Writers Guild of America
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The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the collective bargaining representative, or labor union, for writers in the motion picture and television industries in the United States. As of 2003, it claims more than 11,000 members nationwide. Though it calls itself a labor union, it serves in many capacities as a professional standards organization and even runs the WGA script registration service which non-members can use.
In addition to establishing minimum employment standards for its members, the WGA is the final arbiter of screenwriting credit for film and television programs made under its jurisdiction. Indeed, the issue of proper credit was one of the driving forces behind the creation in 1921 of the Screen Writers Guild, the WGA's predecessor organization. Today, the Guild also provides health and pension benefits for its members, issues the Writers Guild of America Awards, and runs the WGA script registration service to help writers prove authorship of their works.
For historical reasons, the WGA is divided into two separate unions, the Writers Guild of America, east and Writers Guild of America, west. Generally, a writer who lives east of the Mississippi River belongs to the east branch, while a writer who lives to the west of it belongs to the west. However, under the terms of the affiliation agreement between the two Guilds, any writer who works in theatrical films is automatically a member of the Writers Guild of America, west no matter where he or she lives. The two unions are currently engaged in a non-binding mediation process to determine the disposition of the dues of members who live in the east but who derive all or part of their income from film work.
The current president of the WGAw is Patric Verrone. The current vice-president of the WGAw is David N. Weiss.
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The 2004 WGAw Elections
In 2004, WGA West was embroiled in a scandal, during which leadership changed more than three different times in only a few weeks. Victoria Riskin, re-elected as president in 2003, was determined to be ineligible for the post because she had not worked as a writer recently enough to qualify. She resigned and was replaced by vice-president Charles Holland, who resigned a few weeks later when questions arose about statements he had made regarding his college and military career. After Riskin resigned but before Holland left, the guild board appointed Daniel Petrie, Jr. as vice-president, and assumed the presidency upon Holland's departure. Petrie had been elected president of the Guild before Riskin.
The U.S. Department of Labor supervised a new election in September 2004 between Eric Hughes and Daniel Petrie, Jr.. Hughes accused the union of being run by insiders only for the benefit of famous writers, at the expense of new or little-known writers. Hughes presented a number of documents on his website, which he alleged proved his accusations.
Petrie won the election by a 71% to 26% margin. (The remaining three percentage points represented votes for write-in candidates, or ballots that were left blank.)
The 2005 WGAw Elections
In the first election after the 2004 scandals, all but two candidates for every open position declared allegiance to one of two slates: "Writers United" and "Common Sense." Art Eisenson, one of the two independent candidates, would later drop out of the race, leaving David S. Weiss as the lone independent.
Led by animation writer Patric Verrone, Writers United candidates ran on a platform centered on the need for the WGA to extend its jurisdiction by spending up to 30% of its budget on organizing reality television, video games, and other areas not generally under Guild jurisdiction. The Common Sense candidates, led by feature writer Ted Elliott, had a more diverse set of viewpoints, although all agreed that the 30% budget target was inappropriate.
Verrone, the first candidate in Guild history to hire an outside campaign advisor, ran a tightly focused campaign centered on meeting individual Guild members in small groups. After meeting with some 900 WGAw members in a variety of settings, Writers United swept into office by large margin, capturing the presidency, vice-presidency, secretary-treasurership, and all eight open board positions. With one of the highest turnouts of any Guild election, Verrone was elected with 68% of the vote. The lowest vote-getter was David S. Weiss, who was also the lone remaining candidate not on either slate, leading some observers to predict an era of increased slate focus in Guild politics.
The Writers United victory was also seen by many Hollywood observers as a harbinger of a Guild that would take a harder line in future negotiations with studios.
WGA Awards
The WGA also administers the Writers Guild of America Awards which have honoured screenwriting achievement in various categories since 1949.
101 Greatest Screenplays
In 2006 the WGA announced its list of the "101 Greatest Screenplays", as voted on by its members. Members had nominated over 1400 screenplays, although technically any produced screenplay was eligible, regardless of era or language. The screenplay for Casablanca, written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, was voted the best.
Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Billy Wilder each had four screenplays in the top 101. William Goldman, John Huston and Charlie Kaufman had three each.
56 of the screenplays were adaptations from other works, including Casablanca. 60 were dramas, 26 were comedies and 15 were comedy/dramas.