UPDATE: Since this post, the class has come and gone. If you'd like to visit the web-site we built about producing for film and TV, please CLICK HERE.
The first session of the USC School of Cinema Television's CNTV 589 ("Produce or Perish!") featured Patric Verrone as our guest. Verrone is the President of the Writers Guild of America, west. As far as producing goes, Patric's been a strong presence in the field of animation where he's worked on "The Simpsons," "Futurama," "The Critic," and is currently co-executive producing "The Class of 3000." How he manages to stay so busy and still run a Hollywood trade union says a lot about his talents.
PATRIC VERRONE BIO. Verrone graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College where he was an editor of "The Harvard Lampoon." He got his law degree from Boston College Law School where he served on the Boston College Law Review. He is a member of the California and Florida Bars, has been an adjunct professor of entertainment law at Loyola Law School and UCLA Extension, and has served as editor of the Annual Entertainment Law Issue of "Los Angeles Lawyer" magazine since 1996. He has been a television writer and producer for nearly 20 years and, besides those animation credits, he's also worked on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and "The Larry Sanders Show." He has won two Emmys and been nominated eight times in four different categories. He won the 2002 Writers Guild Animation Caucus Lifetime Achievement Award.
All those credits are great, but the one that matters a lot to Hollywood right now is the WGA presidency. As you may recall, Verrone and a slate of like-minded candidates were just swept into office last year with an overwhelming 68% of the vote. Their agenda included a pledge to devote up to 30% of the Guild's budget to organizing writers in reality television, animation, cable, and independent film.
Mainly, though, the membership perceived Verrone and his team's interest was to force the 2007 contract negotiations to get-real. He's got all the issues on his plate -- from iPod downloads to product placement -- and the AMPTP (the group of producers that bargain collectively with the writers) is basically acting like Verrone is too hard-headed, and likely to take the union to a strike. But, as Verrone says, a strike will not be his decision to make, but will be made by the producers based on how constructively they bargain. We shall see.
Anyway, Verrone started by grabbing a dry-erase pen and basically laying out the entire schematic for how a production travels from being an idea through distribution. I've actually taken his diagram and run it through my new iMac's OmniGraffle program. We present it now in living color -- think of this as "Verrone's Vortex" -- and, students, yes, we will be discussing and testing from this. Click on this graphic and you'll see the enlarged version.
For an even better view, here's what the chart looks like as a JPEG file:
And, since we believe in choices, here is the same chart as a PDF file:
According to Verrone, there are basically six entities now that control most of Hollywood. They are:
- CBS - Viacom
- NBC - Universal
- ABC - Disney
- FOX - NewsCorp
- CW - Warner Brothers - AOL/Time-Warner
- SONY
Of these six companies, five have a TV network associated with them. Only SONY, because it is foreign owned, cannot make this claim.
Verrone argues that technology has changed the entertainment game from "Push" to "Pull." In the traditional model, when families gathered around the TV, whatever the three networks chose to broadcast was all the choice that was available and you had to watch it when they sent it out over the airwaves. With TiVo, streaming videos, taping, and downloading, we are moving evere closer to the day when people can get any programming they want, whenever they want it. We are all creating our own networks, and many of us are programming niches.
We also talked a bit about the world of animation where "The Simpsons" is a billion dollar industry and where Verrone has spent most of his career.
One key difference between animation and live action is often lead time. Verrone used to write for Johnny Carson where the monologue would be written in the morning that Johnny would perform that night. In contrast, "The Simpsons" season finale is being written right now (August) and won’t be shown until May. One consequence is that the writers have to avoid the extremely current and transitory jokes in favor of material that will play in a more "evergreen" way. Another difference is how the cost of production is not as easily distorted by high actor's salaries as voice-actors rarely get the same kind of pay raises because they can easily be re-cast and the actors know it.
Verrone got a big laugh explaining how screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Adaptation") decided to test the rather sweeping legal rights assignments (ownership in "this universe" and "all universes") that studios make him sign regarding his material. Kaufman apparently asked that Mars be excluded as a territory and that all profits on these anticipated Martian colonies be reserved to him. The studio refused. They wanted Mars, too! Talk about forward thinking...
{To read all the USC CNTV 589 posts in one URL, please CLICK HERE.}
{Thanks to Suzanne B. Ogden for taking the class notes this week.}
