BC Law grad follows his writer's heart

When Patric Verrone applied to Boston College Law School, he was just following what he always envisioned he would be doing in his future. The ivy-covered Newton Campus supplied him with a serene setting for such an intensive program. After all, his work on the Harvard Lampoon as an undergraduate had been fun, but it was time to get serious about his career.

"I planned to go to law school, because that's how you make a living," he says. "There's no money in writing and no one works in television, as far as I knew. I expected to return to Florida and practice law there, and so I did."

A year and a half later, his move out to California, where he worked for some of the funniest shows in television history and eventually became president of the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), couldn't have been more unexpected. His then-girlfriend was already a member of the WGAW, and her literary agent told Verrone he could get him a job. "I said, 'Well, I've heard of agents, and I don't believe you,'" Verone says, "but he said it again, so if you can say it twice, I guess I better give it a shot." With his boss's blessing, he called it quits at the law firm and ventured west.

Not even Verrone could have written such a dramatic twist - not that he wants to. He much prefers his comedic roots, which began with a series of one-liners for a late-night show starring Joan Rivers. For three years he wrote for The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and when Carson retired, Verrone began his work in animation, for which he has become most well known. With cartoon classics like The Simpsons, Pinky and the Brain, The Critic, and Futurama under his belt, Verrone earned the Lifetime Achievement Award in animation writing in 2002. In addition, through 17 years of experience, he saw firsthand what it was like for a network like Fox to get off the ground. He came to realize the sacrifices the network had to make to compete with NBC, ABC, and CBS. One of those sacrifices was animation, particularly its writers.

"When Futurama first started," he says, "it didn't have Writers Guild coverage, like health insurance, residuals, or pension, because animation wasn't included in our contract. But the writers like me had worked on late night and sitcoms before where we were used to those benefits. In 1998, shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy went to the head of Fox and asked for coverage. They actually gave it to us, which was nice of them."

This progress for animation laid the foundation for Verrone's campaign when he ran for WGA president in 2005. In the past, each progression toward new media, like the move from television to home videos, had always been unfavorable for the writers. Although they did not know that it would specifically be iPods and webisodes, he and his running mates sensed that some form of new media was in the near future that would likely hurt the writers, so they prepared for that fight.

"We ran on that campaign and won," he says, "and since then we've been trying to build the guild into an organizing union, one that actually has protocols and a system in place to represent its members and make gains in negotiations."

What followed was the WGA writers' strike from November 2007 to February 2008, and although it was painful for the rest of the country to sit through reruns, Verrone maintains that this was the only way to get the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to take the guild seriously. For 25 years, the AMPTP hurt writers by refusing their requests, and Verrone believes they got too comfortable with this system of bullying "weak" unions.

"It's operated like this for 25 years. Since [the WGA strike] in 1988, there really hadn't been any kind of strike or real labor difficulty for almost 20 years. They were very much used to this process where labor executives meet in a room against us. It's really not very conducive, especially when the other side always said 'no' for 25 years."

But in November, the WGA was not going to take no for an answer, particularly when it came to the new media Verrone anticipated. Writers were not being compensated for such things as Internet streaming, just as they had not been compensated for home videos years earlier. The strong stance of the guild, particularly in the form of 14 picketing lines, took the AMPTP by surprise. Inside the meetings, the AMPTP finally realized that it could not push the writers around anymore; real negotiations took place, and a contract was settled upon - one in which the writers did not have to make all the concessions.

Verrone credits the strong relationship between the writers and fans with the success of the strike, because they turned to the main point of contention as their best forum: the Internet. "One of the important legacies is that we used the Internet to win the Internet," Verrone says. "So while [the AMPTP] had the mainstream press, we had direct contact with fan base through YouTube and blogging. It built real leverage for us."

The deal that finally ended the strike marked the first time that the entertainment industry ever moved toward a form of new media and actually got more money for the writers. Some proposals for animation and reality television benefits did not take hold, and Verrone hopes that they can continue to earn a higher profile; after all, they are the creators of this sought-after new media. Overall, Verrone considers the strike a huge success for the WGA and its importance in the industry.

"We said, 'We'll go on strike.' They said, 'We don't believe you.' So we did. They didn't think we would last, and we did. They didn't think we would win, and we did."

As television gets back in gear, Verrone looks forward to the return of late night talk shows, The Sarah Silverman Program, and The Flight of the Conchords. In addition to his presidential duties, he continues his work as a writer and plans to take advantage of new media by developing an online show - not for Fox, not for the conglomerates, but for himself.