The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

bargaining power and need not agree to any terms but his own. A S a producer I want Hollywood ■^ *-to be a center which attracts good writers. I want Hollywood writers to aim always at greatness instead of being content with reasonably wellpaid mediocrity. I want Hollywood writers to be free men artistically but I have become convinced that there exists among them too great a tendency to sacrifice that freedom for security or for the illusion of security. It was a member of the Screen Writers' Guild itself, Mr. John Rodell, who said in a recent issue of this magazine : "The price of artistic authority is to work for nothing, at the risk of never gaining any reward at all ; to take the risk of never being paid, never being heard, never being seen. It's working in travail, in silence, in doubt and anxiety and alone. It's having your own conception, not borrowing someone else's; your own gestation, not the story conferences, and your own delivery, though it kill you. None of this idea is new. It is as old as art itself. But it is also as true, and as necessary to say. And it tells why the screenwriter hasn't earned this authority either, this even greater carrier of prestige and self-esteem." Almost since time immemorial the writers of Hollywood have rent the skies with their demands for more freedom as to what they could write, more authority over what they might write, and more money in payment for what they did write. Here, if you have the courage and the faith in your ability to match your demands, is an opportunity to achieve all those ends you have been talking about. If you are writing on your own no one can dictate to you what you shall write. If you are writing on your own, you can bargain freely as to whether or not any changes may be made in what you write. If you are writing on your own you can rest assured that if you write well, your financial reward will be greater than if your agent had been picking up your paycheck each week. This is not an idea conjured up by a producer for the purpose of exploiting writers. On the contrary, it was one of your own most distinguished colleagues, Dudley Nichols, who spoke to writers and directors five years ago in these words: "It is an axiom that no one will pay you to be a free artist. You are hired for profit — that is common sense. Very well, then, you must stop working for salary. You must devote yourself to the task in hand as do the novelist and the dramatist, and only be recompensed if the film makes a profit. Economically, I believe the writer and director will fare even better under this arrangement than under the salary system. Spiritually they will become whole men and work with integrity." The choice is entirely in your hands. It may be a difficult one for you to make at the outset but you will recollect that it was a writer who could stir men as few others of his time, Tom Paine, who said "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated." h^ A Thought For The Future THE role of prophet is an unenviable one, especially in regard to an organization that has been rendered largely ineffectual by internal dissension for a period of many years. There has always been an "issue" dividing screen writers and dissipating their energies. All these "issues," whether political or professional, seem to stem from a fundamental controversy over the nature of the Guild itself: are we a trade union or are we a society of writers seeking to free the screen writer from the status of a hireling? Do we want to perpetuate the salary system or do By SHERIDAN GIBNEY we want to establish the writer in his proper place as an independent creative artist with the same control over his material that the dramatist has and an equally fair remuneration in the form of royalties? This controversy has been obscured by the fact that writers have looked upon their emancipation from an employee relationship as practically hopeless. It is further confused by the presence among us of many writers who, for economic reasons or lack of confidence in their ability, prefer to be employees, even at the cost of surrendering all rights to their ma terial and all control over its use. These people the Guild has served well by establishing minimum working conditions and guaranteeing fair credits. But what have we done for writers who would welcome a chance to work independently, provided there were reasonable opportunities of production on a royalty basis? I can truthfully say — nothing. This is not the Guild's fault entirely. The producers have long preferred the salary system and have repeatedly refused to recognize the Guild as representing writers other than employees. Nor has any producer to my knowledge < > »— ( < X H Z w w H i— ( Pu The Screen Writer, April, 1948 21