Clooney also directed “Leatherheads”, which under WGA rules puts him at a disadvantage creditwise. I think as a director he has to contribute 50% rather than 33%.

– Leatherheads was an original screenplay, so Clooney would have had to prove a 50% contribution whether or not he was the director. (In an original screenplay, any subsequent writer has to prove 50%, only the original writer must contribute 33%.)

And to answer Frank’s question –

is WGA arbitration based upon the final shooting script of the film, or the final cut of the film?

– the WGA arbitration is based on the final shooting script. If requested by a writer or the studio, a “cutting continuity script” can be submitted for reference and not attributed to any writer. However, in most cases, a cutting continuity script is not given to the arbiters.

Writer B is clearly responsible for a good 60% of the new version. The director shoots this second version, resulting in a 3-hour epic. The studio edits it down to 90 minutes and releases the short version. The edited version cuts out so much of Writer B’s work that Writer B gets no credit, and no residuals. Later, for whatever reason, the studio decides to release a “director’s cut” and puts out the three-hour version. Let’s say that re-release makes solid art-house grosses and sells a ton of DVDs.

You know where I’m going. In this case, is there any way Writer B can get the appropriate screen credit on the expanded version of the film, and get those deserved residuals?

Frank asks:

As a film editor, I’m curious: is WGA arbitration based upon the final shooting script of the film, or the final cut of the film?

Essentially, the final cut of the film. Credit is for the “final script,” and that’s defined as the script as shown on the screen. If it’s in the movie the audience sees in theaters, it’s in the final script. If it’s not, it ain’t.

Andre Gayle asks:

Also, will there be any moves to address the Director’s ‘by’ credit at the beginning of all moves?

Not likely. This issue is at the genesis of the great DGA-WGA rift, and when the WGA successfully negotiated to get rid of the possessory credit, the DGA then threatened to strike unless it was restored, which it was.

Ultimately, we have to negotiate big credit issues with the companies. In my opinion, the “film by” credit is ensconced. I don’t like the credit, and I didn’t even take it when I was the director and sole writer. However, fighting this credit has cost us more in possible unity with the DGA than it’s earned us in prestige.

And the credit’s still there.

Just my .02 on that.

I do have an unrelated question, that you may or may not know the answer to. You used the correct capitalization for the two branches in your acronyms (WGAw and WGAE) but I’ve never really been able to find an answer too why the two have such different capitalization schemes for the cardinal directions in their name. Why does the WGAE use a capitol E and the WGAw use a lower case w?

Finally, I’d also like to thank you for all of your coverage of the strike last year. I really enjoyed reading it, though never really felt like I had much to contribute in comments.

No one is well served by the current system. It’s based on the screwed-up outdated idea that collaborative artwork in inherently inferior to the work of a “lone genius”. That’s not true, and I think that the cultural underpinnings behind that assumption have fallen away.

The WGA is the only union that spends most of its time and denying its own members credit for their hard work. It’s crazy.

Give every writer credit. Bring back the “Additional Dialog By” credit.

This mishigas is clearly one of the reasons that the possessory credit still eludes writers — after all, there’s only ever one director (or two in rare cases), but five or six credited writers is not unusual. But, of course, you could also say that both these issues are symptomatic of the regard with which the rest of Hollywood holds writers. If the original writer were deemed as integral to the project as the director, the vast majority of produced films would have only one credited writer or writing team, and it would be easy to assign possessory credit in the same manner as is used for directors.

I doubt in the near future we will see main credits that read: “Story by Screenwriter 1, Screenplay by Screenwriter 1 and Screenwriter 2, Additional dialogue by…” and then a long list of writers. It would look weird, even though it’s often true. But we might see an Additional Writing credit at the end of the film, in the same font as the stunt guys.

But if you saw that one of the writers on “Crimson Tide” or “The Rock” was Quentin Tarantino (and I believe he worked on both those films), wouldn’t you assume he wrote all the best lines?

When did this come in? Seems a very specific rule. I happened to watch Manhattan last night and it was credited as “Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman”. I thought they wrote that movie together in the same room.