It’s a well-known TV phenomenon, especially as television shows move into their advancing years: You’ll be watching an episode of something, see the credits scroll by, and then go “Huh, they let David Duchovny direct this one.” Not to single out Duchovny—who directed three episodes of The X-Files, and six of Californication, during his long runs on both shows—since, again, it’s a pretty common way to keep an actor happy once their feet start getting itchy with a role. (Steve Carell on The Office, Ellen Pompeo on Grey’s Anatomy, Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad—name a show that lasted long enough, and with a prominent enough star, and it’ll probably crop up.) It’s a win-win for both parties, usually, allowing producers to keep their stars happy (and their egos stroked) while the performers in question bulk up their resumés for whatever come next.
And the Directors Guild Of America is, apparently, moving to put some limits on it—and, indeed, on anyone involved in a show’s production hopping into the director’s chair when they’ve already got a job.
This is per Variety, which reports on a summary of the DGA’s tentative agreement with Hollywood’s major TV and film studios, which it’s been negotiating over the past few weeks. That includes a lot of the expected provisions, including adjustments to how much the studios kick into the Guild’s health plan, calls for the studios to lobby for better tax incentives to make movies in the United States, and quite a bit of material on AI. (Some of which is a little worrying in its own right; we’re all for the provision that says directors get final say on any AI material generated for their work, but the addition of “a new employer-funded program to help directors build their AI skills” sounds like it’s just capitulating to the technology’s supposed “inevitability.”)
The most interesting provision, though, is one that was apparently pitched in response to the fact that there’s just less TV, on an episode-by-episode basis, being made these days—and, consequently, fewer slots for professional directors to ply their trade. While it doesn’t go into exact numbers, the summary states that the contract “seeks to preserve valuable episodic directing slots for career directors by limiting the number of episodes that can be directed by those who have no track record in directing and are already employed in other capacities on a scripted series.” All of which sounds like a pretty clear message to the “Y’know, I’ve always wanted to direct” set, while still leaving a window open for truly passionate multi-hyphenates to take a spin in the big chair. And while it’s easy to imagine this growing out of a few carefully nursed grudges about toes being stepped on over the years, it really just feels like an obvious outgrowth of the overall shrinking of TV over the last several years. It was a lot easier, in the era of 22-episode seasons, to throw one or two at your resident would-be auteur; in the era of far more limited run times, the DGA is apparently feeling a little more territorial about those slots.
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