PGA leadership discuss fight for health insurance and better pay for members

Film and television producers are, at their core, accomplished problem solvers to a myriad of levels. For Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line, who currently share the presidency of the Producers Guild of America, the issues prevailing for its members are downright existential.

"The biggest refrain is 'How do we get health insurance?'" says Allain , whose production projects have included everything from "Boyz N the Hood" and "Muppets in Space" to "Dear White People" and the Oscars telecast.

"And 'How do you make a living as a producer?'" adds De Line, l Former Touchstone Films executive is responsible for mega-hits such as 'Pretty Woman' and 'Armageddon', and whose prodigious output includes 'The Italian Job', 'Ready Player One' and an upcoming limited series Billy the Kid .

De Line points out that the Producers Guild is not a union, like many of its professional counterparts for directors and screenwriters, but a professional organization, which has required many years of work to overcome the challenges of meeting the health goals of its members, many of whom are eligible for film industry insurance on certain productions .

"Stephanie and I want to make sure that…if [insurance] isn't available, we get a kind of line item out of it in every budget that would go to cover producers' health costs to some degree, because we're the only ones on a call sheet that don't have medical coverage,” says De Line.

Although they play the presumptive role of making money in productions, "producers have felt the sting for a while of doing what we love, but not getting paid to develop things, relying on fees, the backend is shrinking," Allain says. "We're the linebackers, we take all the hits. But now is a time when everyone realizes that to really keep this profession alive and exciting and to attract young people, we need to be valued and compensated the same way other professionals are in our business.”

To solve the puzzles in the backend, the guild assembles a task force to examine recent and dramatic changes in deals with producers due to streaming-focused business models. "On streaming, you'd get an upfront buyout, where you used to get backend stake, and they weren't getting ad revenue," De Line explains. "Now many streamers have two versions of the service, and some have ad-supported subscriptions, and producers don't see that backend."

"We should be part of it because we are often the idea generator," adds Allain . "We buy the intellectual property, sometimes we work for years to put this thing together, and we only get paid once the preparation starts. It could be a year, two years, five years, 10 years of work where we get nothing.

“Before, you could put all that energy and dream and hope and work hard into something, and you bet on yourself, and the result is that if he wins, you win too: you get a piece of that movie,” she adds. "But it's practically gone."

"It's also on the feature side," says De Line. “With the budget shrinking and the industry being in such a state of flux, our production costs have always traditionally been attacked to arrive at a budget figure. Now we see it on the backend too. Studios have gotten rid of, for the most part, first dollar gross, so it's getting harder and harder for producers to make a living."

Now the PGA is taking an active part in educating its members about the trading trends that she sees emerging in the industry, says De Line, to say in essence, "Here are the things you might want to discuss with your rep to make sure you could fight in your deal, so you get some sort of stake. to profits, so you don't get cut too far ahead." Because we're just not protected in that regard."