The hundred or so members of the ad hoc, loosely structured United Showrunners coalition still plan to honor their earlier offer to management that they would return as soon as negotiations resume, but not in line with the Nov. 26 date for a renewal of negotiations.
Instead they will wait to make sure management are serious about working out a new contract, according to Steve Levitan, Executive Producer, of “Back To You,” creator of “Just Shoot Me,” and writer/producer on “Frazier” and many other shows. Levitan emailed me over the weekend: “We have been asked (by the WGA) to stay out until we’re sure that they are bargaining in good faith. Most expect it to be a very short negotiation.”
Many of the Showrunners will be meeting informally tonight at a Mexican restaurant in West Los Angeles just as an opportunity to mingle. No other meetings of the group are scheduled at present, and one Showrunner said over the weekend if things go well, there will be no future reason to meet.
Levitan and the other show runners are coordinating closely with Patric Verrone and the Writers Guild negotiating committee, which itself is loaded with Showrunners like Marc Cherry, creator of “Desperate Housewives” and Carol Mendelsohn of “CSI.” That was done on purpose to put the Showrunners front and center in the guild leadership, unlike the writer’s strike in 1988, when Showrunners ended up being a divisive force. This time around, the Guild laid the groundwork in advance of the job action to ensure that Showrunners would be with them.
“I think we’re all aware in the Guild that those Showrunners who (in 1988) pushed everybody to come back have been proven wrong,” says Levitan, “so were very much aware of that. We’re 100 percent committed to what the Guild is seeking here. We put ourselves on the line to demonstrate our solidarity.”
There has been an almost amazing show of solidarity by the Showrunners and as a result every major studio and network has had to shut down shows. Even when it was torture and heart break not to be there, the Showrunners have stayed away this time. At least one or two have gone to work as producers but they are a tiny minority. For the most part Showrunners have presented a solid front on behalf of the Guild.
The Showrunners who are on strike do so in the face of serious legal liability. A Showrunner has a lot more to lose than someone who is just a writer on a show. He or she (mostly he) is also a corporate manager, and as a manager has a contract to produce that show even if there is a strike. So Showrunners are in clear violation of their contract as a producer when they walk. Many have received a letter from a network lawyer warning saying that as a Showrunner they are “in breach” of their contract and may be sued by the network or production company.
Among the Showrunners front and center with Levitan were Christopher Lloyd (”Back to You,” “Frasier”), Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”), Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin (“The Riches”), and Josh Friedman (“Sarah Connor Chronicles”). Others who signed the ad included Donald Todd (“Samantha Who?”); David E. Kelley (“Boston Legal”); Greg Berlanti (“Brothers & Sisters,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Eli Stone”); John Wells (“E.R.”); Marti Noxon (“Private Practice”); and Chuck Lorre (“Two And A Half Men”).
Dr. Neal Baer (yes, he’s a real medical doctor), the Showrunner on the long-running, critically acclaimed series “Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit,” and a member of the Guild negotiating committee, told me over the weekend he still expects to receive a legal letter, but he also understands that each Showrunner has to make their own personal decision. “It’s not easy,” adds Baer. “I feel people just have to act on their conscience. I’m not going to make a judgment about anybody else (continuing to work).”
Baer pointed out the ephemeral nature of the Showrunners offer to management. With each passing day, more shows shut down because there are no more scripts, which also means that there will not be anything left to produce. So the writer side put the producer side out of work.
Baer felt so badly about the pending layoff of his colleagues that he flew to New York where the show is produced and spent time answering questions for about 200 people, from grips to Teamsters to his co-Executive Producer and director Ted Kotcheff. . He took the questions on bits of paper passed to him in a bunch so that there was no way to identify any individual. He was on a plane back to L.A. about five hours after he had arrived.
While Levitan is one of the instigators of United Showrunners, he is not the leader. There is no single leader. There wasn’t even an organization until a group of Showrunners participated in an ad in Variety supporting the guild’s actions. “We wanted to get everybody on the same page and it grew out of that. So this did not even exist a couple weeks ago. But we know we are very powerful group for both sides,” Levitan said last week.
On November 7 when Showrunners came out to picket in front of the main gate at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, a sense of camaraderie developed. They had agreed to meet after picketing that day at the nearby Smokehouse restaurant. When they got there, the group felt there wasn’t sufficient privacy. So they had lunch, and arranged to meet later that afternoon at the WGA offices in West Los Angeles.
That meeting was unstructured and got a loud at times. There was no moderator, no leader, although Levitan and a few others had helped get it organized. They had come together with a helping hand from the guild but outside the guild’s auspices. The WGA did pay for the hats that the writers received when they arrived at Disney to picket, which were black with white lettering: United Showrunners. And the WGA provided meeting space.
The meeting got some press coverage, but even that left at least one veteran comedy series Showrunner frustrated: “I think the meeting has been mischaracterized. Some, especially Nikki Finke, were accurate in detail but inaccurate in tone. The meeting was described as being heated. You have to understand it’s a room full of Showrunners! It’s a room full of people used to professionally saying something and having everyone else in the room go, ‘OK, that’s how we will do it.’ And I think it was startling for a lot of us. We would say something. Somebody would have a different opinion, and we would want to say, ‘Well, did I not make myself clear? I thought I just explained how this was going to go.’ There was about an hour of that and all of a sudden it dawned on people ‘Oh wait a minute this has to be a different kind of forum’. And once we went through that process, the level of consensus was very high.”
They understood what made them powerful, recalls the same veteran writer, producer and Showrunner: “The feeling was that almost to a person that holding back producing duties has an effect on the companies. The question is always what effect does it have? And the greatest effect it has is a symbolic effect. I find it when I’m out on the picket line and I wear my United Showrunners hat, and there are other writers there and they talk about how it makes it easier for them to come to the picket line when they see Showrunners who have put themselves in the line of fire legally. I think it raises the Esprit de corps when the boss is standing next to you.”
Shawn Ryan, who was pained because he had to skip work on the series finale episode of “The Shield,” which he created, as well as production on his CBS show “The Unit,” explained why they did it in an open letter shortly after the gathering.
“At the Showrunners Meeting it became very clear to me that the only thing I can do as a Showrunner is to do nothing,” wrote Ryan. “I obviously will not write on my shows. But I also will not edit, I will not cast, I will not look at location photos, I will not get on the phone with the network and studio, I will not prep directors, I will not review mixes. These are all acts that are about the writing of the show or protecting the writing of the show, and as such, I will not participate in them. I will also not ask any of my writer/producers to do any of these things for me, so that they get done, but I can save face.”
“I truly believe that the best and fastest way to a good contract is to hit these companies early, to hit them hard and to deprive them of ALL the work we do on their behalf,” added Ryan. “How do we ask our staff writers to go out on strike as we continue collecting producer checks?”
At the meeting there was an informal, unwritten but apparently sincere pledge by the top Showrunners not to forget the younger, more vulnerable among them. They made an agreement that if one was sued, they would treat it as if it was all of them being sued.
This agreement apparently doesn’t mean any of the Showrunners will help others with legal expenses. According to Levitan, what it does mean is that when the strike ends, they will only go back to work if all legal threats are dropped against each and every one of them. How that works in practice is yet to be seen.
It appears unlikely that if there is a fairly quick resolution that Showrunners United will continue on as an organization. The fervent hope of all the members appears to be that there will be no need. They can put their black hats on the shelf as a memento of what they went through.
(hollywoodtoday.net)