The screen writer (June 1945-May 1946)

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w Guild is asking the Executive Council of the League to arrange a joint committee of the member guilds and the Screen Writers' Guild to discuss this subject. Actually, the basic procedure involved is amazingly simple and not at all complicated. While the Screen Writers' Guild, at first glance, seems powerless under its Minimum Basic Agreement to do very much, actually it is free to do a great deal. Since the whole field of original material was excluded from the Minimum Basic Agreement, the Screen Writers' Guild, in so far as contractual arrangements with the Producers are concerned, is free to do exactly what it pleases in this field. But it realizes immediately that, in this field, it would be sheer folly for any one guild to act alone. If all act together, and act quickly, the battle will be won with a minimum of difficulty. True, there are many details to be worked out as to methodology. James M. Cain, for instance, has proposed that the percentages to be charged and the revenues to be collected might be administered through some arrangement similar to ASCAP. Other writers might prefer not to pool their rights but to collect on a percentage arrangement similar to that in effect in the Dramatists' Guild. But this much is clear: if the Executive Council of the League and the member Guilds agree on the two dominant principles, licensing instead of sale and separation of copyrights, all the subsidiary principles will fall into place at the right time. A simple statement of policy — and the thing is done in pictures, just as effectively as it is done in the field of television. It may be argued that not all the guilds of the League are equally strong. Some are in a better position than others to administer such a policy and to discipline those members who do not observe it. Yet, when all is said and done, what authors in their right minds are going to oppose such a rule — whether they be active members of the League and its affiliated guilds or not? Who is it that ever willingly sells ALL his rights to anything? What author alive would not prefer to license rather than sell, if he thought a fair share of his brother authors were ready to stand with him?