ADDENDUM This study was undertaken by Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn at the request of the following organizations: American Greetings Corporation American Newspaper Publishers Association Association of American Publishers Harcourt Brace Jovanovich IBM Magazine Publishers Association Motion Picture Association of America National Music Publishers' Association Printing Industries of America Recording Industry Association of America Software Publishers' Association Turner Broadcasting Warner Communications 62 I am writing at the suggestion of Charles Fitzsimons, Executive Director of the Producer's Guild of America, concerning certain "moral rights" and the motion picture industry. I am a television producer of some standing in my community and the man who conceived and personally supervised every aspect of 127 hours of the television series "Cagney & Lacey"; there were a hundred different writers involved in that process and dozens of directors. The constants (show-in and show-out, week after week and season after season) were the stars and myself. Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly and Barney Rosenzweig made that show. We got the awards and if anyone is going to be granted any moral rights on this or any other project I am thus involved with, it better not exclude the producer. In the early days of Hollywood, no one questioned what producer David O. Selznick was to "Gone With The Wind", or Pandro Berman to all those Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers films, or Walt Disney to his early work, or Arthur Freed to the MGM musical. They were the producers... the storytellers. Today in television the producer is still that person: the show-runner. Television is a producer's medium. Ask the people who make and stand behind their shows - from Aaron Spelling to Stephen Cannell, Stephen Bochco, Len Hill, Edgar Scherick or Phil de Guerre. The definition of who does what in television today is not that different from what it was generally in Hollywood before a few critics in France coined the term "auteur" and the Writer's Guild took the producers, their traditional nemises, to court - thus all but destroying the Producer's Guild and giving leave for the studios themselves to usurp the name producer. (Thus, the Motion Picture Producer's Association which is, in fact, an alliance of manufacturers not a union of creative producers per se). 11111 Santa Monica Blvd., 20th Floor Los Angeles, California 90025 213-312-1383 FAX 213-478-5170 TLX 170747 Representative Robert W. Kastenmeier For purposes of any moral rights to be granted, please understand that the producer is the storyteller. He or she is the one who decides what tale should be told to an audience. The producer then goes about the business of putting all the elements together to make that happen. He or she may write it themselves and or direct it themselves, thus becoming a single or a double hyphenate. Conceivably, the producer could even star in the film, as Charlie Chaplin did, or as many of our more entrepreneurial actors do today, but the basic function that of deciding to tell a particular story to an audience is the producer's role. They may be overlapped, they may even be the same individual, but a director is hired to command the crew, to "block" the action and to aid the actors. A writer is someone selected to turn an idea into a screenplay - a blueprint for the director and production team. The producer is the story teller visualizing it first, then putting together and supervising all the creative elements for the financiers and ultimately the audience - shepherding it through its conclusion and release. |