Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/618780
n the summer of 1986, President Gil Cates appointed a Special Advisory Committee headed by Elliot Sil- verstein to study the growing practice of colorizing black and white films. Later that year, the National Board voted to oppose colorization, and held a press confer- ence, attended by John Huston, Richard Brooks, Arthur Hiller, and Peter Bogdanovich, to communicate directors' outrage with the practice. The Guild took the fight to Capitol Hill and Huston made a video to inform Congress about the issue. He said The Maltese Falcon was "made in black and white … and it is not to be conceived in any other way than black and white." Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, among others, also testified before Congress that the colorization of films was a moral violation of a director's rights. "We applied a tremendous amount of resources to this battle," said Cates, and the Guild was able to point out that the is- sue was not just about a director's creative rights but the audience being deprived of the intended viewing experience. The publicity, attention, and discus- sion that ensued eventually ended the studios seeking to colorize films and directly led to the National Film Preservation Act and the National Film Registry that for the first time legislatively recognized films as historic treasures and works of art. ➨ 1986 1987 Dorothy Arzner Receives Posthumous Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame President Gil Cates Leads the Guild's First—and Only— Strike Chuck Workman's Precious Images Captures Directorial Magic >To celebrate the Ju- bilee, Workman directs an eight-minute short containing images from 458 historic American films. It goes on to win an Academy Award for best live action short and is updated later in 2011 for the 75th anniver- sary to include television, documentary, and com- mercials. DGA.org/75thFilms "There's a family of directing that all of us in the Guild feel very strongly about. Whether their clip is in the film or not, every single member who has ever lived in the Guild is represented in it, by its spirit and subtext." —CHUCK WORKMAN FIGHTING COLORIZATION 50th Anniversary With a Golden Jubilee >Special Golden Jubilee Awards presented to Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and, posthu- mously, Oscar Micheaux. Residuals Total Almost $49 Million >The happy marriage that exists today between HBO and the DGA was not always the case. It took eight years of tough, often acrimoni- ous, negotiations from 1978-1986. Guild leaders realized the chance to get in on the ground floor of cable television on behalf of its members would never come again, and instructed directors and their team not to work for HBO. HBO answered with antitrust lawsuits. The basic template for the eventual HBO deal was set in 1981, when the Guild negoti- ated an agreement for pay TV with the AMPTP. The HBO lawsuits were dismissed in 1982, and four years later, the pay TV ser- vice and the Guild signed a contract that called for all dramatic programs produced by HBO to be subject to DGA minimums, residuals, and pension, health and welfare contributions. The Guild's decisive action and unwavering stance in the face of huge pressure opened the door to new creative and financial avenues on pay TV. "We view this contract as of major importance to the industry," said then-DGA President Gil Cates. DGA.org/HBOcontract 1986 DGA PACTS WITH HBO "The result of the battle the Guild fought to reach an early deal with HBO paved the way for the amazing storytelling opportunities for members working in pay TV today." —LESLI LINKA GLATTER "[Our testimony] gives voice to the idea that art and the artist are not commodities to be treated like sausage." —STEVEN SPIELBERG 48 dga quarterly 80-YEAR ANNIVERSARY 80-YEAR ANNIVERSARY PHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE, TOP RIGHT) DGA ARCHIVES (3); LA TIMES; WARNER BROS./PHOTOFEST; ANNIE LEIBOVITZ I