Writers endorse credits simplification

15% of WGA members voted in referendum

By DAVE MCNARY

The WGA's rewritten rules are great news for rewrite scribes.

Members of the Writers Guild of America have strongly endorsed a trio of proposals in a referendum aimed at simplifying procedures for determining feature screenwriting credits.

About 15% of WGA members voted, with 1,619 ballots cast. The changes, announced Friday, go into effect immediately for any project for which a Notice of Tentative Writing Credits is submitted by a production company.

The referendum was the guild's first on screenwriting credits in six years (Daily Variety, June 12). Although screen credit procedures have been a thorny issue for WGA members in the past, the revamp of key guidelines did not generate any major controversy among guild members.

The proposal drawing the strongest support, at 90%, requires credit arbiters to consult with one another via teleconference in all cases in which a decision is not unanimous. The previous rules prohibited arbiters from communicatingwith one another.

Voters gave 86% approval to a proposal eliminating language allowing the arbitration committee to award screenplay credit to subsequent writers for "any substantial contribution." Scribes would continue to receive screenplay credit if they can show a contribution of more than 33% of the script as a first writer or writer of an adaptation or 50% if they act as a subsequent writer on an original screenplay.

WGA members backed with an 83% approval rate a proposal to ease what's known as the "60% rule," which set a high threshold for directors, exec producers or others who are part of the production executive team on a project to also receive writer credit. The old rule had stipulated that those subsequent contributors had to have contributed "substantially more than 60%" of the revised script to qualify for credit; under the new guidelines, the threshold drops to "more than 50%."

In a message to members, WGA East president Michael Winship and WGA West president Patric Verrone called the vote "yet another indication of our continued, growing solidarity."

Proponents of the proposals contended that the changes will reduce the number of split decisions among arbiters and improve the chances that rewrite teams will gain credit, provided they contribute more than half of the final screenplay.

The WGA's credits review committee had noted prior to the voting that hyphenates (and teams that include a hyphenate) would still need to meet a more-than-50% standard as subsequent writers on adaptations and originals, and that hyphenates proposed for credit will continue to trigger automatic arbitrations.

"In short, these proposals still hold hyphenates to a higher standard while preserving the special privileges that recognize the unique efforts of the first writer," the committee said.

The WGA is the final arbiter on who receives screenplay and story credit on pics and TV shows. In the 2002 vote, members spurned a change that would have abolished the "heightened" requirement that makes it tougher for directors and producers to receive writing credit.

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