WAS THE NAME of a pretty good miniseries starring Pete Postelwhatever a few years back. You know the guy -- Mr. Kobayashi from The Usual Suspects. (I am on hiatus, people. I don't look up shit.)
It's also my idea for a little peevy list. One for which I'll need you Canadian, professional working writers to decloak and pitch in.
You know how conversational topics go in waves? Like, three weeks ago I had never heard of assembly kitchens, and now I've had three conversations about them in a week? Well, another topic on that score has my nomination for example one of The Sins.
I was talking to a fellow screenwriter yesterday, and among the many, vast differences he cited in his experience working in L.A. versus Canada was the attitude toward contracts.
In L.A. and in Canada, the letter of the law is exactly the same: if you're a guild signatory, you don't start work without a signed contract.
In L.A., my friend says, this is pretty much the rule. You're not going to be writing or working in a story room unless your paper is signed.
In Canada, the rule is observed only in the breach. In the last four years, I have had my paper signed before I started working exactly once.
When I talk to other writers, I find that this is, in fact, absolutely the norm. (And yes, I know this is endemic in the arts.)
The problem is that it's getting worse. Time was on a longer project, I'd find paper getting to me after I started but not too far after. Now, I regularly hear about people who don't have contracts until after they're finished work.
Where it gets really scary is on the subject of payments.
The WGC is very clear on the concept of the production fee -- it's to be paid on the first day of principal.
So how is it possible that episodes get shot -- fully shot -- and people haven't been contracted for the script, never mind the production fee?
Other writers also have reported to me a peculiar militance when they try to police these contracts. Accounting departments that say, "you'll get paid when you get paid," who think that "you're paying paid too much anyway." Or just people who get annoyed when you ask.
What the hell is this about?
For many people, that lump payment may be one or two checks they get for the whole year. Mortgages are due, installment taxes must be paid. This bizarre sense that by asking to be contracted or paid in a timely fashion, writers are somehow being annoying or not team players -- where the hell does that come from? How did "oh my god I'm so sorry we're just getting that out to you," become "we'll get to it when we get to it?" When did writers become gap financiers?
I mean, we work in an industry where you have to make deadlines all the time. You have to apply for funds, you have to get tax credits in, you have to start prep, you have to schedule and cash flow and everything else...none of those deadlines can be missed without consequences.
...so why can't anybody -- and I mean ANYBODY, get contracts out, and get writers paid on time?
And what's our recourse? I mean, the reality is that on most of these projects if you didn't work without the contract the projects would sink. There's always too much urgency. But the urgency seems to go only one way.
If you have horror stories about non-contract and non-payment (WGC union stories only please, we all know non-union is the Wild West.) I'd love to hear them below.
What is it about the Canadian side of things that encourages this behavior? And what can we do to improve it? (And no: refuse to start work isn't an option. C'mon.)
Poky contracting and poky payments -- I nominate you for The Sins.
14 comments:
Pete Postlethwaite. But close enough.
Much as it makes good business sense to wait for all the legal stuff to be tied up before starting the engines, I don't know any writer whose head works like that. If you're hot for it today, you get it written down.
I know it's neither Canada nor LA, but I once started work on a drama for a major, major UK Broadcaster while the contract was still being written... it arrived for my signature in the usual way, and I turned it around and carried on with the draft.
The day of delivery, one of their execs cancelled the project. This was followed by a gleeful phonecall from someone in Business Affairs. Her take on it was because they'd yet to add the final signature at their end, it meant they didn't have to pay me.
A high-intensity laser blast from my agent sorted them out. But they tried. And someone there clearly had no conscience about it.
Unfortunately all my stories are from being a crack whore in the wild west.
Can you do the work, tell them you've done the work, but will only let them see it once they finalize the business side of things?
At the risk of being lynched, I'll tell you why I've seen writers (and others) not get contracted and paid. It's sort of a snowball effect. It is taking longer and longer for producers to get their signed contracts from broadcasters. And without one, you can't set up your financing.
Personally, I don't sign contracts with anyone until the broadcast deal memo is signed. For precisely the reason Stephen gives ... if you've signed contracts with the writer, director, DOP, etc. and your show gets cancelled by legal when your broadcast executive gets let go in a corporate downsizing, you're still on the stick to pay everyone contracted even though you have no show and no money. Because again, regardless of what most people think, each production gets bank financed on its own merits and most of us producer types don't have pots of money lying around to gap finance huge amounts of money.
So, I'm passing the buck. That was a long way of saying that the paperwork delay starts and ends with the broadcaster. That's why the CFTPA has been so keen to get all the major broadcast groups here signed to terms of trade agreements the last while because it speeds up the negotiation and contracting process and gives you a baseline to work from.
With all due respect Caroline, that isn't the writers' problem but the producers'. While we all work within the same system and should all be aware of, and sympathetic to, systemic problems, we have individual responsibilities. Financing, gap or otherwise, is the producer's beat. Actually it's your principal function.
Geoffrey, with all due respect, you can't get blood from a stone. And if you aren't being contracted by Sony or some other public company with big coffers, that isn't a realistic view in this marketplace.
I don't like not paying people and have always been upfront with them at the outset that they won't get paid until the broadcast contract is signed. Most of the people I've worked with in the past understood the realities of the business and were OK with it and appreciated the honesty. Those that weren't, didn't get hired and don't tend to be on the go-to list in the future.
I'd also like to think producers have more of a roll than just glorified banker.
Caroline,
Does that tactic work with the teamsters?
Question: At what point did you know that these were the “realities of the marketplace,” before or after you became a WGC/DGC signatory producer? If it was before, I guess it was always your intention to not honour that contract, even as you put pen to paper.
So, if you don’t have a pot to piss in and you word is no good, what’s left?
-Wil
I recently had a producer refuse to send me notes until the contract was signed and delivered.
Wrap your heads around that one.
-Wil
It's a toughie. there have been many times when i have proceeded on a project without a signed contract for the very reasons that Caroline alluded to. I'm of two minds on this -- sometimes you have to do it because of broadcaster tardiness so you bite the bullet and write the script. other times well, the producer is just shitting you.
What you have to do is make an evaluation of who you are dealing with before deciding whether you are going to 'write on deferral". some of the amibitious small producers are living so close to the wire that it is easy to see that their claims of being near broke is easy to see, others well, they are just greedhead scumbags who want to keep money in their accounts as long as possible before handing it off to the writer.
if you are going to write on deferral you do have to ask around to learn who you are dealing with. when I have written without contracts it has been for companies (or individuals) that I believe in and hope to forge a long term relationship with (also try and use this to lever something substantial out of them -- like partial ownership etc).
But if it is a Shaftsbury or a BA I want the contract signed and the money delivered before I do anything.
All that said, I do think that with the number of failed lawyers hanging out "producer" shingles one must be wary of working with people who somehow can't afford to pay you but can shmooze at the bar at Bistro 990 with the best of them.
What blueglow said.
I've been pretty fortunate I think in terms of no real ugly horror stories, but lots of starting the work prior to contract completion. But most times I've managed to secure some form of payment, even if just a lump sum that will come off the first 'real' check...maybe having kids and supporting a family is a form of hammer.
But like blueglow says, you read the room and situation and play it from there.
Wil Z, I've never not honoured a contract. Ever. Just so we're clear on that. And my word is good. That is precisely why I don't sign contracts til I know I can honour them. I guess the people I work with know and trust me because they continue to work with me.
As for when this became the norm in the marketplace, I'd say realistically the last 5-7 years. It's even worse if you're dealing with some American broadcasters.
We recently had a project on one of the top 10 US cable channels where all payments were frozen to us inexplicably because they said we didn't make good on all the deliverables. After six months of fighting and having to deficit finance, we were able to prove we had indeed sent everything and the publicity materials that had held up payments had been in three peoples' email boxes and on CD-rom and DVD in a box in someone else's.
And I've delivered finished shows without receiving more than the contract signature payment to some Canadian networks.
I didn't make the system, I'm just trying to stay alive in it. I hate this implication that producers are out to screw everyone when they're caught in the middle of a bad scenario. I've worked on more than one show where I've not gotten paid for weeks so that other people did. I'm not saying every producer is decent, as Blueglow rightly pointed out you need to know who you're working with, but I've worked with some shitty and unprofessional writers too ... the are bad seeds in every job in the business.
As for the Teamsters, since I'm not producing scripted stuff right now, it hasn't really been an issue for me.
Caroline,
If you are running a non-union shop, then please accept my apology. However, if you are a signatory producer, I can name at least one contract you don’t honour, the IPA. I’m sure you are a mensch when dealing with individuals on a production. I’m also sure that your forced into a bad position and wouldn’t want to make people work without contracts, if you had your druthers. Unfortunately, you do. Let’s not make claims about integrity if this is the starting position. It is what it is.
I am not without sympathy for your plight. With broadcasters jerking you around on one side and unions putting the screws to you on the other, what’s a producer to do? I don’t really blame you for depending on the generosity of the people you work with, and I hope you recognize it as such.
Let me ask you this: what do you give in return for this largesse? Is there some sort of deferral bonus? Do you cede some creative control? Are there backend points or vanity credits? Do you consider them de facto co-producers, since they have taken on the risk for you?
Or do your compatriots receive only what they would have if they signed a contract upfront?
This isn’t about you personally, since it is quite common (I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday; it was a long time ago). You just happened to stick your hand in the cage.
-Wil
P.S. The Teamsters always get paid first. Nobody fucks with the Teamsters.
I recently had the experience of a producer, with a great track record, for whom I had worked before, with great success, stiff me for payments he had already claimed he had paid me in order to free up dough from an agency (that shall remain nameless).
He was in the midst of a financial crisis. His most recent project, with which I had nothing to do, cost more and made less than he had calculated. He stood to lose everything. Should I cut him slack out of sympathy? I had nothing to do with his screwing up. Does my not pushing the point encourage the continuance of his reckless behaviour? Is the business in Canada so f*cked that this sort of thing has to happen? In the end I've resolved to just not work with him again. But am I then just shooting myself in the foot.
I don't think we should all beat up on Caroline here. She says what says earnestly. I've heard that before, too.
The fact that, corporately, big media companies are doing the same thing to producers as producers are doing to contracted writers is a sign of just how sick and unprofessional the whole thing is. What's the point of having these rules if no one follows them?
That being said, the producers face the same pressure as the writers do on this end. How do you tank a deal because there's no paper? How does a writer tank a potential relationship by insisting on the letter of the law?
It's my feeling -- and I'm working through this, here -- that you have to uncouple the two. I bear some responsibility for starting work without paper. It's a sin that I commit. There are sins I won't do, like working non union -- but indeed, that is on me. Just as the producer assumes the risk of starting before the deal is done.
But there is no causality here, and the fact that a producer is being dinged around by the network is not a justification for them asking me to assume that risk.
Part of the real problem here is that what should be regarded as super-extraordinary is actually now quite commonplace -- and we all know it. Far from it being unusual to start work without being contracted, now it's EXPECTED.
And we've all gotten those calls where we're expected to sign the CAVCO form or whatever, and fax it back in two minutes -- but you can work six weeks without paper.
There are ways that responsible companies can ameliorate this situation. On a recent project, the production co. was not getting payments from the net in the very method Caroline described. They went into their pockets and advanced the writers money through another account. I think that, while not perfect, is proper.
Our risk is our risk and your risk is your risk. We have plenty of risks that you do not have to deal with at all -- but I just don't think it's proper to ask us to share in your risk, unless, like Will says, you're making us a producer, giving us back end, etc.
Part of the "know who you're dealing with" thing is part of this. I'm not sure I want to be in business with a producer or company that can't front me money if their money hasn't come through. Everything in this business is a crapshoot. That's too much of a crapshoot for me.
And the Teamsters thing is instructive. You would never ask the crew to work without pay and if you did, you'd have trouble.
The writers should not be the most vulnerable just because they have to start work first.
I just don't know what the solution is here. Other than the WGC "getting tough." But what would "getting tough" look like?
Where's my interest, for instance?
I don't know. I just don't know.
I have done a LOT of writing pre-contract lately, because producers here are very slow to negotiate contracts. I feel okay doing it because I know the producer's signatory to the IPA anyway, so I know they're going to have to cough up the dough one way or another.
But these were either solid producers or solid, greenlit shows.
In a development situation, I will sometimes go ahead because I know that if there's no deal, I own the project. I can always make a deal with the network myself, and then we'll go find another producer.
In a production situation, I know he can't actually use my material without a deal, so time works in my favor. I had a producer try to stiff me on the terms of a deal about four weeks before principal photography. I refused to sign. Guess who caved?
But I do resent having to play hardball over and over again, and I'd be perfectly happy if, for once, a producer got their act together on time.
I have seen some extremely unprofessional behavior on the part of Canadian producers -- sometimes intended to be at my expense, but often short sighted. If you don't actually sign an option deal with me, guess what -- you don't have an option. When the network asks for the paperwork, and we're down to the fine points of the deal, what kind of position does that put you in? You've sold something that you don't own or control.
I *never* did that when I was working as a development exec in LA. But then, I wrote very fair contracts and therefore I was able to negotiate them very fast!
It doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship, really it doesn't. Producers who are being fair with me, I'm fair with them. There are producers who want to make it into a battle are forgetting that until they have a deal with the writer, they don't actually own or control anything. And that's poor business.
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