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1) If at any point you actually want to have a linear discussion you can stop overtopping me and just reply. But until you do, I'll play by these rules. Since you clearly don't understand the benefits of packaging to writers at the top of the producerial pyramid, here we go:
2) For me, on a development deal that is now almost two decades old, my quotes are my quotes and they are fat. If I allow myself to be packaged, then I don't have to pay 10 percent to my agent. This means that depending on how many hours of TV I produce in a given year...
3) I get to pocket between $200,000 and $500,000 a year in straight cash by letting CAA fail to aggressively fight for anyone else's services and bid-rig all the talent salaries on my show and others. I simply pocket my extra money and let everyone else fend for themselves...
4) Even knowing this, even knowing that this cash is out of my pocket, it has been my decision for the last fifteen years to refuse to allow my agency to package my shows. Not because packaging costs me money; the opposite is true. I do this because I was a reporter...
...who covered crime, organized crime and the federal courts in the forelorn city of Baltimore, Maryland and I recognize overt bid-rigging when I see it, and further, because I have been a good union member all of my life. And I also recognize that if an agency can profit...
...more from acquiring the back end of a production, then the only ass they have to kiss are the essential few at the top of the pyramid who are necessary to initiate that project. Whether he gets 10 percent of my salary or no, my agent will still have to satisfy my sense...
...of whether I am well-compensated because he needs me to write a pilot and a bible and stage the production. But my junior producers, story editors and staffwriters -- all of them are wholly dependent on what the agencies do to raise the market worth of all writers. And...
...the agencies don't do shit because 1) why should these big machers give a fuck about getting some story editor an extra $2000 an ep from HBO when that means, oh, an extra $200 to them, when instead they can wink at...
...the studios and say, pay us our big bribe and we will not be at your door busting balls for the interests of any writer or actor who is not essential to the staging. Yes, an A-lister here and there is going to cost; that's its own market. But the entire cohort of writers...
...and actors will be put forward to you for service in the least competitive manner possible. We don't care about getting them extra dollars because we don't care about extra dimes to us. We are being paid millions to not care about clients, only ourselves....
You, Ayelet, want to pretend that work can't be found without an agent, but I'm working with fresh younger writers on the Deuce and Plot right now and none of them came through agencies. Agencies don't call me fighting for young talent; they don't give a fuck...
...unless that talent can help them make a package or shows the potential to develop into a showrunner that might deliver a package. Producing is the tagline there, not writing. Writing alone is near useless to the agents now, monetarily. And the tell is that even...
...when I do hire a young writer and they get their first credits, they still find it hard to get big agency representation, and when they do, their agents never, ever, ever fight to get them better quotes and guarantees. That's an agent wasting time on behalf of a client...
...rather than using that time to advance the cause of the agency. Now, because of how much nonsense you've already delivered about who you think I am, how I am paid or how you think this works, I'm going to guess...
...that your next question might be along the lines of something like, "Well, if you think writers deserve more, why don't you just pay them more." Eh? Because it's not my fucking money and it's not my marketplace. Because the negotiation is never between Blown Deadline...
...Productions and the writer, but between HBO business affairs and the writer, and guess what, HBO can always operate within the realm of existing quotes for the entire cohort of WGA members. They know the market for writers and they negotiate accordingly...
...In a magical world, my decision long ago to not pocket millions in accrued commission money and instead operate in a world where all writers could have sufficient agency to get on a show where they could do good work and be paid more in a marketplace that isn't bid-rigged...
...hasn't let to higher salaries for most of my writers. It didn't come out of my pocket and go into theirs on my shows. Why? Because too many other development-deal showrunners are complicit in packaging because it serves their absolute self-interest...
...because they would prefer to keep the hundreds of thousands or millions in bribes that they would otherwise be paying as commissions, allowing those more dependent on the market-rate for writing to suffer in their stead. And now, to hear some of them wrapping themselves...
...in the mantle of looking-out-for-the-little-guy makes me want to projectile vomit. They are not being honorable, or honest, or above all, loyal to the union that brought us all to this dance. They are grasping and selfish. And it offends me that I am here on Twitter...
...with you, waltzing around while you attempt incompetently to parse where my stance on this issue is somehow in service of my own self-interest, when in fact you are just clueless. My self-interest at this point in my career would be to take the package and pocket...
...the big bribe and service myself as a producer and fuck over my sense of myself as a writer and a WGA member. I don't because I have mirrors in my house. And perhaps the reason this is hard for some...
...to understand is that they always imagine themselves acting in narrow self-interest, so they easily assume that everyone else will always do so. It's offensive. You want to debate the issue, fine. But enough with the "maybe the reason you do" rhetoric is for shit. Just stop.
