A number of my fellow WGA members have e-mailed me analyses of the DGA deal. Some of these, particularly in the numbers department, come to quite different interpretations. Others say that some important details (including at least one major gain) were oddly — presumably, innnocently — omitted from the summary that was released.
My conclusion so far? We may not know as much about this deal as we think we do. So while I'm still inclined to think the percentages are disappointing, I'm open to the possibility that the terms may be better than they appear to be from the summary. At least, I hope they are.
One of things e-mailed to me — twenty times so far, thank you — is a positive assessment of the deal by John Wells, a former WGA president and the producer of E.R., West Wing and many other successful shows. I also have some messages from folks who claim Wells has misunderstood some of the details or who offer the inevitable, probably unfair criticism that Wells is letting his producer side do the thinking here, rather than his writer side.
This is one of the occasional conundrums of officer status in the Writers Guild. If you're not a very successful writer, people complain that you may not understand the business and you're lacking a certain stature in the industry that a leader of the WGA oughta have. On the other hand, if you are a very successful writer, you're probably also doing some producing and/or directing, and then you get the complaint that you're not a pure writer and may have other interests at heart. The Wells administration was criticized for not taking a harder line against the studios. (My own feeling was that Wells was the right leader for that period…a period when the mood of the Guild was not conducive to a stronger stand. A lot of people, I know, think the WGA is "strike-happy" but my observation is that it's usually the opposite of that. It's just that every so often, we find ourselves in a position where we don't have any other viable option.)
So about the DGA offer, I dunno. I'm leaning towards pessimism but waiting to learn more, waiting to hear what the numbers crunchers say. Apparently, some of them do not yet have the full text of the deal to study and what they have may not be accurate or complete.
In the meantime, my buddy Bob Elisberg has an article in the L.A. Times to rebut one of their sillier editorials.