Director wants to share writing credit question

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  • Director wants to share writing credit question

    I was reading about the writing credit dispute between the director on Selma and the writer. Basically it's not a WGA thing and the original writer had a contract that states he will be sole writer. The director ended up doing a page one rewrite and wrote all the speeches in the story and wants to share credit. The writer says %$#@ that basically.

    Question: in studio and WGA productions what's stopping a director from doing that all the time if they want a writing credit?
    One must be fearless and tenacious when pursuing their dreams. If you don't, regret will be your reward.

    The Fiction Story Room

  • #2
    Re: Director wants to share writing credit question

    WGA credit arbitration.
    If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.
    Dave Barry

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    • #3
      Re: Director wants to share writing credit question

      Wasn't there a similar dispute on 12 Years a Slave? The writer and director were not even speaking to each other by the end of it. I think the writer won in arbitration, and at the Oscars.

      I have not seen Selma yet, hope to soon, but weren't all of the speeches written a long time ago by MLK and company?

      Happy Martin Luther King Junior day to all!
      "The Hollywood film business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S Thompson

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      • #4
        Re: Director wants to share writing credit question

        MLK's speeches, just like any other author's works, are copyrighted and controlled by his estate:

        http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...online/278853/

        If the estate doesn't give permission, you can't copy them.

        Also, Paul Webb's original contract for the "Selma" script allowed him to retain sole credit at his discretion. Because the film ultimately produced was a non-WGA production, the script wasn't subject to WGA arbitration in any event:

        http://www.thewrap.com/selma-screenp...denied-credit/

        Given the controversy over how LBJ is ultimately portrayed in Duvernay's version, it is either curious or totally understandable why Webb chose to keep the credit for himself.

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        • #5
          Re: Director wants to share writing credit question

          Originally posted by JoeBanks View Post

          Given the controversy over how LBJ is ultimately portrayed in Duvernay's version, it is either curious or totally understandable why Webb chose to keep the credit for himself.
          A) That controversy is completely ridiculous. It's oscar-season smoke screening.

          B) If there was a residual deal in place, it may have been connected to money.

          C) And this is the important one: While there are undoubtably cases of arbitration because somebody knows that credits=money, and there are certainly cases of people trying to grab credit, it's important to remember that the vast majority of credit fights happen because people think they deserve it.

          That is to say, it's entirely possible that writer didn't think that the director deserved credit. I remember somebody who had been on a few arbitration panels talking about having three or four writers who felt that they deserved sole credit on one of the projects he was arbitrating. Even accounting for each of them asking for the maximum and thinking only a shared credit is fair, you've still got more people who feel honesty entitled to credit than actually could get it.

          Reasonable, honest people disagree about what fair credit is on a given project. So one shouldn't assume that because there's a contentious credit dispute means that somebody is acting in bad faith.

          Writers are not always the best judges of credit on their own scripts.

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          • #6
            Re: Director wants to share writing credit question

            The bigger question to me is, why wasn't this film produced under a WGA contract? It was not some micro-budget, no-name indie producers involved.

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