A rumor concerning the WGA has been dispelled

Okay, so some of you probably already knew about this particular rumor and about the truth (or lack thereof) behind it. But this quote I only just found today. And it's quite reassuring because I had heard something absolutely terrible about the WGA side of the whole situation back in October before the strike began. And that rumor made me quietly ashamed of the WGA.

The rumor I heard --told to me by a WGA attorney back during the first week of November-- was that when the AMPTP folks showed up for a scheduled pre-strike negotiation meeting on WGA turf back in October, the WGA deliberately failed to provide any chairs for them and smugly forced them all to stand for the meeting. The fact that it was WGA insider who said it made the accusation all the more credible to me. (This WGA lawyer was NOT IN that meeting, he merely heard about it later.)

But the following quote from a Feb 12 story in the LA Times completely dispells the previous allusion that the WGA had been deliberately rude. It turns out not to be true at all. It was NOT a premeditated snub, it was merely a mis-communication over the correct head-count slated for the meeting.

From L.A. Times Staff Writers Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller, February 12, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-ticktock12feb12,1,1459353.story

Even before talks first began on a new contract in July, animosity bordering on loathing between the guild's chief negotiator, David Young, and the studios' point man, Nick Counter, hobbled the chances of any fruitful exchanges.

A veteran organizer of garment and construction workers, Young was a brash newcomer to Hollywood, while the confrontational Counter had scores of contracts under his belt over a two-decade tenure as the industry's chief labor negotiator.

They couldn't even agree on how many chairs should be in the room.

At a meeting in October, days before the writers' contract was to expire, Counter showed up at the guild's West Coast headquarters with an entourage of 20 labor relations executives. Young was taken aback. He had planned for half that many -- and had only eight on his side of the table.

Young wouldn't budge from his chair, leaving Counter's posse standing. Out of embarrassment, "Desperate Housewives" writer Marc Cherry got up and rummaged through the building for more chairs.

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And on other matters, Nick Counter seems to be emerging as the bad guy here.

From L.A. Times Staff Writer Patrick Goldstein, February 12, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-goldstein12feb12,0,5178856.story

The longtime head of the studio alliance ended up being viewed as the chief obstacle to a settlement, not just by WGA loyalists but by neutral parties, notably a host of the town's top agents, who were appalled by Counter's willingness to walk away from negotiations without making a serious offer. Accustomed to the go-along, get-along style of previous guild negotiators, Counter had zero chemistry with the aggressive new WGA leaders and miscalculated badly, believing his tough tactics would eventually cause the guild to crumble. Instead, the guild brought in Alan Wertheimer (a veteran attorney whom the studios viewed with respect) to help make their case and negotiated directly with Chernin and Iger, with Counter shunted aside, no longer running the show.

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odocoileus said:

All those Times articles are pro studio spin.

Counter's the designated fall guy, but he was acting under orders from the moguls.

The moguls are playing a game to make themselves look good. The Times goes along because it too is part of a media conglomerate, and it needs the mogul's business.

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Part of me has been wondering about that possibility. And yet, the situation involving the chairs at the meeting seem to be pro-WGA. So if the studios are spinning pro-WGA fables, I am confused.

Meanwhile, here's precisely what the WGA lawyer said back in November. Please note the word "refused."

... the Guild has not struck since 1988. They’re not going to back down from that strike call trivially. There has to be some real progress or real sign of progress for the Guild to even belay the call for a strike. There were some reports Friday evening I believe of some potential softening of the position of the parties, the beginnings of some movement. It’s not clear how credible those reports are, but that may have provided some foundation for this morning’s session. The flip-side of that is that first of all relations between Patrick Verrone, the president of the [Writers] Guild, and Nick Counter, the president of the AMPTP (which is the producers, networks, and studios), are extremely poisoned. There is really no love lost. There has been a lot of public name calling essentially. And there’s a bitterness there that in human terms would be very hard to overcome. And it’s important to understand that any negotiation like this --or any negotiations at all, whether it’s between you and an individual producer, you and a writing partner, or two large organizations-- has a very important human dimension to it. At one point the Writers Guild apparently refused to provide enough chairs for the studio negotiators to sit down in. That kind of thing does not go unforgotten. And if the parties can’t even figure out how to sit at the table, it’s very hard for them to do a deal ACROSS the table.

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So evidently, when that meeting ended, the AMPTP people angrilly declared that the WGA wasn't even gentlemanly enough to provide enough chairs. And so I guess (unless the L.A. Times quote above is total crap and/or damage-control by the WGA) that October accusation was AMPTP spin.

Would you maybe suspect that this post-strike quote about Marc Cherry scrambling to get chairs is a total lie, and yet a studio lie as opposed to a WGA lie, and therefore it's actually a studio lie meant to be a sort of an olive branch being extended by the studios to the WGA?? AN olive branch to the tune of: "Here, let us help you look good."


(And as an explanation of why I have an exact quote: I am the transcriptionist for a Hollywood interview podcast. So I have all these interview transcriptions in my harddrive. And whenever I make a post here at AW in which I draw upon the information I gleen from those many many podcasts, I deliberatley try to avoid advertising/spammig/pimping-out the existence of that program here at AW. So I use conversational shorthand by saying things like "an agent once said to me," or "from what I once heard a Hollwood lawyer explain," etc.)