CPO: Phase 1 – Collect Underpants

The big story this week, in entertainment at least, is the Writers’ Guild Strike. This, of course, means that you too have the chance to be a scab and sell your screenplay!

The bulk of the dispute between the “management” and “labor” would appear to be centered in the DVD/New Media area. Basically, writers make very little in royalties for DVD sales, and nothing when something is downloaded on the internet. And I’m not talking piracy here. I’m saying that if you download an episode of TV from Itunes, the writer of that episode gets nothing.

In Hollywoodland, not to be confused with Hollywoodland, writers are in a strange position. Ultimately a film is made by a director, and the director is run by his producers. The writer seems to matter little in this equation, particularly in a world with a lot of recycled material. Say you’re a writer. You are crafting the screenplay of a big super-hero movie. You didn’t create the characters, the storyline is based on a comic and the previous movie, and ultimately the director will rewrite some scenes and lines. Then the editor comes and gets rid of some subplots.

At that point it would be hard to tell your friends exactly what you’re contribution was.

Look at Alien 3 for instance. IMDB credits the following writers:
Dan O’Bannon (characters) and
Ronald Shusett (characters)
Vincent Ward (story)
David Giler (screenplay) &
Walter Hill (screenplay) and
Larry Ferguson (screenplay)

That’s six writers credited for the script, for those who are bad at arithmetic. Rumor has it that Sigourney Weaver was, let’s say, difficult, and there are perhaps a dozen more writers that worked on the script. The rules of Hollywood won’t allow you to show that many writers on the end credits (but you do credit the caterers). Wikipedia has this to say on the rules: (emphasis is mine)

Only three writers may be credited for the screenplay if they collaborated and a maximum of three teams of three may be credited no matter how many actually worked on it. For example, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) had about a dozen writers, as did Hulk (2003). The film adaptation of The Flintstones (1994) supposedly had over sixty writers. Those awarded credit for creating the characters elsewhere and the original story are not included in this limit.

But let’s focus on the six credited writers. Dan O’Bannon and Shusett are credited with “characters”. This means that they wrote he original movie, and not necessarily this one.

Vincent Ward is credited with Story. This means Ward created the basic sequence of action for the film. In the credits, this will read as “story by Vincent Ward”.

Giler & Hill and Ferguson are credited with the Screenplay. This means that they wrote out the dialogue as probably developed some other aspects of the film. The ampersand (&) between Giler and Hill meas that they worked on the script as a team. The written out “and” means that Ferguson worked on the script separately. So the credits will list this as “Screenplay by David Giler & Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson”.

For some reason, this set-up reminds me of the quadratic equation.

If somebody (or a team) writes both the screenplay and the story, he/she/they is/are given a “written by”credit.

There is also a “Screen Story by” credit, which is used when a person noticeably reworks a story from another source. So, if you were to write the story to a CGI penguin version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, this is the credit you’d probably get.

So when we look at the writing credits for, say Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, we get:
screenplay by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, screen story by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, and Jay Wolpert

You should know have the tools to figure out this mess. (And if you can figure out the trilogy or its inexplicable popularity, you’re a better man than I.)

There are a couple of other writing credits (e.g. narration by) but they aren’t used too commonly.

You are now equipped to go ahead and write your treatment of Superman Returns Once Again. Godspeed little soldiers!