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>Well before there was a Directors Guild of America, directors were accustomed to seeking and receiving a pos- sessory credit on their feature films. Later, it was commonplace among directors such as Frank Capra, George Stevens, King Vidor, and Alfred Hitchcock. In each case, the credit was negotiated by the individual director, a practice that the DGA maintained every director was entitled to. This tradition was challenged in 1966. In secret negotiations, the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America West signed a contract barring producers from awarding a possessory credit to anyone other than the writer credited on the film or the author of the source material. DGA Vice President Delbert Mann (President George Sidney was shooting in England) responded boldly by filing a suit in Superior Court. Directors united in anger at a historic meeting on both coasts on May 16, 1967. In early 1968, faced with the threat of a directors' strike, the producers reversed course and affirmed the right of anyone, whether indi- viduals or management, to negotiate for special credits. That principle was enshrined in the DGA Basic Agreement, and remains so today. 1968 POSSESSORY CREDIT PROTECTED 1964 1966 1967 Right to Director's Cut Established Directors' Credit Placement Established >The 1964 Bill of Creative Rights also contained the provision that the director receive final credit on the main titles and credit on all paid advertising. DGA.org/CreativeRightsBill Delbert Mann Elected DGA President >Serves two terms from 1967-1971 Membership Reaches 3,300 East Coast Headquarters >President George Sidney is instrumental in acquir- ing a building on W. 57th Street that becomes home to the New York office. Publication of the First Guild Magazine, Action! rom the inception of the DGA, one of the leading goals was to establish the right to a Director's Cut, but it took over 20 years to achieve this objective. Elliot Silverstein experienced the need for it first- hand in 1961 after directing an episode of The Twilight Zone, ironically titled "The Obsolete Man." "[The] editor refused to cut it the way I wanted it cut," said Silverstein. "The only [postproduction] right we had in the early '60s was to make suggestions for improvements in the rough cut to the associate producer." Silverstein found that other directors were having similar problems, so he and a group of 24 directors met with DGA National Executive Secretary Joseph Younger- man to see what could be done. When the Negotiations Committee, chaired by former Guild President Frank Capra, presented its demands for a Director's Cut to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, this repre- sented a substantive change to the way the studios had always viewed the post- production process, and the producers resisted. To break the stalemate, Capra ingenuously proposed that if a director held up postproduction, the DGA, at its own expense, would fly in one of 12 top-notch directors to finish the job. The notion that directors would work for love rather than money removed the producers' objections, and the Guild ultimately secured a Director's Cut as part of a landmark Bill of Creative Rights in April 1964. The Bill of Creative Rights has since grown into the Creative Rights Handbook, which summarizes the rights of DGA members. "The Director's Cut was a serious artistic step in Guild history," recalled director Robert Ellis Miller, a member of the original committee. "It changed everything." THE BILL OF CREATIVE RIGHTS "All of the creative rights language flows from this idea of the director having the right to a cut. But it had to be demanded and negotiated for, and it forms the heart of the Guild's creative rights language." —STEVEN SODERBERGH | Co-Chair Creative Rights Committee 1968 Assistant Directors Training Plan Started on East Coast >256 trainees have graduated through 2015. Free TV Residuals Increase and Foreign Free TV Residuals Begin dga quarterly 43 Unit Production Managers Merge With the DGA West Coast Assistant Directors Training Program Started >644 trainees have graduated through 2015. "The Director's Cut was to be definitive; it was to be the cut the director made, the cut that he or she wanted to appear on the screen." —ELLIOT SILVERSTEIN PHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE, TOP LEFT) FRAZER HARRISON/ GETTY IMAGES; PHOTOFEST (2); DGA ARCHIVES F