The 'credit' card
March 31, 2005
Three little words have caused tension between guilds since the early days.
By Jesse Heistand
It's a question as old as filmmaking and one that has pitted writers against directors against producers for decades. The possessory credit or, as it is commonly called, the "a film by" credit, was claimed in the early days by directors and producers more so than writers. Those three little words remain a source of tension among helmers and scribes, though the Directors Guild of America and Writers Guild of America exchanged olive branches last year in an effort to establish hard-and-fast rules to govern the use of the possessory credit, including limitations on its use by first-time feature directors. "If a script falls into your lap, and you've never done a film before, and you just shoot the script and suddenly, it's 'a film by,' then that doesn't make any sense to us at all," DGA president Michael Apted said last year when the guild formally unveiled its guidelines. Back in 1940, the Screen Writers Guild made a point of including provisions involving the possessory credit in its first contract in an effort to give the writer even more prominence onscreen. At the same time, the union tried to bar anyone other than a writer from claiming authorship of a movie. There was one problem: The WGA's contract did not allow limitations on such credits. At least, that is, until the negotiations of 1963, when the WGA was able to get industry negotiators in the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to agree that no one could use "a film by ... " unless they at least wrote the feature. Three years later, the WGA extended the restrictions to other phrasings of the possessory credit, further enraging directors. Most of the sparring has been between those two groups, with directors noting that they're taking credit for an audiovisual work that is inherently distinct from the script. The WGA, on the other hand, continues to insist that it is absurd for anyone other than the writer to claim authorial ownership. "The guild argued that only in the motion picture industry has the writer been subject to the indignity of having his authorship of the motion picture arrogated by nonwriters," according to Mike Franklin, who served as the WGA's executive director from 1958-77 and then as executive director of the DGA from 1978-87. The DGA would have none of it. On Jan. 7, 1967, it sent a telegram telling the AMPTP and various production companies that the WGA's newfound credit control "violates the established prerogatives, traditions and rights (of) motion picture directors." The DGA noted that the possessory credit had traditionally been the right of directors in Europe and the United States, at least back to the days of D.W. Griffith's 1915 release "The Birth of a Nation." The DGA eventually sued the writers guild, AMPTP and its member companies on May 9, 1967. In a front-page story the following day, The Hollywood Reporter called it a "history-making lawsuit." Less than two weeks later, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ralph Nutter denied the DGA's request for a temporary injunction, leading to a banner story in which The Reporter said the skirmish appeared to be far from over (in part because the DGA intended to appeal). Attorney Harold Fendler, representing the DGA, argued that the writers had unfairly taken away something that had been the director's right to receive for some 50 years. "Writers are jealous of directors and producers," Fendler told the court, to which the judge added, "Let us stipulate that both have egos." The lawsuit became moot for another reason -- MCA chief executive Lew Wasserman got involved. Wasserman concluded that the AMPTP had made a mistake, and, in the next round of negotiations in 1970, studio negotiators insisted that possessory credits were not a proper item for collective bargaining because they involved something above minimum-scale credits, like "written by." According to Franklin, Wasserman promised that the studios would limit the instances of these credits, and the WGA conceded, avoiding a potential strike. Credits, of course, proliferated wildly, and the WGA felt further insulted when, in 1981, the DGA was able to get the AMPTP to agree that directors must be given "a film by" credit in all outdoor advertising if there are six or more credits. More than 20 years later, the DGA moved to defuse the lingering resentment in March 2004 by voluntarily overhauling its credit guidelines. It put limits on when a first-time director can receive a possessory credit and also abandoned the 20-year-old outdoor advertising rules because they had clearly not worked, guild officials conceded.
More coverage:
 Creative force: The organized labor saga
'Credit' card: Guild clashes over credits
Picket senses: Labor unrest
Diplomatic community: Studio bargaining power
De Havilland rule: Contract clash and its effects
Dialogue: Olivia de Havilland
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