Freelancers, really? Part Two

ALRIGHT, NOW. Where were we?

In Part One of this post, I laid out the vision of how I frame the question of mandating freelance scripts on Canadian series.

The brief recap is this: a suggestion was made, should the WGC try to pursue a policy like the WGA has in their MBA, where there are two freelance scripts reserved for a show with 22 episodes? That means that those scripts must go to outside writers. Through my examples and through some rather clever and cagey comments, I laid out the situation for the professional television screenwriter in Canada, and asked the question, "is the object to have as many people be able to get TV script assignments as possible, or is the object to have as many people earn a living only from their writing as possible?"

Mount weighed in with an example from another industry:

In Newfoundland, the Fisheries were structured to give fishing licences to a great many. The idea was to give the maximum number of people a way to make some kind of a living from the sea.
In Iceland, the structure was different. Much fewer licences were granted. Those who had them earned a very good living and then other Icelanders (Icelandees? Icelandicans?) made their living from secondary industries - selling boats, big screen tvs, hot tubs, etc.

Iceland still has a thriving fishing industry, Newfoundland has.... not.

A few months ago I attended the National Forum of the Writers Guild of Canada as an invited guest. (My subsequent term on the WGC Council didn't start until May.)

I found out a couple of things that surprised and pleased me. The first was that the WGC Membership actually has a higher percentage of their writers working than the WGA. I think that's a piece of good news that doesn't get out too often.

The flipside of that is that the vast majority of the membership are in an economic category where it's pretty clear that in all likelihood, they're not able to fully support themselves by their writing.

It was at this forum, looking at these charts, that I realized that at least for the last couple of years, I've been earning enough that I'm probably in the top tier of working screenwriters in Canada. That was cool to see, then scary, then cool again.

Let me break it down.

It was cool because, you know, it actually made me step back for a moment and feel lucky (and by lucky I mean, realize how hard I had worked, and by that I mean how lucky I was, etc, etc.)

It was scary because it still is unstable. If you average it out over five or six years instead of just the last two or three, it gets a little dicier. And who knows what next year will bring. Maybe I won't be flavour of the month. You just never know.

But then we got back to cool -- because I realized that the other thing the WGC has going for it is that there is NOT the massive disperity you see at work in the WGA and SAG down in the USA. Those fractious coalitions of members are held together, or not as the case may be, by a top caste who may be earning millions, and a bottom rung of many, many more people who are just scraping by. It's pretty hard to find common ground between those two groups.

Here that disperity's not as great. Which is good. But what does that have to do with the question at hand, or the object -- getting more writers to be able to have careers?

Well let's start by looking at the way it works in the USA under the WGA MBA.

There, out of twenty-two scripts, you have to hire two outsiders. In theory, this means that there's an outside pool you can draw from. In practice, what it often means is that series use these freelance drafts to "audition" writers that they were thinking of hiring anyway. You will often see that the person who got one of the outside scripts one year, the next year becomes a staffer. I think that's a pretty nifty thing.

So would that work here?

Let's look at the economic argument first, then the creative.

First, and most obviously - in Canada we very rarely do twenty-two episodes in a season. The usual order is 13. Sometimes a show might get 18 or 20 but this is very rare. In recent years, many cable outlets, places like Showcase etc, have taken to ordering 6 or 8 episode orders.

But that's misleading. Because of the number of mergers, "benefits" packages, et al, most outlets now, in development, commission a pilot and one, two, or three scripts. The most common number is two. So, those scripts are gone. So that 13 episode order is really 11, 8 is 6, 6 is 4, etc, etc.

Then lets add to how the script assignments are handled here. It's a bit of bait-and-switch really -- the payments for scripts are often used to "top up" what are poor weekly fees for story editors.

In his post on this topic, Alex Epstein at Complications Ensue put it this way:

My contract for my series gives me a lower weekly salary than the $6,000+ a junior story editor is entitled to in the States. If my show should go, I'll make that up in production fees. The WGC deal mandates that the writer of an episode be paid around 3% of the budget of the episode. (There's a more complicated formula than that but if the episode budget is a million bucks, the writer's getting a check for over $30,000.)

Normally a free lancer's script has to be heavily rewritten. A freelancer can bring new story ideas and a fresh perspective. They never turn in something you can shoot.

That's awkward because under the WGC rules, the contracted writer -- the free lancer -- is entitled to sole credit and 100% of the production fee no matter how little of their work remains.

In the US this matters less because the story editors are getting paid a whack of cash to rewrite things. That's their job, to rewrite. There is no production fee, either. So the scripts are worth relatively less and the salary is worth relatively more. It is less of an injustice to the writer actually turning in the shootable draft -- whether story editor or showrunner.

Moreover, in the US system a showrunner or story editor who heavily rewrites a free lance script is entitled to credit. So there may be no injustice at all.

Okay, so you combine this -- differences in the way the agreements work and the basic difference in payment structure and what you see is the number of scripts you get is way more important here for making your year. And there are always less of them available.

Now, sometimes when you build your story room, you might have one or two scripts left that aren't assigned. And you might see something else, too.

I've been on, and heard about, shows where the showrunner actually takes fewer scripts than some members of the staff. Partly because they're making more money, partly because they're busier, but mostly out of a desire to make that economic thing work. So if you have a great writer, maybe they get three and you get two. This is more common than you think.

Also, holding one of those scripts back can allow for a number of ways to make your room better. You could bring in a freelancer with all their fresh ideas and energy. You could use a script to reward a script coordinator, to give them a big break and get them to get their feet wet.

Or a showrunner can use that extra script as a motivational tool. For somebody who goes that extra mile, who performs really well in the room, or does extra duty, or really steps up, or whatever.

That's in a perfect world where the showrunner is given that flexibility.

Unfortunately in Canada we have this dual system in place -- an older, mostly non-writing producer driven culture where the writers are hired hands, and the move toward writer-controlled creative. But even in the latter case, you could always find yourself in a bad deal situation: a showrunner hired later or hired to replace someone might come in and find that they have a situation where the scripts are already gone, and there's very little that can be done to motivate people.

Much of this is a management issue. When there are no scripts left, sometimes things here become a little Lord of the Flies. You hear of shows that hire little writer sweatshops, where writers churn out story after story which have to be cleared with the caprices and the whims of a non-writer who's in charge. So writers in the room become jobbers, doing piecework on story that gets thrown up against the big wall with no Production or Script fee at the end of it. Dire.

As a commenter on Part One put it:

producers hire a combo of "seasoned writers", people who have written 5-10 scripts, and promising newbies (one or two who have to be from the film centre) and create a 'writing room".

once that is done they pay them a shitty weekly or monthly wage and these folks bang out story after story after story until the producers decide (on some strange whim) which one they want to turn into an episode -- "something like that happened to someone i know", seems to be the current raison de jour to make something. and then the painful process of writing the script starts.

this goes on for months and months until every possible drink option at "the paddock" or the "shoe shop" or the sutton place or the "irish heather" or "l'express" or O' Halons" has been exhausted.

Sounds nasty, don't it? See, part of my problem with "mandated freelancing" is that at the end of the day, it all comes down to the quality of the management that is running the show. On a good show, a well-run show, showrunners will use scripts to motivate and reward; on a bad show, I can easily see a return to the bad old days I've heard of from the 80's and 90's, where the "freelance scripts" were given to idiot cousins of the exec producer, or the ex-wife as part of the alimony settlement, or to the dude so and so did coke with at the Geminis. (I wish I could tell you that I made up the three examples I've just quoted. I didn't.)

Any system is only good as the people who are charged with administrating it. If you've worked in production, you know that there's a system in place where they offer extra tax credit bonuses to shoot outside the "zones" that comprise most production centres in Canada. This is classic Canadian, "spread it around" strateregy. But again, if you've worked, you know the result: this becomes the new baseline. Nothing shoots in Toronto -- you have to drive to Hamilton. Vancouver, you find yourself in Maple Ridge. With a blink, what was supposed to be an "extra carrot" just becomes part of the budget. And all you've done is guarantee that everyone has to drive an extra hour to go to work.

I have similar fears about mandating freelance scripts in our system. I just feel it will be abused. And don't say that it's the WGC's job to make sure that doesn't happen, because that, my friend, is talking about a level of supervision and investigation that's just simply unworkable. It's a non-starter.

I truly feel that this is tied in with the showrunner question, that that is the single best thing we can do to make the plight of writers better in Canada. But charging the right people with that mentoring and encouragement is key, too. When I was doing Across The River To Motor City, I deliberately argued and brought in a writer I knew who was great, and good with story, and who hadn't been getting traction getting a series gig. I gave up a production fee, and a script, because I knew it was better for the show, and because I tried to spread the wealth around. I think there are lots of showrunner level writers in Canada who feel that way. We should do everything, collectively, we can to big up those people. Celebrate them.

Showrunners who give their story coordinators a chance to do a script are doing the same thing. On a certain level, you have to put your trust in the right person there to bring people up with them. Some don't, but in my experience, most do.

Now that's my economic pitch. Here's my creative one:

TV has changed. Jaime Weinman at Macleans is better at this, and though I can't find a particular post right now, he's constantly writing about why the largely freelance vs. mostly staff culture evolved the way it did. In short, it's this: Even shows that you don't normally think of as "serialized" today have significant serial elements. The audience demands it. That, and the layer of complexity in a story demand someone who is there more than a freelancer is going to be. If you go back and watch medical dramas or cop shows from the 70's, you're going to be flummoxed by just how simplistic they are on every level. And how nothing connects. The nuance of where someone is in their relationship with so and so, or the general cant of how the "squad" is doing as the season progresses; that may not be as twisty and intertwined as, say, Intelligence or The Wire, but it's still complex enough that you want someone there that's been part of the conversation from the beginning. That is the route to great. The other way, to my mind, just won't work.

If you're a freelancer, and you want scripts, that might seem like I'm slamming the door on you. I'm not. And if you're starting out, it might seem like a barrier to you. It's not. In fact, newbies, things are actually way better for you than you think. There are plenty of levers in place to give you that first gig. It's number two and four and six that's the real issue. It's the established writers looking for a way to get scripts without having to be in the room that are really the main concerned parties here.

So if mandating outside scripts isn't a good solution, what else could be done? I have a couple suggestions, but they're by no means perfect, or complete. It's not an easy proposition to be sure.

But for that, you'll have to come back.