DGA v. WGA: Directors Score Pilot Credit, Writers Cry ‘Power Grab’

A new provision in the Directors Guild of America’s recently inked contract with the studios — a credit created to celebrate pilot directors — is opening up old wounds with TV writers, underscoring historical tensions between the two groups. 

For background: This contract negotiation cycle was remarkably free of drama, with the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA and the DGA wrapping their talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in a fairly efficient manner (and without any threat of strikes). The DGA closed out its talks in June, winning gains for its health plan and residuals, etc. — all the usual things you ask for in a new contract, as well as extending the contract (as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA did) to four years instead of three.

This time around, the DGA’s creative rights committee also sought — and won — a “pilot directed by” credit, which will acknowledge the director of a show’s first episode in every episode of every season going forward. It’s a way to recognize a pilot director’s creative impact in building out a whole world on screen for the first time, working not just with the showrunner, but production designers, costume designers and other departments to create a unique and lasting look and feel. 

Most fans of Gilmore Girls or The West Wing know who writers Amy Sherman-Palladino or Aaron Sorkin are. But do they know Lesli Linka Glatter, who helped give Stars Hollow its distinct look, David Nutter, the “pilot whisperer” who helmed no fewer than 16 pilots that were all ordered to series, or Tommy Schlamme, who popularized the “walk and talk” — an energetic camera style that he deployed on Sorkin’s The West Wing, Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and is now mimicked on many other shows?

Probably not.

Paris Barclay, a former DGA president who has directed 10 pilots, including Dan Fogelman’s Pitch, Station 19 and most recently, Doctor Odyssey, notes earlier TV helmers who are legendary only to fellow directors and studio insiders.  

“My mother doesn’t know Robert Butler,” Barclay tells me. “Robert Butler directed the pilots of Hill Street Blues, of Moonlighting, of Batman, did the first television miniseries, did Sisters, the family drama — so many different things that she’s been watching all her life, but she always misses Robert Butler.” 

The new credit is the most visible aspect of a push in recent years by the DGA to raise the profile of its members’ work in television. Its purpose is to highlight the importance of one craft, the guild says, not take away from another. But a quick survey of showrunners, writers and dual DGA-WGA members reveals a heavy backlash among Hollywood scribes. 

The guild’s recent moves feel like a “weird, closing-the-tent power grab by the DGA,” says Drew, a DGA and WGA member (one of several guild members who requested pseudonyms to speak for this story), calling the “pilot directed by” credit an “inelegant credit” that threatens to diminish the all-important “created by” credit — established 50 years ago — that appears on screen during the main title sequence. Even though Drew stands to get this new DGA credit when he directs the pilot of the next show he’s producing, “I don’t really want it.” 

So never mind all the layoffs, runaway production and existential anxiety over the industry crumbling around us — it’s time to gear up for a good old-fashioned feud over artistic merit and creative credit. Call it a crosstown classic.

Along with my interviews with Barclay, Glatter and Schlamme, who detail the mission of the “pilot directed by” credit, I spoke to members of both guilds, including DGA-WGA members like Marc Guggenheim, to reveal: 

• How TV’s “balance of power” between writers and directors has shifted and why this change “moves the needle” further
• The 20-year DGA campaign behind this new credit
• What pilot directors actually do that episodic directors don’t
• Why writers think these three words could shift TV’s balance of power — and where those words will appear onscreen
• How old strike-era resentments — and frustration with the WGA itself — are fueling the fight
• Why even some DGA-WGA members see the credit as an overreach
• What the credit really means — and doesn’t — for a director’s career and comp