A video has been making the online movie site rounds that shows Aaron Sorkin and Todd Phillips taking the Writer’s Guild of America to task for disempowering individual writers and imposing more restrictions than if they simply negotiated for themselves or through their agents. What made this interesting dual-rant so interesting was that they were delivering it in front of fellow screenwriter and WGA President John Wells.
The conversation was put on by THR who stages conversations like these in the lead-up to Oscar season. Sitting around the table are the aforementioned Sorkin (The Social Network), Wells (The Company Men) and Phillips (for Due Date? Odd choice…), along with David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole), Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3), and Simon Beaufoy (127 Hours).
While that particular conversation is interesting, it’s definitely worth your while to check out now that the entire hour+ long conversation has been posted. I’ve only manages to watch a few chunks but it’s an interesting talk for sure, and you’ll even get to hear Phillip’s Mel Gibson story. You can’t cram that many great scribes into one place and not get some gold out of it, so have a look. If you’re just interested in the WGA talk, I’ve embedded that individual video below the full piece.