JMK, I don't know what the flap was about WGA arbitration, but though a lot of people complain about it, no one yet has offered a better solution than the one now in place at the guild for determining credit.
Complaints usually stem from someone who thought they deserved credit, but didn't get it. I personally have felt that all arbitrations I have been involved with have been handled fairly.
Unfortunately, there is a contingent of powerful re-writers in the guild who are trying to make the credit arbitration rules easier for re-writers to get credit.
I have been in the forefront of the debate as one of those who is vociferiously opposed to this double-dealing. It's the rich and powerful of our guild (who already get the plum original assignments) feeding off the rest of the guild. They are like Edward G. Robinson in KEY LARGO. They want "More."
I think the primacy of the first writer should be embraced and it should be harder for anyone who comes after to get credit. We should be trying to move in a direction of "one writer, one script" (That's why directors have all the power, only one director).
A laundry-list proliferation of credited writers only re-inforces the idea that writers are as disposable as toilet paper, encourages producers and studios to cavalierly throw writers off scripts (and 9 times out of ten, the writer is not the problem...but the crap notes he is forced to execute), diminishes the work and contribution of writers, and encourages writers to savage their fellow writers by leaping over their battered carcasses to gleefully re-write them.
I think writers need to respect each other more and stop this pernicious practice of re-writing each other at the drop of a hat. I personally have only re-written if the job is a page one re-write where everything before is being thrown out and I'm starting over from scratch or with the original source material or if I have consulted the previous writer and gotten his blessing to re-write him. But truth be told, I've not re-written anyone in years. I hate chewing on someone else's cud.
I advocate that we could get rid of arbitration for credit altogether, if the first writer got sole credit and everyone else who comes on, comes on merely for the fee they can negotiate as an anonymous script doctor. (Wasn't this the practice for years on Broadway?) That way everyone goes into the process knowing full well the outcome and you don't have re-writers fixing stuff that isn't broke, just so they can write enough to get credit. They know going in the they're not going to get any credit or any back-end money.
And that's why writers try to get credit on a film. Credit is tied into backend revenues...cable and DVD monies. Disconnect credit from the back-end money and you'll suddenly see a lot of writers less interested in taking re-write jobs.
These radical ideas meet with howls of protest in some quarters in the Guild, but many are in favour of it. Unfortunately, with those who currently hold the slate of politics in the WGA, will not give this idea much of a chance to be voted on by membership.
Bottom line should be fewer writing credits on a film...not more. I think writers in the Guild who re-write their fellow writers without their permission are carrion-eaters, plain and simple.
As for the guy who left the guild over the writer credit...oh big deal! I suspect he took financial core and, if he did either that or resigned, it will not be his option to re-join, it will be the guild's decision whether he can come back in or not.
But this points up one of the the things I hate about these DVD extras. People can come on and tell bullshit stories with no proof to back up their claims. And almost always these yarns are making themselves look good. If people knew how much ego, hype, and outright lies fuel these extras, I think they'd watch them with a bit more of jaundiced eye.
