What To Learn From Showrunner David Graziano

Only you have your own best interest at stake

Photo by user Nicholasevang (Wikipedia)

Yesterday, the LA Times reported on the history of toxic behavior perpetuated by showrunner David Graziano (whose most recent and hopefully final credit is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). This article may have taken two or three people by surprise. But support staff are no strangers to this kind of behavior from David and others, and there's no real system to hold the powerful in check.

That's why this is big news for script coordinators. This article stokes the meager embers of hope in the community that perhaps this is the beginning of the most powerful people running Hollywood's biggest shows finally being held accountable. But probably not.

Choice Quotes

A few charming quotes from Graziano's spokesperson, Alafair Hall, reveal the contempt with which Graziano regards the staff who pull late night after late night to make his millions. Regarding the script coordinator Haley Cameron, whose willingness to speak on the record sparked the conflagration by which this story warms the cockles of our weary hearts, Hall wrote that a script coordinator is "an entry level (sic) position." The WGA West (the guild to which Graziano belongs) holds a 12-week course to train people to be writers' assistants and script coordinators. The owners of this very site themselves publish Amazon's best-selling (and only) guide to script coordinating, a 178-page tome that, at best, is an excellent White Elephant gift to discourage starry-eyed twenty-somethings from spending thousands on film school.

Script coordinating means editing scripts to a consistent style and format, ensuring the writers (who don't read books in their ample free time) haven't yet again mistaken "dammit" for its illiterate doppelganger "damnit", navigating an every-evolving distribution list of people who must and people who must not receive specific drafts, and handling complaints from the studio, network, production, and talent. On top of this, script coordinators also function as the right hand of the showrunner, guiding their boss's attention to production's concerns and the immediate needs of tomorrow's shoots, keeping them on track with legal clearance and on-screen copy required by various departments, and all without grinding their Delta Dental-insured molars down to the gumline. Script coordinators have a toolbox of soft skills and the knowledge of Final Draft, WritersRoom Pro, WriterDuet, Microsoft Office, Miro, Arc Studio, Movie Magic, Celtx, and Zoom. They're expected to debug files and computers and hold the hands of the first-time staff writers who make eight times what they do.

But Graziano considers this an entry-level job. That's fine. But even Hall's accusations that Cameron made "unapproved script changes" is ridiculous: every script comes out with dozens, if not hundreds, of mistakes that require correction. If these were to be run by the showrunner — especially in the wee hours of the morning, when many scripts are finally published — then the showrunner would quickly grow weary of the level of micromanagement required to get a script published. Script coordinators, as both support staff and department heads, have to operate with a level of autonomy. If a mistake slips through, it's revised in the next set of revisions.

“A source close to NBCUniversal said it investigated Cameron’s claims and the studio found that Graziano was not operating outside of professional expectations.”

But like most stories, the real lede is buried: "A source close to NBCUniversal said it investigated Cameron’s claims and the studio found that Graziano was not operating outside of professional expectations." This is the fundamental truth that needs to go unignored. Maya Angelou warned us:

When People Show You Who They Really Are, Believe Them

In this case, we're not discussing Graziano, but instead NBCUniversal and studios at large. Studios are caught in a cult of personality, a positive feedback loop that goes: 1. This person is talented and successful.

2. This person treats others poorly. 3. However, because (1) they are successful, their talents must outweigh the (2) liability of their personality.

4. Therefore, we should hire them.

This gives awful people carte blanche to fail up. As long as the studio perceives that this terrible person brings more subscriptions to the platform than another person with actual managerial instincts, the studio's motivated to listen to their own delusional feedback: if this person weren't so talented, they wouldn't have made it this far in spite of their personality, ipso facto they're the most qualified. And so long as that show's subscriptions (under a bad showrunner's reign) exceed its costs, it brings a profit. The human cost — the damage to workers' mental and physical health - doesn't matter. That's why In-N-Out, Trader Joe's, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints rank among the best places to work, but not a single studio or streamer makes the list.

Who You Gonna Call?

Support staff who find themselves on the receiving end of mistreatment, sexism, racism, and abuse may have no idea where to report their concerns.

Studio HR

HR exists as a buffer between the complaints of the worker and the company's coffers. It's a cooling ground where mandatory training is offered to stem the company's ultimate liability if a lawsuit were brought. Remember: a company's HR department exists only to protect the company. However, in the event of a lawsuit, a studio might point to its employee handbook - where employees are required to, and agree to as a term of their employment, bring all concerns to HR before escalating the issue. (A script coordinator or writers' assistant's employer of record, however, is usually the payroll company. Without a labor attorney on the staff of scriptcoord.com, we cannot determine if this is a significant distinction). You may have to go to HR if you're unwilling to suffer a showrunner's tantrums any further.

The WGA

The WGA has historically been uninterested in support staff. Before unionizing with IATSE's assistance in 2018, script coordinators and writers' assistants approached the WGA and requested their assistance in unionizing with them. The WGA expressed no interest in helping. One could even argue that their refusal to help, which lead SCs and WAs to approach IATSE Local 871 instead, relegated these trades to a perpetual underclass, a perspective further supported by the WGA's willingness to train SCs and WAs (again, trades represented by a completely different union) with the hopes that those staffers might one day be deemed worthy of getting a script assignment and entering the hallowed halls of 7000 W 3rd St. To wit: the WGA will not help you, my dear SC or WA.

And at the risk of piercing through the honorable profession of Writing, the WGA takes 1.5% of a writer's earnings in its quarterly dues. One could surmise the WGA's fiscal concerns would lead them to keep its highest-earning writers employed.

The Union

Unions exist for reasons like this: to advocate on a worker's behalf. In Los Angeles, script coordinators and writers' assistants are represented by IATSE 871. In New York, where Law & Order: SVU's writers' room is, SCs and WAs are not unionized.

If you are in a union, it's crucial to remember your Weingarten Rights: if you're in a meeting in which you reasonably suspect you're going to be disciplined, you have a right to have a union rep present. Without suggesting that this constitutes legal advice, this right means if you think you're about to get fired, you can ask if your employment status might change as a result of this meeting, and if they answer yes, you can invoke your Weingarten Rights. This stops the meeting until a rep is available and present. It also means that a showrunner, who perhaps was going to fire you for not including enough EPs on the already-approved cover sheet, now has to describe the situation to the union and the studio's HR. In other words, it's the one chance you can use HR's buffer effect in your favor.

It will win you no Good Deed points with the showrunner, but if you're at this stage, you probably weren't going to get hired next season in any position.

A Labor Attorney

Most attorneys offer free consults, so if you've gotten to the situation where you believe it's time to take action, you lose nothing (except your time) by consulting one. No matter what route you ultimately take, everyone (on your side) will hope that you've done one crucial thing:

Write It All Down

Again, not legal advice. Consider it writing advice - you got into this horror show to sell a screenplay, didn't you? Whether you're meeting with HR, your union rep, an attorney, or future-you looking for material from which to source a hilarious new one-hour dramedy, a record of what has happened will be valuable. This can be as simple as an email to yourself indicating the day something happened, what happened, and who was there.

Always Look Out For Number One

There's no shortage of terrible people in power - both here and in the greater world. And as support staff, we're often encouraged to buckle under with the hope that we'll get tapped for the next freelance if we don't make any waves. Freelances are dead and being support staff is a never-ending low-pay nightmare. You need to look after yourself. Prioritize your mental health, your boundaries, and your paycheck. Nobody will pat you on the back for taking abuse or working unpaid OT.

And one final note to the writers and producers on Graziano's shows: your silence hasn't gone unnoticed.

Good luck, team. Scriptcoord, out.