John August

Film Industry

PayUpHollywood progress, an update from ‘Christian’

Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up, Television

Three years ago — October 8, 2019 — a writer who went by “Christian” emailed about their experience as a writer’s PA, explaining how they were expected to do the jobs of multiple support staff on a tiny salary. We discussed their email on the show, including the issue of needing to have a car.

Last week at the premiere event for The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XXXIII (delightful, btw), I met “Christian” in person. They filled me in on what had happened in the past three years.

Some legitimate progress had been made, which Christian felt could be traced to the #PayUpHollywood movement. Their pay had gone up from minimum wage — but not necessarily to a living wage — and conversations about pay were becoming more open. That’s the good news.

Frustratingly, studios were still balking at reimbursing staff for things like assistants’ use of their own cell phones. Showrunners weren’t willing to engage on getting assistant and support staff properly compensated for their hours. It felt like the same grind for a few dollars more.

Christian ended up quitting work as a writer’s PA to focus on their writing, which had gone neglected for two years due to stress and overwork. I asked what advice they’d give to a writer who was looking at taking a coveted showrunner’s assistant job.

Honestly, do it for one show, one season. Learn everything you possibly can. Make contacts. Then get a job as a receptionist at a law firm so you can have the time to write.

This week, Christian wrote in with some follow-up thoughts.

first personI wanted to thank you for not only graciously listening to me ramble last night, but asking me how things were going. As you could probably assume from what I said, it’s been a lot of ups and downs.

I won’t bug you further with the details behind my experiences, but just want to make it known that my toxic boss and the refusal to provide pay parity or stipends for what we were legally owed was happening on essentially both the studio’s and network’s biggest drama cash cow. So there really isn’t any excuse for nickel and dime-ing the assistants, other than the fact that they can.

But really, it doesn’t matter what the budget is, there’s no excuse for screwing the lowest paid workers out of fair wages when these corporations are making billions of dollars a year. The money is there. They just don’t care.

It doesn’t help that there’s a huge line of people willing to accept things as they are because they believe getting an assistant job is a ticket to staffing. (The person who took over my desk when I left was a previously staffed writer, who had left the industry for personal reasons, and was so hell-bent on getting a foot “back inside” that they accepted the demotion to Showrunner’s Assistant on a desk that doesn’t promote up and isn’t particularly kind. So there were really no consequences to my toxic former boss or the show for behaving so poorly.)

And I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution, because even though my boss was not supportive, I know countless assistants who do have supportive bosses, and even their bosses have gotten stonewalled when trying to help their assistants get paid what they’re owed. One example: a friend’s boss actually carved out the show budget so that there would be enough to pay each assistant $20/hr (this is back in 2019 I believe, well before union negotiations), and the studio refused to allow the Showrunner to pay the assistants that because it would “start a precedent.”

Even today, I have a friend who got promoted to manager at her POD, but is still getting paid at the assistant rate AND having to cover her former boss’s desk because the studio won’t give the POD the budget for a managerial wage and a new assistant until the POD has “more projects in development.” Currently, this POD has the #1 show on its network, a spinoff in the works, and several other projects being pitched around town.

I feel as though ultimately the only solution seems to be to unionize every assistant position at every level, but that is a hefty, years-long goal filled with complications and extra financial barriers for those who are already struggling to make ends meet, or even just to break in.

And in the meantime, I think the only other thing to do is to make it really, REALLY clear that being an assistant isn’t a gateway to becoming a writer anymore. It’s purely a networking tool at this point, and you should use it to build up connections with supportive writers, then get out and find something that pays better with less hours so you can hone your craft (unless, of course, you are lucky enough to land a boss who actually will lift you up). And, just to note from my own job search over the past few months, almost everything pays better for less hours outside of the entertainment industry.

One more thing that I really think assistants need, and I wish that the WGA or even IATSE offered, was a course on financial literacy. I know this isn’t something that’s a problem specific to assistants, or even to this industry, but it’s something I think every assistant would really benefit from, and it would give them more capability to walk away from bad situations, rather than staying because they need the money.

I think the biggest takeaway I’ve gotten from becoming financially literate is that you don’t need a lot of money to learn how to better manage it. I was essentially broke when I started to understand my finances. In fact, I think it’s more important to understand money when you don’t have it. Especially if you’re also trying to pay off debt. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and also contemplating in the context of being an assistant.

Sorry for such a novel of an email. After our conversation, I felt there was a lot I had left out that was more useful than what I had actually said, so I hope that this has been of value for your time.

The Odd Joy of the Wizard/Paladin

Film Industry, First Person, Random Advice, Television

On Scriptnotes 541, Craig and I discussed which of the classic D&D attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma) were most important for an aspiring film and TV writer. We ranked intelligence first, while acknowledging that charisma was important for the social aspects of the job. We felt wisdom was gained through experience — which it is, in the real world.

Our discussion generated a lot of listener emails. Nick Roth’s response felt like it deserved its own post. So here it is in full.

Sometimes, as a writer earlier in your career, and especially in the context of tv writing (my background is as a lower level writer on a network sitcom), it feels like you can’t just be a wizard who has maximized intelligence with secondary emphases on charisma and wisdom.

It feels like you have to multi-class as a Wizard/Paladin.

It’s a stupid multiclass. You have to approach your work like you’re on a holy quest, and everyone expects you to be a melee tank, but all you really want is to cast spells from the shadows. You have to have intelligence and charisma, and you have to have both strength and constitution to survive in a writers’ room, where you need thicker skin than mage armor can provide. And you also need to get yourself into the right place at the right time, so you can’t even take dexterity for granted, because there are barbarians out there with advantage on initiative rolls who will beat you to opportunities.

You have literally no dump stat. And, in this campaign setting, there are famously OP Backgrounds you probably don’t have access to — like having famous parents or being literally Malia Obama.

The point is it can feel impossible to roll this character. But here’s the thing: the best characters and the best campaigns aren’t made by rolling great attributes and min-maxing your abilities. They are made by figuring out the most hilarious and surprising and heartwarming ways of interpreting your critical successes and your critical fails. Okay, so you’ve insanely chosen to be a wizard-paladin and you rolled three negative modifiers. Big whoop. You can still have the best time saving the multiverse with this zany School of Police Procedurals Wizard who has taken an Oath of Musical Comedy. Maybe you fight a dragon, or maybe you reboot Cop Rock!

I feel like I lost the thread there, but you get the idea. Just like we must imagine Sisyphus happy, we have to love all the parts of being a screenwriter, no matter how absurd a multi-class it requires, even when we roll a 1 and had -3 to the check to begin with.

Is a class in script coverage worth it?

Film Industry, QandA, So-Called Experts

Ethan in Northridge writes:

Recently I was searching online on how to write script coverage and become a script reader as I felt I didn’t have a full understanding of those topics. In my search I found a website offering a free class that would “share the details of what it takes to become a reader.”

Since the class was free I decided to attend. It started out fine. The instructor was nice and eased us into talking about script coverage and their own background.

Then about halfway through the class, when the instructor promised to get more into the details about becoming a reader, the class clearly turned into an advertisement for their paid courses. The remainder of the class was largely them listing off how different parts of their courses have a $400, $2,000, or $11,000 value.

Most people in the class chat were praising this and saying it was a great deal, but I personally just felt uneasy about the whole thing.

Do you think I am correct in feeling uneasy about this? Or am I being judgmental and unfair to a legitimate business?

Something can both be a legitimate business and make you feel uneasy. For example, pawns shops are legitimate businesses. So are gun ranges, drug paraphernalia stores and strip mall psychics. That doesn’t mean you need to give them any of your money.

Don’t get hung up whether something is legit or a scam. If a business doesn’t feel right for you, trust your gut and move on.

Let’s talk a little about script coverage, and whether it’s ever worth paying to study it.

I first learned how to write script coverage while in graduate school at USC, in a class taught by uber-producer Laura Ziskin. She showed us examples of good coverage and then told us to write some. For several weeks, we’d take home a script from her library and write up coverage on it. (You can read some of this early coverage in my 1996 site, although I can’t find any with proper top sheets intact.) Laura or one of her execs would mark it up and offer feedback.

How much did I pay to learn coverage in Ziskin’s class? And how much was it worth?

Since that was only a small part of the class, it’s hard to break it out to exact dollars. But I’d guess it was less than $500. As part of a class designed to teach us to think critically about script development, the section on coverage was definitely worth it. In fact, a few months later I started working as a paid freelance reader at TriStar.

Do you, Ethan, want to work as a reader? If so, a short, structured program focused on writing coverage might be worth it, assuming it’s taught by someone who does it for a living. You’d want something like what I had with Laura Ziskin: a look at what executives want to see in coverage, and then a few cracks at writing it, with good feedback on what you wrote.

But that’s if you want to be a reader. It’s much more likely you want to work as a screenwriter.

In that case, your time is better spent reading as many scripts as possible and writing just your reaction to the scripts. What worked for you? What didn’t — and why didn’t it work? Most importantly, what did you learn?

If you can find a group of peers to regularly discuss the scripts you’re reading, all the better. But I don’t think you need to do it as part of a class.

Why I changed my mind on end credits

Film Industry, News, WGA

This week, the WGA announced an upcoming referendum on a proposal to create an “Additional Literary Material” end credit for feature films.

I was part of the committee that drafted the proposal, and took the lead in writing up the exhaustive explainer and FAQ.1

Outside of my role on the committee, I want to talk through how and why my thinking about end credits has evolved over my 20+ years as a screenwriter, and why I think members should vote yes on the proposal.

The way it’s always been

Going back decades, the WGA has had a process for determining who gets credit for writing on a movie. These are the familiar “by” credits: written by, screenplay by, story by, etc.

These credits denote authorship. Whether a film uses opening titles or end titles, the writing credit always comes right next to the director. They answer the question, “Who wrote that?”

But they don’t tell the whole story. In many cases, other writers worked on the project. If they didn’t meet the threshold for receiving this “by” credit, all record of their employment is erased.

That’s unique to the film industry. In television, members of a writing staff receive an employment credit (e.g. staff writer, story editor) in addition to a writing credit on episodes they write.

The idea of listing every writer who worked on a movie is not new. It’s always seemed absurd that a catering truck driver who worked one day on a film has their name in the credits, while a screenwriter who spent a year on the project and wrote major scenes goes uncredited.

And yet! Screenwriters are not drivers. Our work is fundamentally different. Authorship means something, both for the individual project and for the status of screenwriters as a profession. That’s why in the case of projects with multiple writers, the Guild has an arbitration process to determine the official writer(s) of the script.

But what about listing the other writers in the end credits, away from the “by” credits?

For at least 20 years, I’ve been able to argue both sides of the end credits question. Pro: Listing all the writers better reflects the reality of who worked on a movie. Con: Listing all the writers undercuts the purpose of the WGA determining credits in the first place. Like a high school debater, I knew the arguments and was ready to engage on either side of the debate.

I didn’t want to pick a side — but of course, I was picking a side. When the status quo is no end credits, doing nothing means perpetuating the current system.

During my year working on the committee, a few things got me to change my mind.

Recognizing survivorship bias

I’ve received credit on films I wrote, and lost credits I thought I deserved. On the whole, it’s worked out. My resume looks pretty full, particularly in those crucial early years of my career (Go, Charlie’s Angels, Big Fish).

Even on movies where I didn’t get credit, “the town” knew I did the work. I kept getting hired and increasing my quote.

Talking with many of my screenwriting peers — writers in their 40s and 50s — that’s largely been their experience as well. It’s not surprising given the phenomenon of survivorship bias. If you’re only looking at the screenwriters who made it, you’re going to assume the system is working well.

But what about the screenwriters who aren’t getting credit? What’s happening to them?

Talking with members currently at the early stages of their screenwriting careers, they describe a very different universe than I experienced, one with month-long writers rooms, simultaneous drafts and cultural sensitivity passes. Their missing credits are not because of bad luck, but rather because of an environment that makes it much less likely they could ever receive credit.

That sense that “the town” knows who really wrote something? There is no town anymore. Instead of six studios, there are countless production entities, many of them not based in LA. Netflix is so giant that one team has no idea what another team is making.

In 2021, when a screenwriter receives no credit on a film, it truly is like they never worked on it.

When thinking about missing screenwriting credits, I mistakenly assumed that my experience in the early 2000s matched screenwriters’ experiences today. It doesn’t.

Comparing imagined harm to actual harm

Most of the status quo arguments I’ve heard for the past twenty years foretell grave consequences if additional writers were listed in the end credits. Some common predictions:

  • It will devalue the worth of the “by” credits
  • Studios or producers will hire friends just to get their names in the end credits
  • It will hurt newer writers if a big-name writer showed up in the end credits

All I can say is, maybe! We’re screenwriters; it’s our job to imagine scenarios.

But it’s also important to check the facts. Earlier this year, the WGA examined over a thousand feature contracts to look at trends in compensation. One finding: credit matters a lot.

Chart showing that a feature writer with no credit earns median $100,000 while one with a single credit earns $140,000

The median guaranteed payment for a screenwriter with no credits was $140,000. The median guaranteed payment for a screenwriter with one credit was $400,000.

A single feature credit more than doubled a screenwriter’s pay.

Would receiving an “Additional Literary Material” credit result in the same bump? Likely not to the same degree. But it would show that a screenwriter worked on a film that got made. I strongly believe that’s going to be worth real dollars to that writer. In my discussions with newer writers, agents and executives, most of them agree.

This impacts quite a few writers. In 2020, 185 participating writers wrote on produced features for which they ultimately received no credit.

I should also note here the Guild’s Inclusion & Equity Group’s concern that the status quo disproportionately affects women and writers of color, for whom these resume gaps can be a substantial barrier to future employment.

When comparing the theoretical harms of end credits to the actual harms of doing nothing, I think it’s better to solve the real problems members are having.

Finding a middle path

Even after acknowledging my survivorship bias and the actual harms screenwriters are facing, I wouldn’t have supported many of the more aggressive proposed changes to the credit system. For example, I don’t believe in changing the thresholds for the “by” credits, expanding the definition to include non-writing roundtable participants, or having all participating writers share in the residuals pool.

Instead, what the committee came up with after a year of sometimes-heated debate was a proposal that narrowly addresses the “resume problem” of missing employment credits without changing anything about the traditional writing credits. The result closely mirrors the system used in television for decades, where writers are credited for both their employment and their authorship.

The term “Additional Literary Material” is incredibly dull, but it’s also accurate. It reflects the reality that the people listed wrote material for the film without passing any judgement. It clearly delineates actual writing — words on paper — from participating in a roundtable.

Rather than diluting the authorship credit of the “by” writers, I’d argue the “Additional Literary Material” credit reinforces it. By definition, any writer listed it this block did not meet the thresholds for receiving “by” credit. (And if a writer chooses not to be included in “Additional Literary Material,” it’s their decision alone.)

In summary, I changed my mind on end credits because I realized I wasn’t looking at the reality experienced by many screenwriters in 2021. This proposal addresses a specific problem with minimal disruption to long-established screen credit processes.

Voting on the referendum begins November 2nd. I urge you to vote yes.

Supporters of the proposal are gathering signatures for a Pro statement. You can read it here.

WGA members can sign on by sending an email to yesonendcredits@gmail.com with the subject line “PLEASE ADD MY NAME TO THE CREDITS PRO STATEMENT. Please include your name and preferred email address.

  1. I beg you, please read the explainer. We really tried to answer every question you might ask. ↩