Helmer succeeds Michael Apted as guild topper

Taylor Hackford has been named to a two-year term as president of the Directors Guild of America, succeeding Michael Apted.

The
DGA’s 135 delegates selected Hackford, who’s been 3rd VP of the guild
since 2005, on Saturday at DGA headquarters in Hollywood. DGA National
VP Steven Soderbergh, who’d been mentioned along with Hackford as a
possible successor to Apted, nominated Hackford for the presidency.

"This
Guild has worked for nearly three quarters of a century to advance the
economic and creative rights of its members, always addressing new
challenges with a firm and steady hand," Hackford said in a statement.
"I’m extraordinarily proud of what the DGA has accomplished, and I hope
to continue that great legacy of leadership at the Guild."

Apted,
who had been president since 2003, had decided earlier this year not to
seek a fourth term because he said it was important to get "new blood"
into the top leadership slot.

Hackford’s directing resume
includes "Ray," "An Officer and a Gentleman," "Against All Odds,"
"White Knights," "The Idolmaker" and "Everybody’s All American." He’s
the 21st president of the DGA since its founding in 1936.

The
key issue facing the DGA, which has about 14,000 members, will be the
next round of contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture
& Television Producers.

The DGA has tended to be the first
of the major Hollywood unions to reach a deal on its master contract
with the congloms during each negotiating cycle. It played that role
early last year during the latter stages of the bitter WGA strike, when
it closed an agreement spelling out two key areas — specifics of
jurisdiction over new media productions and reuse, and guaranteed
access to the new-media deals and data.

The new-media provisions
in the DGA pact — based partly on DGA-funded research on the economics
of digital platforms — subsequently became the template for the WGA,
SAG and AFTRA deals.

The DGA’s current feature-primetime
contract expires on July 1, 2011, along with SAG and AFTRA while the
WGA’s concludes on May 1, 2011. SAG’s contract specifies that it must
start six weeks of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture
& Television Producers on Oct. 1, 2010.

"Economic news
remains grim, Internet piracy threatens our ability to earn a living
and the next cycle of negotiations will be upon us before we know it,"
Apted said in a farewell letter. "We are now deep into a digital age
that has begun to fundamentally alter the relationship between creators
and the audience. At this moment, the industry is struggling to create
an order to the economics of New Media and we, the DGA, have led the
way in carving out a template for jurisdiction and residual
compensation not only for our members, but for the whole industry."

Hackford
joined the DGA in 1974 and became a member of the national board in
2002. He’s chair of the DGA Political Action Committee and co-chairs
the DGA Task Force on Social Responsibility; he was honored two years
ago with the Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award for service to the DGA
and its membership.

Hackford also said Saturday the DGA’s top
legislative priority will be protecting the work of its members in this
new digital age.

"We have to be aware of the challenges we’re
facing in protecting our work on the Internet.," he said. "What’s
euphemistically called ‘Internet Piracy,’ I choose to call by its true
name, ‘Internet Theft.’ It threatens the future of our economic lives:
our employment, residuals and pension and health plans. Solutions won’t
come easy, but they must be found, if we are going to survive as
professional filmmakers."

In other moves Saturday, Soderbergh was
re-elected as National VP and former DGA president Gilbert Cates was
re-elected secretary-treasurer.

Also elected were First VP Paris
Barclay; Second VP William M. Brady; Third VP Betty Thomas; Fourth VP
Gary Donatelli; Fifth VP Thomas Schlamme; Sixth VP Vincent Misiano; and
Assistant Secretary-Treasurer Scott Berger.

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