I know most of you don’t give a fuck about writers unless they’re pissing you off but this is a big goddamn deal.

The headline here is garbage.

The Writer’s Guild, which is the union for writers working in tv and movies, has required agencies to sign on to a code of conduct that would ensure the agents are acting in the best interest of their clients, WHICH IS WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The agents guild rejected the code of conduct. Writers are not required to fire their agents. The WGA is telling its members to contact their agents and see if the individual agents/agencies will agree to the code of conduct and recommending that if they say no, the writers part ways.

Hollywood agents have been double dipping for years and since our government stopped caring about stuff like this long before the current nightmare nobody has stopped them. The best analogy of what’s going on is this:

Imagine you were in a car accident and you hire a lawyer. Then you find out the lawyer is also working for the guy who hit you, but your lawyer hasn’t disclosed that info to you during the negotiations. Your lawyer is incapable of acting in your best interest because she or he has a financial stake in a certain outcome of the case for themselves. What makes them the most money may not be what’s best for you.

Lawyers can’t do this without risking losing their license to practice, I’m pretty sure, so they don’t. Agencies have been on the honor system without any mechanism in place to keep them from double dealing, until now. That’s what this is all about.

This is absolutely true and disgraceful. As I understand it, another thing agencies do is ‘package’ talent together and try to sell it as a unit. So eg if you, as a writer, have a script you want to sell, your agent might package it together with one of their directors or one of their producers. And if you’re the less profitable person in your package, you can bet it won’t be your interests the agency is representing.