Respect, though, isn't nearly so easy to type into a contract. According to the studios, many of the Guild's demands--especially the elimination of the ''A Film By'' credit--aren't within their power to grant. They've been telling writers to take up those particular issues with the Directors Guild of America. Not a terribly helpful suggestion, since a lot of directors are even less thrilled than the studios by the WGA's demands.
''Don't be fooled by the word respect,'' fumes horror director John Carpenter. ''The writers want power. They don't want to be invited [to the set]--they want it mandated. They want to change how movies are made. We're talking about a jihad here. This is an ancient holy war to them. And speaking as an active member of the DGA, I'll do everything necessary to protect directors' creative rights. Everything necessary.''
Not all directors are so militant. Kevin Smith, the indie auteur behind Clerks and Dogma (who also happens to write all his own movies), actually agrees with the WGA on the possessory issue. ''The credit is crap,'' he says. ''If it's used at all, it should be sparingly. Folks like Martin Scorsese and David Lynch deserve it, because their names stand for a certain quality of film. Folks of my caliber have no business throwing that self-indulgent prepositional phrase up there.''
Nevertheless, if the writers do end up striking when their current contract expires May 2, don't expect much look-for-that-union-label camaraderie from their brothers and sisters at the DGA. In fact, the writers themselves aren't counting on support from anyone. ''It's like the baseball strike,'' one sitcom writer says. ''Nobody has a lot of sympathy for out-of-work millionaires. But there are real labor issues here.''
Whether they're real enough to push both TV and film writers onto the picket line is what Hollywood is holding its breath to find out. Although few people know for sure what's being said at the negotiating table--Wells isn't talking and neither are the studios--there's little hint of optimism in the air. ''There's huge uneasiness, huge trepidation,'' says one high-level television executive. ''Everyone is afraid the writers are going to march over the hill at Gallipoli and get creamed, that they'll lead themselves like lemmings off the cliff.''
Certainly both sides seem to be lining up on the edge. The studios have been accelerating production schedules for months, backlogging enough films to see them through the fall. Television shows have been preparing for the worst by asking producers to tap out extra episodes, with some staffs obliging (like Wolf's at Law & Order) and others refusing (''They asked for six additional scripts,'' says Everybody Loves Raymond's Rosenthal, ''but I couldn't in good conscience do it''). Some even fear that the studios actually want a strike, that their number crunchers see work stoppage as effective cost control, allowing them to shut down operations and prune their payrolls of deadwood production deals. Peter Chernin, the president/CEO of News Corp., all but endorsed a writers' walkout in a speech at a media conference in December of last year: ''The good news is that from an earnings perspective, [a strike] would be almost entirely positive. There are short-term benefits [lower production costs, accounting charges] and virtually no longer-term implications.''
