Hollywood screenwriters are notoriously rewritten, written off and pissed off—so much so that they’ve dramatized their own plight in projects like Adaptation, The Player and the recent David Duchovny film The TV Set.
Perhaps one day they will need new material.
If so, it will be due in part to years of meticulous behind-the-scenes negotiating and diplomacy on the part of lawyer Alan Wertheimer, ’69, JD ’72. He is helping the first screenwriters receive gross points, as A-list directors and actors do. That’s a percentage of a movie’s gross receipts—not adjusted, not net. The gross is the only meaningful figure in an industry where studios can arrange their books (legally) so that even billion-dollar films don’t generate net profits.
“The gross-points barrier has never been breached before,” says screenwriter Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society), former board member of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA). This spring, Wertheimer and Tom Hansen represented Schulman, John Wells and Nick Kazan in a negotiation with Warner Brothers. The result is the Writers Co-Op, in which 19 established writers will produce at least 18 scripts over the next four years, forgoing high upfront salaries in exchange for gross-point participation. Warner Brothers will have right of first refusal; and the writers will not be rewritten without their approval and will act as producers.
The WGA, the chief union for screenwriters, calls the Co-Op “a groundbreaking deal that will have a positive impact on writers everywhere.”
If it works, the historic collaboration could be a screenwriter’s dream come true. To repeat: if it works. Some writers, including one Emmy winner who requested anonymity, fear it will help only big-name scribes. “The Co-Op will give other studios leverage to threaten agents as to why they cannot afford to pay a writer’s quote,” says the writer. “They’ll have more fuel to cry bottom-line poverty.”
Wertheimer disagrees. “This is not even something that would affect the Co-Op writers’ quotes at other studios, so I don’t understand the argument.”
In 2001, Schulman, Kazan and Wells—while serving on the WGA’s negotiations committee—began seeking a new flank from which to attack the gross-points issue. They naturally turned to Wertheimer—“Werth” or “The Werth” to friends and clients—who has been fighting on behalf of screenwriters for years.
“It’s pretty widely acknowledged that he is one of the best entertainment lawyers in town,” Schulman says. “He’s got a real fire for getting his clients the maximum good deal. That’s not always what [other lawyers] have in mind.”
Wertheimer, who grew up in Los Angeles, developed a hunger for justice watching Perry Mason courtroom dramas as a boy. He went to Stanford Law with the intention of becoming a criminal defense attorney. In 1971, Professor Anthony Amsterdam—“the smartest person I’ve ever been in the same room with”—set him up in an externship as a clerk to a superior court judge in Oakland.
Oakland quickly disabused Wertheimer of his courtroom fantasies. Only rarely were defendants completely innocent. “Your victory is getting manslaughter, not murder, but it’s not like they didn’t kill the person,” he says.
‘In this business there’s a lot of suffering. I’m a glass-is-half-full person, but I tend to suffer along with them.’
After graduation he took a job at Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman in Beverly Hills, planning to be a litigator. Instead, he fell under the tutelage of the late Norman Garey, ’58, JD ’60, and began helping him with entertainment clients, then building his own clientele.
Then, as now, he says, “Everybody seemed to have a screenplay, whether it was a bartender or a waiter.” One of the “spec” scripts Wertheimer came across was Dead Poets Society. He has now represented its author for more than 20 years.
Many entertainment lawyers, and even some agents, follow the dictum “Sell it, don’t smell it.” Meaning sell an actor, a director or a script, but don’t judge the quality of the work.
Wertheimer prefers to indulge his nose. “I like to smell,” he says. “I’m fascinated by the black magic of someone sitting down and writing a story and inventing characters and then the director bringing them to life on film.”
His office at Jackoway Tyerman Wertheimer Austen Mandelbaum & Morris is filled with Craftsman furniture, several pieces of which he restored himself. Sitting on the wide wooden arm of a chair is a script cracked open to the page where Wertheimer has paused. A wooden, glass-paned cabinet is filled with his clients’ shooting scripts: The Green Mile, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, A Knight’s Tale, Meet Joe Black, Boogie Nights.
“I was completely blessed to fall into something that feels like a hobby more than a job,” Wertheimer says. “To be in the business side of movies is something that’s just fascinating to me, separate and apart from making a living.”
Wertheimer attends film festivals to spot new talent. Seven years ago in Toronto, he saw Kimberly Peirce’s groundbreaking directorial debut, Boys Don’t Cry, which made Hilary Swank a star.
The response to the movie was overwhelming, and its fledgling director found herself fielding offers for big-studio projects that didn’t feel right. Wertheimer protected her.
“I was a kid when we met,” she says. “A lot was at stake. It was like having an elder statesman take me under his wing.”
What Peirce really wanted to do was write, direct and retain complete artistic control of her films. “Alan went to the mat for me a number of times,” Peirce says, pointing out that he forgoes huge paydays for himself when he helps her trade big money for control. “It’s a hard mat to go down on. He fights like hell to protect me.
“When you watch the movie, you’re seeing Alan’s work up there. It’s not just me. I don’t say that lightly. I deeply, deeply appreciate how he’s allowed me to make my art. He could have been a producer. He’s certainly smart enough, but he wanted to practice law,” she says.
Peirce helped introduce Wertheimer to her native New York City by taking him on rambling walking tours, often with his son, who attends New York University. Now Wertheimer owns his own apartment in the city and, Peirce claims, has surpassed her in his knowledge of Gotham.
For Wertheimer, mixing friendship and business comes naturally. His list of clients/friends includes Nicole Kidman, Sigourney Weaver, ’72, Teri Hatcher, Kyle MacLachlan, Timothy Hutton, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gary Ross (Big, Dave, Seabiscuit), Ron Bass, ’63, (Rain Man, The Joy Luck Club), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Munich) and Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice), among many others. Relaxed dinners at his Brentwood home often turn into informal networking events.
Before he turned to screenwriting, Bass worked as a lawyer in the same firm as Wertheimer. He turned his old office over to him when he left. Today, Bass says, “Alan is my consigliere. Every decision I make I make with him. Not just for my work, but how to structure my whole life. There’s rarely a day when I don’t speak with him.”
Although he didn’t become the crusading defense attorney he imagined he’d be, Wertheimer is still trying to shape the world around his vision: restoring the beauty of a Craftsman chair or one of the classic cars he collects. And finding a better spot for scribes among the pantheon of Hollywood creatives. Some of Wertheimer’s suggestions have been incorporated into the WGA’s official Screen Credits Manual. His son’s middle name is Justice.
“In this business there’s a lot of suffering,” he says. “Look at how Paramount treated Tom Cruise. No one is immune. Actors don’t get parts they want. Writers don’t get credit for their work. I’m a glass-is-half-full person, but I tend to suffer along with them.” For every win, there are plenty of losses he prefers—and not just because of client confidentiality—to leave unmentioned.
The good part is that even after 25 years in the business, he still enjoys watching movies. Festivals are his favorite venue.
“Oh my God, just seeing a great movie without all the hype and the marketing. Just seeing it pure . . .” Wertheimer enthuses. “I have sublime movie experiences, fortunately, all the time.”
Ann Marsh, ’88, is a writer in Long Beach, Calif.
