first African-American president of the Writers Guild (January–March 2004).

3
. John Auerbach, “Writers United?”
Cinema Journal
45, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 97.

4
. Carl DiOrio, “Mangan to Exit WGA East,”
Hollywood Reporter
, 31 August 2007.

5
. Tom Fontana, interview.

6
. Howard A. Rodman, “WGA Strike One Year Later: Rodman,”
Deadline Hollywood
, 28 February 2009,
http://www.deadline.com/2009/02/wga-strike-one-year-later-howard-rodman/
.

7
. Susan Christopherson, “Labor: The Effects of Media Concentration on the Film and Television Workforce,” in
The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry
, ed. Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 162.

8
. Andy Meisler, “The Man Who Keeps
E.R
.’s Heart Beating,”
New York Times
, 26 February 1995.

9
. Denise Mann, “It’s Not TV, It’s Brand Management TV: The Collective Author(s) of the
Lost
Franchise,” in
Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries
, ed. Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John T. Caldwell (London: Routledge, 2009), 99–114.

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

11
. Barbara Corday, interview with the author, 30 August 2013.

12
. See Mara Einstein,
Media Diversity: Economics, Ownership, and the FCC
(London: Routledge, 2004).

13
. Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706 6(2)(A) (2006).

14
. Jennifer Holt,
Empires of Entertainment: Media Industries and the Politics of Deregulation
, 1980–1996 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 150.

15
. Charles Slocum, interview with the author, 24 January 2010.

16
. Charles Slocum, “Seven Steps to Wisdom,”
Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West
, October 2002.

17
. This instability was occurring across media industries beyond film and television. See Mark Deuze,
Media Work
(Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007).

18
. Tom Fontana, interview.

19
. This is a summary list of the major regulatory provisions. The Telecommunications Act also revoked regulations on radio station ownership and cracked down on content violations with the inclusion of the Communications Decency Act, a new ratings system, and the requirement that all new television sets include the V-chip, a technology intended to allow parents to manage their children’s viewing based on content ratings. For a detailed analysis, see Jeff Chester,
Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy
(New York: New Press, 2007).

20
. Emanuel Levy,
Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film
(New York: NYU Press, 2001), 510
n
38. Later companies like Lions Gate Entertainment followed this pattern to great success.

21
. Another example is Fox Atomic. For more discussion of this movement, see Chuck Tryon,
Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 171.

22
. Gary Indiana, “Gus Van Sant,”
BOMB
45 (Fall 1993),
http://bombsite.com/issues/45/articles/1699#
.

23
. Alisa Perren,
Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012).

24
. Levy,
Cinema of Outsiders
, 3.

25
. Disney subsequently sold Miramax in 2010—not back to the Weinstein Company, but rather to the oil money/private equity firm Filmyard Holdings.

26
. There were also a number of short-lived series (
The Critic
) or series shown briefly on primetime that then transitioned to Saturday morning (
Batman: The Animated Series, The Tick, Life with Louie
).

27
. WGA memo, “WGA Reaches Groundbreaking Contract Agreement with Fox Television: Primetime Animation Writers Reach Contractual Parity with Their Live-Action Counterparts Los Angeles,” 14 August 1999, Special Collections, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library Archives, Los Angeles.

28
. David A. Goodman, interview with the author, 24 April 2009.

29
. Sydnye White, “Documentary by Design,”
Cinema Journal
45, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 94.

30
. Bill Carter, “Reality Shows Alter the Way TV Does Business,”
New York Times
, 25 January 2003.

31
. John Koch, “On the Dock of the Bay,”
Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West
, May 2005, 17.

32
. Del Reisman, “Spring through the Guilds and Honorary Societies,”
Weekly Variety
, 18–24 November 1996.

33
. John Zuur Platten quoted in Suzanne Oshry, “Getting in the Game,”
Written By: The Magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West
, October 2004, 52.

34
. Christy Marx quoted in ibid., 55.

35
. Charles Slocum, interview.

36
. The memo suggested a “charm school” that would have promising writers “undergo an intensive image makeover.” The goal was to increase the visibility of writers and to improve their professional status. Ron Tammariello, internal memo to Brian Walton and Paul Nawrocki, 1995, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library Archives, Los Angeles.

37
. See Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, “The Showrunner as
Auteur
,” in
Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status
, ed. Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine (New York: Routledge, 2011), 38–58.

38
. David Goodman, interview.

39
. Mann, “It’s Not TV, It’s Brand Management TV,” 99–114.

40
. Michael Curtin, “Matrix Media,” in
Television Studies after TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era
, ed. Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay (London: Routledge, 2009), 13.

41
.
Http://transition.fcc.gov/ownership/california100306/statement_patric_verrone.pdf
.

42
. Robin Schiff, interview with the author, 21 April 2009.

43
. Grace Reiner, interview with author, 23 June 2009. Howard A. Rodman said of her: “Grace Reiner is a force of nature, and has the entire MBA in her head, like a character from Fahrenheit 451” (Howard A. Rodman, personal communication with the author, 15 August 2010).

44
. David Robb, “WGA to Decide Walton Verdict,”
Hollywood Reporter
, 4 August 1998.

45
. Daniel Petrie Jr., memo to the membership of the WGA West, “A Referendum Defeated 921–821,” September 1998, Archives, Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles.

46
. Elias Davis, interview with the author, 29 September 2009.

47
. Anonymous, interview with the author, 26 April 2012.

48
. Grace Reiner, interview.

49
. Marc Norman quoted in Michael T. Jarvis, “Putting Faces to Some Famous Words,”
Los Angeles Times
, 31 October 2003, E10.

50
. William Goldman quoted in ibid.

51
. Charles Slocum, interview.

52
. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau, “Introduction,” in
The YouTube Reader
, ed. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009), 10.

53
. Ross McCall, interview with the author, 16 May 2009.

54
. Greg Thomas Garcia quoted in Neely Tucker, “Reality Looms: Writers’ Strike Could Change Pace of Television,”
Washington Post
, 1 November 2007.

55
. Mark Gunn, interview with the author, 22 March 2009.

56
. Patric Verrone, interview with the author, 26 April 2012.

57
. David Young, interview with the author, 29 May 2012.

58
. Jim Benson, “
Top Model
Takes Strikers Off Payroll,”
Broadcasting & Cable
, 7 November 2006,
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/106484-Top_Model_Takes_Strikers_Off_Payroll.php
.

59
. Stephen J. Cannell on behalf of the Caucus of Television Producers, Writers and Directors, statement read before the Public Hearing on Media Ownership,
F.C.C. Hearings Concerning Media Consolidation
, 3 October 2006, Los Angeles,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=5513687633
.

60
. Taylor Hackford on behalf of the Directors Guild of America, ibid.,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6518528813
.

61
. Mike Mills on behalf of the Recording Artists Coalition, ibid.,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6518524527
.

62
. John Connolly, AFTRA national vice president, ibid.,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6518524524
.

63
. Anne-Marie Johnson on behalf of the Screen Actors Guild, ibid.,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6518524529
.

64
. Mona Mangan, executive director, WGA East, ibid.,
http://transition.fcc.gov/ownership/california100306/statement_mona_mangan.pdf
.

65
. Patric Verrone, president of the WGA West, ibid.,
http://transition.fcc.gov/ownership/california100306/statement_patric_verrone.pdf
.

66
. Marshall Herskovitz, on behalf of the Producers Guild of America, ibid.,
http://transition.fcc.gov/ownership/california100306/statement_marshall_herskovitz.pdf
.

67
. Statement of Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, Re: Promoting Diversification of Ownership in the Broadcasting Services, et al. (MB Docket Nos. 07–294, 06–121, 02–277, 01–235, 01–317, 00–244 and 04–228),
2006 Quadrennial Media Ownership Review
, FCC 07–216 (2006), 120,
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_/files/11/10/74/f111074/public/attachmatch/FCC-07–217A5.pdf
.

68
. Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Michael J. Copps, ibid., 106,
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_/files/11/10/74/f111074/public/attachmatch/FCC-07–217A3.pdf
.

69
. Oshry, “Getting in the Game,” 52.

70
. Eric Bangeman, “Growth of Gaming in 2007 Far Outpaces Movies, Music,”
ars technica
, 25 January 2008,
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/01/growth-of-gaming-in-2007-far-outpaces-movies-music/
.