Strike writers to spare Grammys from picketing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202474.html

Strike writers to spare Grammys from picketing
By Steve Gorman
Reuters
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The union for striking Hollywood screenwriters said on Tuesday it had decided to spare next month's Grammy Awards from picketing that could dampen the recording industry's highest honors.

The announcement by the Writers Guild of America marked a surprise reversal from the union's previous stance that it would likely picket the Grammy show, slated for a live telecast on February 10 from the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Writers Guild leaders said the decision, approved by the WGA's governing board, was "made on behalf of our brothers and sisters" in two unions that represent musical performers and had sought a strike "waiver" for the Grammys.

The move was welcomed by those unions, as well as by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys, and CBS, which will carry the telecast.

"We are gratified that the 50th annual Grammy Awards will focus solely on the great music, artists and charitable work resulting from our show," academy spokesman Neil Portnow said.

The Writers Guild has been using the threat of picketing of major entertainment awards venues to draw attention to its cause and to press major film and TV studios to renew negotiations aimed at settling the union's 11-week-old strike.

The Grammy decision came as the WGA and studios announced they would open "informal discussions" on Wednesday aimed at paving the way for a resumption of official contract talks that collapsed on December 7. The two sides have not met since then.

In giving the Grammys a pass, the striking writers cleared the way for the show to go on without the spectacle of stars having to cross picket lines. It was not clear whether union writers would still be barred from working on the show.

A number of high-profile Grammy nominees this year, including Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Alicia Keys, are also members of the WGA's sister union for TV and movie performers, the Screen Actors Guild.

It was the threat of an awards boycott by SAG members that derailed the Golden Globe Awards earlier this month, forcing organizers to scrap their traditional gala event in favor of a bare-bones news conference to announce winners.

But with the principal talent unions for recording stars poised to openly break ranks with the Writers Guild and SAG, it was doubtful a Grammy boycott would have gathered much steam. Beyonce's father and manager last week issued a statement saying she planned to participate in the music awards.

The prospect of WGA picketing still hangs over the film industry's most prestigious honors, the Oscars, whose organizers vow to go on with some form of their ceremony as scheduled on February 24.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and David Wiessler)

WGA calls off awards show

http://www.variety.com/VR1117978857.html

WGA calls off awards show
Winners will still be announced on Feb. 9
By DAVE MCNARY
Thurs., Jan. 10, 2008

The WGA has called off the Feb. 9 awards show in Los Angeles — unless it has ended its strike by then.
In a brief announcement Thursday afternoon, the guild said it would announce its awards as planned but added, “There will be no Writers Guild of America West show until the strike is over.”

The guild – which announced its screenplay nominations earlier Thursday – has been planning to hold its event at the Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles.

For its part, the WGA East has not yet decided whether it will proceed with its awards event, which has been set for the Hudson Theater at the Broadway Millenium Hotel in Gotham. “We are exploring our options and we will let you know when we have made a decision,” said WGA East rep Sherry Goldman.

With the DGA not yet having set its talks with the AMPTP, it’s unlikely that the 10-week writers strike would be settled by Feb. 9. WGA talks collapsed on Dec. 7 after the AMPTP demand that the scribes remove half a dozen proposals from the table; no new WGA negotiations have been scheduled.

Before canceling the kudos, the WGA announced the nominations for adapted and original screenplays, as well as best documentary.

Among the nominations, original screenplay nods went to Diablo Cody for Fox Searchlight’s “Juno,” Tony Gilroy for Warner’s “Michael Clayton,” Tamara Jenkins for Searchlight’s “The Savages,” Judd Apatow for U’s “Knocked Up” and Nancy Oliver for MGM’s “Lars and the Real Girl.”

Adapted nods went to Ethan and Joel Coen for Miramax’s “No Country for Old Men,” Paul Thomas Anderson for Par Vantage’s “There Will Be Blood,” Ronald Harwood for Miramax’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” Sean Penn for Vantage’s “Into the Wild” and James Vanderbilt for Par’s “Zodiac.”

WGA voters named all five of the films nominated earlier this week for the DGA’s top directing award. Anderson, the Coen brothers, Gilroy and Penn all received DGA nominations as did Julian Schnabel for “Diving Bell.”

Documentary noms went to Anthony Giacchino for First Runs’s “The Camden 28,” Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman and Elisabeth Bentley for Thinkfilm’s “Nanking,” Charles Ferguson for Magnolia’s “No End in Sight,” Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen for Menemshaw’s “The Rape of Europa,” Michael Moore for Lionsgate’s “Sicko” and Alex Gibney for Thinkfilm’s “Taxi to the Dark Side.”

Moore won the WGA original screenplay award four years ago for “Bowling for Columbine” dcumentary. The WGA then decided to set up a separate documentary category, making docs ineligible for the screenplay categories.

Documentaries that were eligible featured an on-screen writing credit and were exhibited theatrically in Los Angeles or New York for one week in 2007. Credited writers were required to join the WGA’s Nonfiction Writers Caucus but the scripts were not required to have been written under WGA jurisdiction to be considered.

WGA winners have matched Oscar winners in the original category eight times in the last 13 years, including last year when Michael Arndt won for “Little Miss Sunshine.” In the adapted screenplay category, winners have matched nine times in the last 13 years with William Monahan taking both trophies last year for “The Departed.”

Features eligible for a WGA award were released during 2007 and produced under WGA jurisdiction or under that of affiliate guilds in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand. There were 164 pics eligible in the original screenplay and 103 in adapted screenplay.

And the nominees are:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
"Juno" - Writtenby Diablo Cody, Fox Searchlight
"Michael Clayton" - Written by Tony Gilroy, Warner Bros. Pictures
"The Savages" - Written by Tamara Jenkins, Fox Searchlight
"Knocked Up" - Written by Judd Apatow, Universal Pictures
"Lars and the Real Girl" - Written by Nancy Oliver, MGM

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
"No Country For Old Men" - Screenplay by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, Based on the Novel by Cormac McCarthy, Miramax
"There Will Be Blood" - Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, Based on the Novel Oil by Upton Sinclair, Paramount Vantage
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" - Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, Based on the Book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, Miramax
"Into the Wild" - Screenplay by Sean Penn, Based on the Book by Jon Krakauer, Paramount Vantage
"Zodiac" - Screenplay by James Vanderbilt, Based on the Book by Robert Graysmith, Paramount Pictures

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY
"The Camden 28" - Written by Anthony Giacchino, First Run Features
"Nanking" - Screenplay by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman & Elisabeth Bentley, Story by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman, THINKFilm
"No End In Sight" - Written by Charles Ferguson, Magnolia Pictures
"The Rape Of Europa" - Written by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen, Menemsha Films
"Sicko" - Written by Michael Moore, Lionsgate/The Weinstein Company
"Taxi To The Dark Side" - Written by Alex Gibney, THINKFilm

NBC pulls plug on Golden Globes broadcast

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-globes8jan08,0,4160947.story?coll=la-home-center

NBC pulls plug on Golden Globes broadcast
With celebrities under orders to honor writers' picket lines, a scaled-down 'news' show is to be substituted.
By John Horn and Meg James
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
January 8, 2008

Hollywood's awards season locomotive was derailed Monday when NBC pulled the plug on its highly rated Golden Globes, choosing not to broadcast on Sunday what promised to be a virtually celebrity-free ceremony.

The scrapped program would be the first awards show to fall victim to the Writers Guild of America strike, and February's Academy Awards also could be in jeopardy.

Although NBC cobbled together a series of Golden Globes-related "news" programs to fill the slot -- including a scaled-down news conference to announce the winners -- the decision sent shock waves through the entertainment business, which had been waiting for weeks to see whether a compromise could be reached among the WGA, the network and Globes producer Dick Clark Productions to allow the show to proceed.

But the WGA, as it has with almost all television shows and feature films, refused to allow its writers to work on the Globes and promised to picket the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the usually star-stuffed awards dinner is held.

The leadership of the Screen Actors Guild advised its members to honor the WGA pickets, meaning Globe nominees such as George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie would be making other weekend plans.

Hours after the awards banquet was canceled, the organizers of many of the evening's swankiest Golden Globes parties -- some of which cost $150,000 and more to put on -- said they were canceling their celebrations too.

An NBC e-mail sent to movie studios called for an awards news conference, to be carried by NBC News, along with separate programs devoted to film clips, interviews and Golden Globe parties. But even that bare-bones coverage compromise was greeted coolly by the WGA. The union said it appeared to be a ruse to get around the pickets, which the guild said might remain in place.

"If they do an awards show, no matter what they call it, and it's produced by a struck company, we will picket," said Jeff Hermanson, assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America, West. The WGA believes that even though NBC News is listed as the presenter of the Globes broadcasts, the coverage is being covertly coordinated by Dick Clark Productions.

A spokesman for the production company said the WGA was mistaken. "We have absolutely no involvement in the news conference," Terry Fahn said. Because the rest of the programming for the broadcast had not been finalized, Fahn could not comment further. NBC declined to comment.

Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which bestows the Globes, said in a statement, "We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars celebrating 2007's outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television."

It nevertheless remained unclear whether any of the A-list talent nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. would actually show up for the ceremony in its redacted form. The head of publicity at one major studio said he would not risk humiliating his actors -- not to mention spending tens of thousands of dollars on travel and stylists -- by bringing them to some unglamorous meeting room to find out they had lost. In a crowded ballroom, at least, there's somewhere to hide.

Organizers of the 80th annual Academy Awards, scheduled for Feb. 24, said they remained hopeful they could still produce a show as good as any of the preceding Oscars.

"We really think we can work out some sort of agreement that will allow us to do a traditional Academy Awards broadcast," said Bruce Davis, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' executive director. "We will not be resorting to the kind of expedients that the Golden Globes are resorting to. We can do the kind of show the public expects of us."

The academy has yet to ask the WGA for a waiver for Oscar host Jon Stewart and his writing staff, but the WGA already has denied an Oscar request to use film clips without paying customary union residual fees.

Academy officials are hopeful that their membership -- thousands of prominent filmmakers representing all of Hollywood's top unions, who value the importance of an Oscar -- can help it reach a compromise with the WGA. But the WGA is on strike against Oscar broadcaster ABC, among other companies and networks, and the ceremony brings ABC tens of millions in profit.

NBC, which carried the Golden Globes in their infancy, resumed its broadcast of the awards ceremony 12 years ago. The network built the show into a cash cow, routinely pulling in more than 20 million viewers. NBC in recent years has made $10 million to $15 million on its Globes telecast, according to two people close to the network.

There are at least three reasons for NBC to treat the show as a news event. First, the news division doesn't have to pay to use clips from movies and TV shows. Second, the network isn't on the hook for the $6-million licensing fee it would pay the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. and Dick Clark Productions for the regular awards show. Finally, the network doesn't have to use WGA writers to provide material.

But the arrangement did not please rival television news organizations, which said privately they were irked that they would be barred from covering the event. (Print reporters will apparently be allowed in, but NBC is the only TV network that will be permitted to cover it.)

Advertisers were uncertain about the revised show's prospects as well.

"Is there going to be a red carpet, or will it just be an area rug?" said Shari Anne Brill, director of programming for ad-buying firm Carat, whose clients include Revlon, Alberto Culver and Papa John's Pizza.

"This is not what viewers have come to expect -- the glam and the glitz and the spontaneity of the Golden Globes," Brill said. But she said she understood why NBC was determined to put on some version of the show. "This way, NBC can keep the ad dollars. But I can't imagine that they will take in the same amount that they had planned if this had been a regular telecast."

Another advertising buyer offered a similar view.

"A big part of the appeal of this show is having the glitz and glamour of Hollywood right there in your living room," said Brad Adgate, research director for Horizon Media, which represents such clients as Ace Hardware, Geico and Mutual of Omaha. "People want to see who's wearing what and who George Clooney's talking to. The casualness and the party atmosphere of the Golden Globes has long been its hallmark. I don't know if a press conference is something that viewers will go for. It works for a presidential address, but this is supposed to be a Hollywood awards show."

Scott Rudin, who has producing credits on Golden Globe nominees "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," said he was discouraged by the turn of events.

"I think it's a terrible shame for the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.," he said. "This is a group that's completely caught in the middle of a situation that has nothing to do with them. It's a terrible shame that they're somehow being made to bear the brunt of it. They support a lot of challenging, difficult movies. And that's a great thing."

Also on Monday, United Artists Films became the first movie company to sign a deal with the Writers Guild of America, enabling the start-up outfit controlled by Tom Cruise and his longtime producing partner, Paula Wagner, to hire union writers during the continuing strike.

Although details of the independent agreement were not released, it was believed to be similar to the deal the guild recently struck with late-night TV host David Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants Inc. Both agreements contain provisions accepting proposals that the union put forth in its negotiations with the major studios, including in the key area of Internet residuals.

john.horn@latimes.com

meg.james@latimes.com

Times staff writers Rachel Abramowitz, Claudia Eller and Matea Gold contributed to this report.

Leno Writes His Monologue

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aE2JxFhq9SwA&refer=us

Leno, Ignoring Union's Protest, Writes His Monologue
By Andy Fixmer

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Jay Leno, host of NBC's ``The Tonight Show,'' ignored protests from the Writers Guild of America, to which he belongs, and for a second night performed a monologue on the program that he wrote himself.

The guild said it met with Leno yesterday following his Jan. 2 show reiterating rules issued before the two-month-old strike that forbid members to perform writing duties, even for themselves. NBC said Leno is abiding by union regulations.

The union and Hollywood studios are split over writers' demands to be paid for use of their work on the Web and mobile devices. Since the collective bargaining agreement with the studios and broadcasters expired Oct. 31, the guild can legally issue more restrictive policies, said Jonathan Handel, an entertainment attorney at Troy Gould in Los Angeles.

``Can the guild discipline Leno and fine him?,'' Handel said. ``If their interpretation of the rules is correct, then yes, they can. They probably have the right, if they want, to a more severe punishment'' than what is outlined in the bargaining agreement, he said.

WGA spokesman Neal Sacharow said the guild is confident that its meeting with Leno will clear up any misunderstanding about what is and isn't a violation of the strike rules.

``Leno has always been employed as a writer on the show,'' Sacharow said in an interview yesterday. ``He can't perform his own material.''

WGA spokesman Gregg Mitchell declined to comment on whether the union would take any further action with the comedian.

No Outside Help

The guild may have a tough time when it comes to disciplining Leno, who supports the strike. He walked picket lines and paid non-writing staff with his own money when NBC laid off employees after the strike shut down production.

Guild officials ``have to be seen doing something and talking with him is about the most they can do,'' Handel said.

Leno told his Jan. 2 audience that it's OK to write his own material and that he didn't use outside writers to help write any of his jokes. He performed another self-written monologue on last night's program.

``The WGA agreement permits Jay Leno to write his own monologue for `The Tonight Show,''' NBC spokeswoman Tracy St. Pierre said in an e-mail yesterday. ``The WGA is not permitted to implement rules that conflict with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the studios and the WGA.''

Negotiations between the guild and the studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, broke down a second time Dec. 7 and haven't resumed.

`Late Show'

David Letterman, Leno's late-night rival on CBS, reached agreement with the union last week that allows comedy writers to work on his ``Late Show'' and Craig Ferguson's ``Late Late Show,'' which he also owns.

Even without writers, Leno extended his streak of ratings victories over Letterman on Jan. 2. ``The Tonight Show'' averaged 7.2 million viewers, compared with 5.5 million for Letterman's ``Late Show,'' CBS said yesterday, citing data from Nielsen Media Research.

General Electric Co., the parent of NBC, fell 37 cents to $36.43 at 9:54 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. CBS Corp., owner of the most-watched television network, fell 40 cents to $25.49.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net