LOS ANGELES, April 10 — As his wedding neared, some 19 years ago, Patric Verrone, now president of the Writers Guild of America West, joined his bride-to-be in a ritual common to show business types. The couple formed a company, one with a clever name: Calloo Callay.þþ“It’s what you say when you slay the Jabberwock, which is what we were attempting to do in Hollywood,” said Mr. Verrone, referring to Lewis Carroll’s verse about a mythical monster.þþMr. Verrone will come face to face with the beast in its corporate form this July, as his union and its East Coast counterpart begin what are expected to be exceedingly difficult negotiations with the conglomerates that own the networks and studios. Whether the entertainment business continues to operate as usual over the next year will depend in no small part on how he handles the encounter.þþFor all their complexity, Hollywood labor talks have often boiled down to issues of leadership. This time around, Mr. Verrone — a retro-styled 47-year-old who has a background in both comedy and the law, and a taste for crisp white shirts that seem more Benchley than Bochco — has helped set a tone of wariness, if not outright anxiety, with his insistence on big solutions.þþ“He’s an absolute straight-shooter; he’s unafraid,” said Alan Rosenberg, the Screen Actors Guild president, whose own union faces contract talks only months after the writers. “We’re traveling the same path at the same time, and I know there’s a great deal to be afraid of.”þþSince assuming the Writers Guild presidency 18 months ago, Mr. Verrone has made clear to the industry that he means to reverse trends that have weakened its traditionally strong union structure. He has replaced key members of his union’s professional staff, allied with fellow guilds and laid groundwork for a series of labor-management talks as the writers’ contract nears an end in October, followed eight months later by the industry’s agreements with the Directors Guild of America and the much larger Actors Guild.þþHollywood’s last extended shutdown occurred in 1988, when the writers began a five-month walkout over residual payments for the foreign sale of television shows, among other issues. The sides now face a potentially deeper dispute. The main areas of contention are the expansion of nonunion work by units of large media conglomerates like Viacom and News Corporation, and the way artists will be compensated for their work for the Web, mobile devices and other technologies still falling into place.þþCompany executives have argued that it is impossible to devise pay formulas for systems that are still in flux. “What the costs are going to be, what the revenues are going to be, we just don’t know,” said J. Nicholas Counter III, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. þþBut Mr. Verrone is clearly intent on pinning down as much as possible now — and on avoiding the kind of arrangements (like the one regarding home video) that many in Hollywood’s creative world believe deprived them of rightful gains in the past. þþ“We had a spirit of ‘We’ll talk about these things every three years with the companies; if there’s a bump in the road, we’ll pave it over,’ ” Mr. Verrone said of his own union’s past approach. “But nobody was looking forward to actually going out there and repaving the road ahead.”þþMr. Verrone’s own road to guild activist went through the unlikely combination of The Harvard Lampoon and law school at Boston College. At The Lampoon, Harvard’s humor magazine, he worked alongside peers who would later populate the ranks of television’s comedy establishment. In one group photo of the Lampoon staff, Mr. Verrone occupies the front in a satin jester’s suit. The more soberly attired group behind includes Michael Reiss and Alfred Jean, who both became producers of “The Simpsons” and “The Critic” and eventually hired Mr. Verrone to write for both shows.þþ(When not writing, Mr. Verrone makes miniature historical figures, which he sometimes sells on eBay; his latest subject is Barack Obama.)þþAnd his law school experience came in handy during the 1990’s on a series of animated shows at Fox, where he was employed without guild representation. Alarmed by the resulting gaps in his health and pension coverage, he helped lead a successful push to organize the Fox writers just as “Futurama,” of which he eventually became a longtime producer, was being developed. A series of guild offices followed before he won a two-year term as president in 2005. þþOnce he was a guild insider, Mr. Verrone said, he fully realized the union’s eroded position in the industry. In the mid-1980s, by his count, about 95 percent of Hollywood’s writing jobs in both television and major feature films were covered by the guild. That share, he maintains, has dropped to about 55 percent as the entertainment companies use nonguild divisions to produce a plethora of animated, reality and other shows. þþSince 2000, Mr. Verrone said, guild-covered writer earnings have risen at less than half the rate of entertainment industry profits. “I think if they could do this business without us, they would,” Mr. Verrone said of what he saw as an increasingly chilly corporate stance toward writers, actors and directors. þþA fellow union, the powerful International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, last year handed Mr. Verrone a setback when its members took over work that had been performed by writers who were striking for guild representation on “America’s Next Top Model,” on the CW network. The episode left Mr. Verrone convinced that nonunion writers could best be organized by asking for provisions that would let the guild “reach up to the mother ship” — the parent corporations — to get authority over work for the nonguild units. þþBut Mr. Verrone has also achieved some unexpected successes. He and his allies reached an accord between their 7,500-member union and the Writers Guild of America East, despite a history of strained relations. The increased solidarity and a new militancy among leaders like Messrs. Verrone and Rosenberg and the East Coast writers guild president Chris Albers may portend rougher tactics in the coming face-off with companies.þþYet Craig Mazin, a former board member of the West Coast guild, pointed out that Hollywood’s experiments with that more contentious approach, as when East Coast members two years ago picketed a Viacom shareholders’ meeting wearing masks in the likeness of one of its top executives, have yielded little.þþ“The theory behind such tactics is basically to act terroristically against the corporations that employ you,” said Mr. Mazin, who noted that CBS News writers at the center of that action have continued to work without a contract. þþWhatever else might happen, Mr. Verrone said things would not become personal in the coming talks. But he remained poised for a fight. “When it comes to collective bargaining,” he said, “it seems to me we’re dealing with some of the biggest corporations in the world.” þ
Source: NY Times
