I received a vituperative e-mail yesterday from an acquaintance in the WGA who seems to be hysterical at the thought they we might not grab the DGA deal and end the strike, ASAP. As near as I can tell, he's mainly upset at my suggestion that we actually see the terms of the DGA deal before we embrace it. And of course, it might be nice if someone actually offered it to us before anyone said, "Yes, yes, we'll take it!"
Some will, of course. I'm not sure it will be anywhere near a majority of the Guild.
There seems to be a rumor making the rounds that a band of high-profile screenwriters and TV show runners are writing letters or signing petitions or otherwise circling to demand that our Guild accept anything even remotely akin to the terms the DGA has negotiated. Never mind the other, writer-oriented issues that some think are pretty darned important. They — whoever "they" are — insist we grab what the directors are getting. Insofar as I can tell, that alleged pressure group is not yet massing, or at least is not quite the tsunami that some are claiming. The rumor seem to come from the same place as the one from late November that a band of high-profile screenwriters and TV show runners were vowing to all go Financial Core and quit the Guild if the strike wasn't resolved by Christmas. That rumor was pure moonshine and this one may be, too.
I feel certain it's at least exaggerated. The top writers are all people who've lived through messy, nasty negotiations in their own careers. They've learned that you can't get what you're worth by being (or at least, looking) too desperate to take whatever the studios are willing to pay. At the very least, they've learned that you have to have your agent or lawyer look long and hard at the terms before you assume they're acceptable. You don't commit based on a rough summary of your own offer, let alone someone else's.
Which is not to say the DGA deal doesn't get us closer to a resolution of our strike. Even taking its summary at face value, one can see some good things. It's good that the AMPTP has dropped its insistence on never basing any formula on Distributors Gross. Some of the numbers are higher than they said they'd ever offer…and that's always a positive, even if the numbers still aren't high enough. Things are at least moving in the right direction. Best of all, the DGA offer provides a context for us to get back into bargaining and it provides a structure for some aspects of what we need.
Personally, I think we need something we can live with for a long time. My outraged correspondent thinks we should take whatever the studios offer with regard to New Media and then, if we later realize it's too low, we can adjust the numbers upward in some future contract negotiation. That'll happen when hogs take wing. If we start on the hind tit of that marketplace, that's where we'll stay. To get the numbers up once they're established will require a strike that will make the current one look like a station break. One of the things I'd like to think we're striking for is to not have the AMPTP think that every three years, they can get us to swallow a lousy deal. If they think that, guess what we'll be doing in three years.
So I'm sticking with my radical suggestion that we actually look at the offer, get its numbers crunched by crunchers we trust, and then decide if it gives us what we deserve. If it positions us as non-participants in the future of the entertainment industry, that's where we'll stay for a long, long time.