Why I am running for the Board of Directors of WGA West
I’ve been a proud member of the WGA since 2011, writing pilots for HBO, Netflix, CBS, Hulu, the CW, TNT, and now Showtime. The first of the pilots I worked on to break my eight-year-long streak of unproduced scripts and actually make it to the screen will be airing on Netflix in September. I got into the business for the health insurance, and stayed in it for love. (And because I was sick of writing novels.)
Until very recently, I lived in Berkeley, raising four children and a couple of poorly behaved dogs. Now that I’ve booted my children out of the house, rented a place here in Los Angeles, and hired a dog trainer, I’m eager to serve my union.
Before I was a writer, I was a public defender, representing clients in drug conspiracies, bank robberies, and other federal crimes. This experience makes me comfortable with the prospect of taking on the studios and the streamers in our upcoming MBA negotiations.
We must prepare for our 2020 AMPTP MBA Negotiations.
Just six months from now, our guild will be confronting negotiations that will define the rest of our careers. Unlike the DGA, which has invested heavily in researching business trends, we have heard nothing from our union about efforts to assemble data on the issues critical to the vast majority of its members. We need to prepare for what is ahead of us. If we don’t do the research, we won’t even know what to fight for.
Our world is changing rapidly. Disney+, Netflix, Amazon and others are making residuals a thing of the past. If we do not focus on practicalities — like residuals, span protections, family leave, etc. — those of us who don’t have nine-figure overall deals are going to be left wondering why our incomes have been cut in half and where our green envelopes have gone.
I support negotiation.
Packaging and affiliate production are serious issues that must be addressed. I believe, however, that rather than wait for the resolution of a years-long legal battle, we can and should negotiate with the ATA for the best possible deal.
Very few writers ever see a meaningful back end. The lucky few who do would absolutely get more money in profit participation without agency packaging fees. There is no evidence, however, that getting rid of packaging would translate to higher salaries for the rest of us. Nor is it clear that more of us would end up getting jobs without packaging. If we succeed in ending the practice of agency packaging, the savings will go back to studios. Who wants to take bets on whether they will pass that money along to us?
Accordingly, we must return to the table and negotiate a deal that maximizes transparency, choice, and getting all writers, not just those lucky few, a piece of the pie.
Feature writers are getting the short end of the stick.
The concerns of feature writers are often very different than those of TV writers. Feature writers pay dues of 1.5% of every dollar they earn. TV writers at the producer level are able to pay no more than WGA minimum. These means that an astonishingly well-compensated showrunner could pay less in dues than a mid-level feature writer. This disparity negatively impacts all of us. We all need to pay our fair share, in order to keep our health insurance and pension fund viable.
I will not be ethically compromised.
Whether or not it is a technical violation of the rules, it is a strategic error for one of the leaders of the Negotiating Committee to tell us to fire our agents because packaging is criminal and affiliate production violates anti-trust laws, and then go on, months later, to sell a packaged Endeavor Content show. If elected to the Board, I promise to avoid such hypocrisy.
Read the Statements of Phyllis Nagy for President, Craig Mazin for Vice President, Nick Jones, Jr. for Secretary-Treasurer, and for the Board: Courtney Kemp, Sarah Treem, Jason Fuchs, Marc Guggenheim, Nick Kazan, Ashley Miller, and my slate-mate, Rasheed Newson, and if you feel our concerns and opinions align with yours, vote for us!
