Thread by @xoxoGG

I can’t with @DEADLINE and its yellow journalism. “The WGA pitched dozens of Hollywood’s top talent attorneys today on its plan to order guild members to fire their agents if the guild doesn’t get what it wants at the bargaining table.” This fundamentally misunderstands the...

...mechanics of the process at hand — the guild isn’t ordering (or going to order) anyone to fire their agents. The constituency of the guild is going to vote to ratify a code of conduct, and if that passes then any agency that doesn’t agree to the terms is legally barred from...

...representing WGA members. It’s not as though April 7th will come and an edict will roll out from the WGA leadership to drop their representatives. There is a democratic union process at play here. Framing it as something the guild is ordering writers to do is completely...

...missing the point. This only happens if an overwhelming majority of guild writers endorse the code of conduct. That endorsement is a statement of willingness from individual writers to walk away from agents who don’t agree to the guild terms. No orders. Democracy.

In almost all of its recent pieces on this conflict @DEADLINE has positioned the issue as being one where the guild is looking to revert the agency business to a form that hasn’t been in existence in decades. As though it’s about kicking agents back to the stone age vs...

...eliminating conflicts of interest. As someone who works in the ten percent business, I call bullshit. I help writers to find collaborators and producers to help bolster their work and get a sale — this is the same thing an agent does in packaging a project. It doesn’t...

...entitle me to more money than my clients make off of their ideas. Anyone suggesting anything to the contrary is, in my opinion, just greedy. It’s called doing the job.

AN ASIDE TO MY ASIDE: When I’ve talked to agents about this they always counter with, “well as a manager...

....you can produce.” That’s true. But that’s a false equivalency: packaging is doing the job of helping to get a project set up by combining elements to sweeten the deal for a buyer, and then collecting that money for the life of a series and beyond, which can happen without...

...a writer client even knowing an agency has done so; as a producer the client needs to opt in to having their manager attach themselves (any manager who forces a client to do that should be fired), and that manager/producer, if they’re good at their job, is going to actively...

...working on a show for the life of the series, actively working for its — and the client’s — success on a daily basis. *Earning* whatever fee or credit they’re receiving. (I do acknowledge that there are a lot of bad actors when it comes to manager producers, while working...

...at a network I saw multiple instances of managers attempting to slap their names on something simply for being involved in the creative process, which almost always wound up hurting the project and the writer. Being a creative sounding board is a manager’s *job* — unless...

...they’re bringing something more of substance to the table, that’s not grounds for being a producer).

I’ve digressed a little, but ultimately my point is that @DEADLINE seems to have either a mere rudimentary understanding of the issues at play or they’re willfully obfuscating the facts. If this were being covered with real journalistic integrity it wouldn’t read as though...

...every post were being edited by the ATA.

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