By CYNTHIA LITTLETON
Perhaps the most interesting thing Patric Verrone said at Tuesday's news conference -- other than "the strike is over," of course -- were his observations the pressure points of for the guild and the majors during Hollywood's 100-day civil war.
The completion of the DGA deal was a turning point, but more so for the AMPTP than for the WGA. "I think that loosened up a lot of what the other side would offer," WGA West prexy Verrone said after announcing the results of the vote on whether to end the strike at the WGA Theater in Bev Hills. (Vid of Verrone's statement to the media is posted below.)
"If those proposals had been put before us on Dec. 7, when the AMPTP walked away from the negotiating table, we could've easily gotten a deal done by Christmas. Instead, five weeks went by while the AMPTP chose to negotiate with another union," he said.
After so much anger and bitterness, it's heartening to hear the leaders of both armies, studios and scribes, agreeing in retrospect that the thing that really broke the stalemate was the involvement of the CEOs. News Corp.'s Peter Chernin and Walt Disney Co.'s Robert Iger went into the fabled room; CBS Corp.'s Leslie Moonves used his considerable powers of persuasion and charm in a drinks meeting with WGA negotiating chief John Bowman (at Chernin's house with Warner Bros.' Barry Meyer joining them too), and at a private dinner at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills with Verrone and WGA West exec director David Young, who'd become a lightning rod for studio execs' anger at what they felt were disingenuously blue-collar tactics being applied in a white-collar situation.
Asked what he'd do differently if he had to do it all over again, Verrone didn't pause much before answering. "I'd hope that we had gotten into the room with the CEOs sooner. I really think that was vital to the process to meet with decision-makers, and I hope that going forward those decision-makers are more integrally involved with these kinds of collective bargaining action. I don't know if (the strike) could have been avoided. I'd like to have thought we could have done this without a strike but in retrospect it seems it as though we had to."
By the first week of February, the sides were feeling the pressure of the clock ticking down toward so many deadlines -- the Feb. 24 Oscarcast and the chance to salvage any of the 2007-08 TV season and pilot development. Verrone even allowed that the WGA was feeling some of the same heat, presumably from members with shows and pilots on their minds.
"It was a double-edged sword. They were getting pressure from the impending end of the TV season, the sinking of the pilot season and the fact that the Screen Actors Guild was going to honor our Oscar picket line. We were getting many of those same pressures. The point of true leverage for both sides really came to head right around that time -- the end of January, the beginning of February."
The WGA's completed contract was inked at 6:01 p.m. on Saturday, about 90 minutes before the L.A. membership meeting commenced at the Shrine Auditorium. The strike settlement deal wasn't signed until Tuesday ayem. Is it a perfect pact? Not at all, but it does give writers a ground-floor stake in the business end of new media -- something the WGA lacked in the past during evolutionary periods of the pic and TV biz.
"This deal isn't perfect," Verrone said. "We wish we could've gotten more. We think we deserve more. Our history has been to make sure that the first contract that we get (when new technologies and venues emerge) gets us into the ground floor. When cable was developing, when home video was developing, we didn't get in on the ground floor, and when the time came to improve those contracts, well, we haven't been able to....This one -- which is based on the premise 'When they get paid, we get paid' -- may come to fruition five, ten, fifteen years from now. At this point it doesn't reflect necessarily as high a price, or as high a value, as it otherwise might, but ultimately we think this is a contract that is going to work to our advantage in the future."
The big breakthrough for many writers is the contract term that allows scribes to shift the web streaming compensation formula in the third year of the WGA contract to a percentage-based residual equal to 2 percent of the distributor's gross. The contract agreement already spells out (in legalese it's dubbed "imputed value") what that distributor's gross will be in the 2010-11 contract period ($40,000 for an hourlong show, $20,000 for a half-hour program), and thus the 2% fee works out to not a whole lot more that the flat fixed fee called for in the first two years of the contract.
Verrone (pictured right at the WGA's Nov. 9 rally outside the Fox Plaza building) said the sides agreed to the "imputed value" terms because web streaming remains the Great 
Unknown. It protects writers to ensure there'll be something there for them, and it's understood that the majors would only agree to the third-year residual shift if they could nail down what those costs would be upfront. (Turns out that the credit for the idea of shifting to a distrib's gross/percentage formula in the third year goes to longtime WGA contract wonk and publications editorial director Charles Slocum, according to Verrone. "We'd been through half a dozen other ideas before that one stuck," he said.)
"We don't know what the business is going to be like three years from now," Verrone said by way of explanation, in a huddle with reporters after his formal remarks. "We don't know what it is now, because (the companies) won't tell us."
Verrone added that one of the legacies of the strike will be to have opened the eyes of creative community to the real potential for producing original content for the Internet -- a type of work that will now be covered if done by WGA and DGA members.
"One of the legacies of this strike will be the ability of writers and creators to be do entertainment on the Internet without the conglomerates, without the studios and networks."
Taking the long-term view, Patric, what have we learned from the past three months? I thought it was noteworthy that Verrone earned a round of applause from reporters and TV and radio crew members at the end of his roughly 12 minutes at the podium.
"We learned that this membership can be galvanized. There's a lot of impressive solidarity. Writers will in fact walk a picket line, they will stand up for things they believe. I hope when we go into talks in three years it doesn't come down to this kind of battle, and that we can actually resolve things at the table....I hope it's been a learning experience on both sides. I hope we don't have to do this again, but i hope (the studios have) also learned that this membership is engaged and active. If we have to do it again we will get prepared to do it again."
Addendum: The lift-the-strike vote was 3,492 in the yea column and 283 in the nay column. Who are those 283 people who'd prefer to fight on? We'd like to hear from you.
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