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I would have at least appealed, strike or no strike on the horizon...

There's a section on Eric Hughes' site about The Last Samurai's arbitration. It's fascinating.

Arbitration does indeed suck. It's amazing how bad of a process it is considering the peer review. But George Clooney is making himself look like an actor here. Does he really need that much more attention and praise?

I'm actually on Clooney's side here. He felt they made a bad decision but rather than bitch about it - particularly in the middle of a strike in which it would've been a major story that would've been misrepresented all over the place - he quietly went fi-core. It's kind of the one protest move he could've made and he made it, but kept it quiet and wasn't a dick about it.

Arbitration is hardly an exact science and yeah, I'm sure dicey decisions are routinely made, but that's just the way the ball bounces - nothing against the arbitrators who get a tower of screenplays and nothing more than their favorite candy bar for their time and trouble. It's just a job that if I was ever asked to do it (I'm a WGA member, me-self), I would find it daunting.

But rather than stew about it OR make a public spectacle out of himself, Clooney did what he felt was right. How many writers simply spend the next twenty years complaining about how they got screwed? Clooney's alternative was, perhaps, the classy way to go.

Just my opinion, though.

I respect Clooney for this and may well also go fi-core myself. I was also screwed by the WGA's insane arbitration process. David is correct in pointing out that there is a bias against producers and directors receiving credit even if their rewrite essentially created a brand new screenplay. I understand that, at heart, the intent of the WGA has been to protect writers from 'executives" trying to bully their way to a credit. However, in my opinion, credit should be determined only by the end result and not how that end result came to be --- credit should be determined by the truth.

Clooney is protesting. I get it and agree with him.

However, Clooney's problems probably go deeper with the WGA than just a single arbitration issue. The strike was a disaster for all concerned. The industry and peripheral industries took a multi-billion dollar hit for a cause that was never actually resolved in a meaningful way. Patrick Veronne and his cronies negotiated like rank amatuers - asking for concessions that they never really wanted - that everybody knew they would relent on - and thus prolonged the fiasco... and what of all the television writers who were "force-majuered" and then thrown under the bus by the guild (I am talking about those not on active shows)?

Its fine to be for "labor," but that does not mean that "labor" is being run properly.

Clooney will not be the only one going fi-core.

The arbitration process has gotten so bad at the WGA that I know of a writer recently who lost an arbitration to HIMSELF. I'm not kidding. His film was loosely based on an unreleased short film that nobody ever saw and the guild blocked him from getting a Written by credit - even when there was no other writer involved and the studio was 100 percent behind the submitted credit. He considered going fi-core, but when he found out that it wouldn't change the credit situation (since the studio is signatory to the WGA and has to abide by their decisions, regardless whether he remained a member or not) or any future credit disputes, he let it go. The WGA basically holds the industry hostage with their shitty calls and arcane rules. Meanwhile, they have granted Written by status to other features based on festival awarded short films like Bottle Rocket and DEBS. It's a bullshit system and has caused bitterness in almost every writer I know. My friend's attitude is that the WGA can go fuck themselves and he'll have nothing more to do with them, other than what's contractually necessary.

Having both arbitrated a number of times and been arbitrated upon, I can say that it's the best solution to a difficult problem. It's easy to criticize from the outside, or when you feel you've been cheated of a credit, but what better solution is there, when you're faced with THOUSANDS of pages comprising 22 drafts from 8 different writers? You do the best you can to determine who gets credit and in what order. The difficulty is that the Guild only allows up to three persons or teams to share credit, when in fact, in the Hollywood studio sausage factory it's rare for fewer than four writers to work on a project. Someone is going to lose out. Clooney may claim that he wrote all but two scenes, but at least two (and hopefully three, making it a unanimous decision) working professional screenwriters disagreed that he deserved credit. It wasn't decided by some devious production executive. His fellow writers decided who got credit. End of story. Pun intended.

My issues with arbitration, pm123, is not the people who do it, but some of the "rules" that it is guided by.

Credit is a business issue for many/most writers. And obviously, it can be an issue of pride.

But can a movie with over 90% of the dialogue coming from one writer - who doesn't get credit because they didn't change the idea that the first writers initiated - really be fairly credited to those first writers only?

Shouldn't WGA have some interest in writers who - and this happens on most studio movies these days - sell their position as writers for other credits or money?

Is it really fair for WGA, knowing that there are more than 4 writers on many, many films, limit participation in residuals to those who get that credit... which I agree with you is arbitrated (in most cases) with good intent, but in ways that are inherently arbitrary?

If credit were just credit... ok... there needs to be a system and this is the best we can do. But credit is MONEY, both in residuals and in career stakes. No matter how many studios know you fixed the third act of whatever, the big money bump seems to come for most script doctors after they have the huge hit with their name on it.

I agree that the Clooney case may be odd... and the drama may be cover for other motives. But the system is flawed not because there is a better system to do precisely what this one does, but because some of the ideas of it are antiquated and designed to protect against too few villainies.

Most of you guys are thinking too narrowly. First off you don't make symbolic move or a protest move & keep it quiet. The whole point of those things are to gain attention. See George's trips to Dar-fur are symbolic gestures to bring media coverage to a real issue. They're also nice way to make your private jet costs tax deductible by stopping by as your going to & from your Lake Como Villa (Huge mansion)

But the reason for going fi-core is to end run the arbitration system. With a little legal hocus pocus (think Spike Lee Joint) the union rules won't apply. George will be telling the writers if they get credit not the other way around. Credit = money. The reason is this is not done more often is now George will find it near impossible to win a WAG or Oscar for writing

You can't end run the arbitration system by going fi-core. If that was the case, hundreds of angry screenwriters would have done it already. Unless he finances his own films outside of the studio system (signatory companies) and sells it to one of them as a negative pick-up, he will still have to arbitrate his credits with the WGA each time, because he makes films through the studios - and the studios are signatory to the guilds. He has gained nothing by going fi-core, other than some minor financial savings. But when you make a film for the big guys (or the mini-majors), your credits (if disputed by another writer, or if the director/producer is also a writer) will be arbitrated by the WGA. It's a shitty, antiquated system and it's just plain wrong not to give credit to writers who have worked on a project. Do you know how much of a film a director doing a rewrite has to change to get credit? Over 75 percent. A credit for Clooney's film should read, based on an original screenplay by A & B. Additional writing by George Clooney - or Adaptation by George Clooney, etc. Another problem with the WGA is that there is no consistency with their arbitrations. Enough A list writers and directors have taken issue with the system so many times that you know it doesn't work. You cannot trust a film's writing credits unless the credit reads Written and Directed by - which usually means the director was the film's one and only author.

Unless I'm missing something, WGA rules state that a production executive (Clooney in this case) would have to write more than 50 percent.

Sounds like with his "first position" argument, Clooney wanted the credit to be "Written by Duncan Brantley & Rick Reilly and George Clooney." In reality it probably would have ended up as "Story by DB & RR, Screenplay by DB & RR and GC."

Maybe he should have given himself a goofy credit during the end, like Gilliam & Grisoni did for The Brothers Grimm. Maybe "pigskin tanner" or "field goal kicker"...

David:

As I have told my writing students many times, dialogue is the LEAST important part of a script. Changing every word of dialogue does NOT necessarily get you credit, as the WGA Credits Manual points out. And arbitrating credit, in my humble opinion, should have NOTHING to do with money. If a writer made significant enough contributions to a script, he or she or they get credit, whether they're Robert Towne or his hairdresser. It's that simple. Sure it often means a lot of money one way or another, but I couldn't care less. If some big shot comes in for a polish, and changes every character name (I've seen it happen), in order to convince everyone that he or she or they have made significant changes, hopefully the arbitrators will see through it. Should the WGA allow more than three names on the credits, or pay residuals for more than the three credited writers? Good questions, and worthy of debate, but until they allow credit for EVERY writer who worked on a film (are you ready for a two-minute crawl of writers on the next Brett Ratner film?), arbitration is a necessary evil. Good luck convincing the studios to pay residuals to 23 writers per movie, or getting those 23 to agree on who contributed more to the story...

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