I posted this here back on January 10, 2004. A few days ago, I got into a discussion with someone who thinks they're going to receive a writing credit on an upcoming movie for which they made a few story suggestions. They did not ever sit down at a computer or even a typewriter and write anything resembling an actual script but they feel they have input into what happens in the film and what the actors say…or naturally, it's logical that they get a writing credit.
I asked them how many other people they thought had "input" into the story. They said, "Oh, maybe a dozen of us or so." I decided it was time to rerun this piece. Everything in it still applies except my reticence to get involved in this matter with the Writers Guild. That reticence is now even much greater…
According to this article in The New York Times (which you may have to register to read), the end credits for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King run 9 minutes and 33 seconds. They don't say how many names that involves but the previous Lord of the Rings movie (with apparently a shorter crawl) had 559 names.
This doesn't matter to a lot of people since they aren't going to sit through them, anyway. Theaters may even like it since it helps clear the place out and lets the crew get an early start at sweeping up the Raisinets boxes. But it raises a big issue for uncredited writers.
As you probably know, a lot of movies, especially action flicks and comedies, employ more writers than are listed on the screen. The first Flintstones movie allegedly had more than 30. A lot of folks who get hired to write movies now just automatically presume that someone, or perhaps many someones will follow them.
The Writers Guild of America has the sole power to determine the screen credits on a movie. (Quick aside: In my travels through the entertainment biz, I occasionally encounter someone who's involved in a potential movie in some capacity and though not a screenwriter, says they've been promised a writing credit or will demand one. They're not going to actually write in the accepted sense but they're going to make suggestions and they think they can negotiate a writing credit. If I have the energy, I explain to them that except on a non-Guild film, the studio cannot guarantee them a writing credit. The WGA can always arbitrate and award the credit to the person or persons they decide actually wrote the film. And while that arbitration process is flawed in some ways, it never awards screen credit to anyone who didn't actually produce a script.)
Back when the WGA won jurisdiction over screen credits, it became customary for them to attempt to limit them to two names or in extreme cases, three. The thinking was that (a) more names than that devalued the role of all screenwriters on a film and (b) keeping it down to two or three names might induce studios to keep it down to two or three writers, minimizing how often our work was rewritten by others. Obviously, the latter hasn't worked as intended and some writers are happy about this. They figure more writers being hired to rewrite means more writers being hired, period. But let's turn our attention to that first reason.
That it was more dignified for writers not to be part of a huge list was the thinking back when movie credits were 20 or 30 names. There was usually one credit for Make-Up and it went to the head of the department, not to the 25 folks who actually did the make-up. The head of the Special Effects division got the one credit for Special Effects, regardless of how many guys actually did the work. So it didn't seem that ignoble for someone to write a large chunk of a movie and not get his or her name on it. Most of the people who worked on the movie didn't get their names on it.
Today, most of them do…all 40 Make-Up people, all 348 guys who made the Special Effects happen, the caterer, the insurance broker, the insurance broker's secretary, the security guards, the guys who drove the Craft Services truck to the set, the people who loaded the crullers onto the Craft Services truck…
…but not the guy who wrote 20% of the movie. His name is nowhere to be seen.
Several times, I've been asked to serve on WGA committees that will explore how the credits guidelines might be revised. I would sooner put some vital body part in a drill press. Even opening the floor to discussion gets some writers so angry that flecks of foam begin appearing on their computer monitors and they accuse those who want to change things of being traitors and idiots and sell-outs and…you know, all those things Ann Coulter calls Democrats. I don't need that in my life. Still, I can't help but wonder aloud if now that credits credit almost everyone, it isn't far more ignoble to say that writing a large chunk of a movie still doesn't deserve even cursory recognition. Aren't we now saying that writing 20% of the movie is less important than doing 2% of the wardrobe handling?
The more I think about it, the more I think the whole concept of what screen credits mean has changed, and that it's nuts for the WGA to cling to the perspective of 1946. But I don't expect it to be changed. Not without some serious bloodshed within the Guild.