An Exorcism for the Possessory Credit

by Paris Barclay

As I write this, I am in the midst of kitchen renovation hell.

After looking at three designs, I chose one designer. But first he balked over the contract, and then after he was unable to give me what I wanted for what I had to spend. We parted company.

I’m on my second designer, and it’s working better. He presented a creative plan that suited my budget. He found innovative ways to keep it light throughout, to build the island I wanted, even how to place the television where anyone in the kitchen can see it.

Still, moving from the idea to the reality will involve several thousand little decisions that will make this kitchen mine. The right tiles, the wood on the cabinets, where the doors should be, whether the appliances should be stainless or black, the placement of the lighting and outlets, you know the drill.

Even though the plan is primarily his, the kitchen, in the end, will be as I envision it. It will be “A Kitchen by Paris Barclay, from a design by Thomas Harvey.”

But I won’t ask for that credit on the kitchen door. It isn’t a film.

I’ll bet you know where I’m going with this. I’m a member of the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, and the Screen Actors Guild. Though primarily a director in television, I’ve tackled a feature, an HBO film, and rewritten a number of scripts professionally. Like the youngest child watching his parents and older siblings argue time and again, I am a mostly mute observer, as the “possessory credit” debate rages around me.

It has possessed too many of us. While it’s primarily a feature film issue, enough of us are crossing between the theatrical and television worlds that I believe this olive branch of an article, in this interdisciplinary forum, might help exorcise the demons that have made this issue so emotionally charged.

First, let’s deal with the things most of us can agree on:

1.  Writers have not gotten their due recognition in feature films. A good film begins with a good script, a story that works, strong characters, dialogue that is real enough to be believed in the moment, and well-crafted enough to make its themes rise to the surface like good central heating (or like a well-thought out plan for a new kitchen).

Hollywood in general has not given enough credit to the men and women who originally bring a world to life on the page. Like my first designer, they are often considered expendable if they don’t meet the expectations of those in power. It’s largely because…

2.  …directors tend to have more control, and larger egos. We have chosen this job because it satisfies a deep-seated urge to control our fictional environments. This self-assurance is what makes us, for the most part, efficient leaders - men and women who see the film, filtered through our own experience, and toil longer than any other professional in the feature film business to make it a reality.

Although directors in television are more comfortable functioning in a world where the writer is more valued, other directors gravitate to features because, historically, their control is more secure. And they are supported in this by...

3.  …producers, who tend to value feature directors more than writers. To the producers, writers may lay the foundation, but directors are responsible for making the multitude of decisions that can make the writer’s detailed architecture work as a piece or seem jumbled and incoherent. They must hire the right crafts people, and supervise them until the job is done. (If James Cameron were doing my kitchen with Tom Harvey, you can imagine how different it might look. Or Spike Lee. Or Robert Altman.)

Because of the Directors Guild’s hard won creative rights, producers must almost always settle for only one director per film. With a handful of exceptions, they support the one mind that makes the principal choices that turn the script into a movie. Writers are often changed at the request of the producer (or director) in order to tailor the final product to the director’s vision.

So, unlike in my renovation experience, the director/client is also essentially the contractor as well - hiring the subcontractors (the crew) and supervising them on a daily basis until the job is done.

Now we get into an area where I’ll probably lose some of you. But please bear with me - the exorcism is close at hand.

4.  A script is something you read – a movie is something you see. People may come to a film because of the story, but what they see is almost always one person’s interpretation of what a writer (or writers) has created. Through casting, performances, lighting, wardrobe, sets and locations, editing, sound, music, and all the other crafts under the director’s watchful eye, a new entity is created, separate and apart from the script. It is the film, and the film may highlight, eliminate, focus attention away from, confuse, clarify, amplify, or otherwise alter the meaning and intention of the careful plan a writer (or group of writers) has originally imagined. That is the nature of the transference from the page to the screen. Which leads us to the (sometimes) painful truth that...

5.  …the simplest way for a writer to gain control over his/her own work is to direct as well. The basic truth is that the producers’ belief system, summarized above, is the most sensible and pragmatic way to get feature films made. They must invest the ultimate authority in someone, and the person in the best position to take the responsibility of spending someone else’s money to make these celluloid entertainments, is the director.

It will take a revolution in how films are made for writers to truly take the reins of motion picture making. It’s highly unlikely to happen. So writers who wish to be the masters of their creative domains have shrewdly turned to directing as well, and usually with good results. (As a member of the Western Directors Council of the DGA, where new members are voted in at every session, I have never heard opposition to a prospective member because he’s a writer. And I doubt I ever will.)

6.  The possessory credit (“a film by…” or “a…film”) began as a marketing tool, and has come to be an announcement of what once was already clear when the words “directed by…” appeared. Although some impassioned writers insist on calling them  “vanity credits,” they aren’t always - but sometimes they are. And they are enough of the time that the pejorative moniker has weight.

“A Steven Spielberg film,” no matter who writes it, has value in the marketplace because of the long, extraordinary history of that unique filmmaker. “A Paris Barclay film” above the title, while impressing my family, my agents, and die-hard fans of NYPD Blue, won’t sell nearly as many tickets. But my ego says ask for it, and when I watch a parade of unfamiliar names get that credit, damn it, I want it too!

In a world where possessory credits are commonplace, the credit “directed by” is no longer the simple, clean, summarizing statement it once was. Some directors may legitimately fear that “directed by” alone indicates that they were a hired hand, or less involved in the script development, or that the film is more akin to a television show – where their contribution is not as substantial.

Wait a second. Maybe “A kitchen by...” isn’t such a bad idea? Which leads me to the conclusion that...

7.  …the possessory credit is here to stay. It began with the modern film (see my least favorite film of all time, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation), and was ingrained in the auteur days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and further solidified in the celebrity-crazed times we live in now. Eradication simply is not possible with so much history (and ego) to contend with. At best it can be lessened - that is, more discriminately applied. So I propose a number of ideas that, if they were all adhered to, would not only reduce the use of the possessory credit, but would make it more meaningful when we did see it.

Before your head begins to spin around, I need all of your help to have these demons removed. So let’s all strap ourselves to our beds, and let the exorcism begin.

WHAT IF DIRECTORS

asked for the possessory credit only when:

• their name truly mattered in the marketplace, or

• they wrote (or co-wrote) and directed the film, or

• they created the initial idea or story, and hired a writer or writers to create it (like my kitchen), or

• they had a strong hand in supervising the writer or writers in rewriting, changing, or shaping a substantial percentage of the story and dialogue, or

• they oversaw a film in which much of the story and/or dialogue was improvised by actors on the set or

• they have final cut on the film, guaranteeing that every frame reflects their esthetic?

WHAT IF WRITERS

asked for the possessory credit as well, when:

• their name is the most meaningful piece of information to an audience, or

• when they are also the producer of the film, involved in many of the key decisions that will bring the script to life, including, for instance, hiring the director, or

• when they are the only writer, and the primary source of both the visual and verbal images that will be seen by the audience, with the director executing a vision that is most accurately described as theirs (as is the case in most television shows), or

• when they have final cut on the film?

WHAT IF PRODUCERS only gave the possessory credit to directors or writers who met at least one or more of the above criteria?

The possessory credit isn’t owned by directors - the DGA’s minimum basic agreement only gives every director the right to negotiate for it, and certainly doesn’t preclude writers (and producers, for that matter) from asking for it as well. The Directors Guild has always said that it has no desire to guarantee this credit to any bonehead who thinks he can design a kitchen (I mean, direct a film). But it steadfastly supports its members’ right to reach for it.

Most films will still be the product of one director’s vision, and for some of those directors, “directed by” will suffice. For others, “a film by…”  will be the most accurate term to clearly say to an audience either, “you know me, and this is gonna be one of my babies,” or “you may not know me, but what you’re about to see owes substantially more to me than any other single person.”

So let’s put an end to the vilification of each other over this issue. I say, “Be gone, Satan!” Let balance and a modicum of humility return.

Who knows? In a world where order and true respect reigns, you may even see a new hybrid credit: “A film by Steven Spielberg and Ron Bass” or “A kitchen by Paris Barclay and Thomas Harvey” perhaps?

For this young sibling, watching the possessed giants he loves and admires go at each others’ throats, this wouldn’t be the end of the world.

It could be the beginning of life where, once ego is tamed by mutual respect, the only spirit that moves us is our shared love of the art of making films.

Paris Barclay is the supervising producer for the ABC television drama NYPD Blue, winning both an Emmy and a Directors Guild Award for his work, and has also directed the Miramax film Don’t Be a Menace..., and the HBO movie The Cherokee Kid.