Entertainment & Sports
May 30, 2001
It's No Act
As a teen-ager, Vicki Shapiro dreamed of being an actor but later found her Hollywood niche by becoming general counsel to the Screen Actors Guild.
Vicki Shapiro's acting career didn't make it past the college-play circuit, but she's not out of the Hollywood loop yet.
Now, as general counsel for the Screen Actors Guild, she focuses on other talents - including helping the organization through its internal conflicts and participating in the ongoing negotiations for the new theatrical and television contract.
And although she never seriously considered acting as a career - she was leaning more toward pre-med - Shapiro can't leave the thespian life behind.
"I love actors. You don't stay here for 16 years unless you love actors," she says. "They can be aggravating and all of those negatives, but mostly I just think they're wonderful, creative, exciting people."
Shapiro, who joined the guild as its general counsel in 1985, is currently arguing and strategizing for wage and residuals increases in the guild's theatrical and television agreement, one of the union's largest and most important contracts with studios and production companies.
The 52-year-old is advising a negotiating team that she describes as unusually large - 40 or 50 strong, she says with a smile.
"There will be lots of us," Shapiro says. "When in doubt, throw a few more lawyers on the team."
Despite the gargantuan negotiating teams, few expect the theatrical and television negotiations to stretch as long for the guild as they did for the Writers Guild of America. The actors guild's fellow talent union, amid heavy rumors of an impending strike, made modest gains in residuals and established "preferred practices" for increased creative control after the union's contract expired May 1. The actors union, with more streamlined proposals, veteran chief negotiator Brian Walton, and the groundwork previously laid by the writers guild, is likely to make similar advances in half the time and with half the drama.
But despite the relatively sane climate, Shapiro expects the last few days before the actors guild's contract expires June 30 to be tense. In past home stretches, the alternately exciting and dull negotiations have stretched on for 24-hour periods. During the guild's most recent theatrical and television negotiation - the contract that it's about to renew - talks finally wrapped up at 6 a.m. after stretching for more than 24 hours.
"By 6 o'clock I was pretty grumpy. And I'm not by nature grumpy," Shapiro says. "I'm really a fairly upbeat person."
Shapiro is also a morning person. At 6 a.m. during non-negotiating periods, she can be found pounding away at her treadmill at home in Sherman Oaks. And when she gets to work, it's a good thing she knows how to stay chipper. Most guild member problems can be solved by the guild's contracts or residuals departments, but the ones that reach the attention of Shapiro's legal department are usually more severe and involve that most terrifying of Hollywood clichés - an unhappy actor.
"I spend a tremendous amount of time on the phone with the members, with the members' attorneys and agents and managers and mothers who all have questions and comments and concerns," she says.
These actors range from part-time waiters to high-powered stars - whose names Shapiro would prefer not to drop.
"Now and again, high-profile people certainly contact us," Shapiro says. "People with not so high profiles, they're much more likely to call directly."
The 100,000-member guild generates enough trouble to keep Shapiro's six-attorney department juggling about 500 cases at a time, most of which go to binding arbitration hearings under the terms of the guild's collective bargaining agreement.
Like some of its legally troubled members, the guild itself has had a turbulent past two years.
It's new president, William Daniels, who replaced longtime guild president Richard Masur, had barely settled in when the guild and its sister union, the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, struck over issues for commercial actors in 2000. In the past few months the guild has been hit with two racial discrimination suits and one religious discrimination suit by former employees. In addition, the guild recently vetoed a long standing merger proposal with the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists.
"They talked a lot for 30 years, and I think they voted it down a couple of times, actually. And finally we said, 'You know, this just isn't going to happen,'" Shapiro says firmly. "And so we've all moved on."
Three years ago, the guild commissioned a report from management consultant firm Towers Perrin on its internal operations. Now, it is in the process of implementing some of the recommended changes.
Shapiro is characteristically level-headed about the process.
"I think a lot of people realized we weren't functioning optimally. And we are supported strictly by member dues, so you really feel a sense of responsibility to give the members their money's worth - to make sure you're doing the very best job for them that you possibly can. It's a very different attitude, I think, than a for-profit organization," she says.
Between its in-house struggles, ongoing talks with the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists and day-to-day business, life at the guild calls for a healthy dose of tact and diplomacy. Leonard Chassman, guild executive director, says Shapiro has just that.
"She's good at presenting things before various bodies," he says.
Shapiro's personality also helps smooth the road of intraguild relations.
"She has a strong sense of commitment, an excellent sense of humor and a sense of irony," Chassman says.
After the guild and management negotiators all have gone home and the agreement has been finalized, Shapiro's work will be far from over.
Enforcing whatever advances the guild makes in its residuals agreement, for instance, will be up to Shapiro and her department. Negotiations come and go, but "residuals in perpetuity" are forever - even if the producers have left Hollywood.
In relevant cases, independent producers agree to pay a lifelong stream of residuals to actors in their projects who are under guild jurisdiction. Enforcing such agreements can be tricky if, in 20 years, the producer has relocated to Timbuktu, taken up soybean farming and forgotten to mail the residuals checks.
To prevent such disappearing acts, Shapiro sometimes will move to secure residuals for guild members by taking a security interest on the project - which sometimes can make the product more of a financial risk for distribution companies, and thus harder to sell.
"No one is trying to unduly burden these people. I just want to make sure that they live up to the terms of a bargain they've agreed to," Shapiro says.
Shapiro got her start at the Screen Actors Guild through Los Angeles' Shafton Morris Figler & Gladstone, the guild's former outside firm. As an associate with Shafton Morris, Shapiro worked on guild matters until the guild switched to veteran labor-side lawyer Leo Geffner at Los Angeles' Geffner & Bush.
A few months later, Chassman called her and asked her to come on board.
"Quite frankly, I couldn't pack my briefcase fast enough," Shapiro says. "The job you would love to have just falls from heaven into your lap. That only happens once in a career."
Shapiro's current job may have fallen from the heavens, but she wasn't immediately in a position to catch it. A psychology major at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she high-tailed it directly to California after graduation to escape icy Eastern winters and eventually landed a personnel position at a Los Angeles hospital.
But Shapiro soon felt about human resources work the way she felt about East Coast winters.
"I just said, 'This is not a lifelong career for a nice person,'" she says. "And I walked into my office and closed the door and called several law schools and asked them to send me their brochures."
Shapiro got her degree from Los Angeles' Loyola Law School in 1978 and joined Shafton Moss as a litigation associate soon after. Since then, she's been happy to trade litigation for working with actors.
And haranguing producers isn't the only evidence that Shapiro takes her job very seriously - she's very careful to keep disputes between actors, companies and agents very close to her chest. Nor does she use her insider position to lend a helping hand to the struggling actors she knows.
"I think that it would be inappropriate. I don't want to use my position for anything other than what I should be using my position for, which is to represent these performers," Shapiro says.
But inside her office, on her windowsill next to a collection of bric-a-brac, is one small concession: a framed photo of her 27-year old niece, who hopes to make it in Hollywood as an actress. Shapiro is sympathetic to the urge.
"I really like actors, and of course as a teen-ager I very much wanted to be an actor, and I suppose that I've sublimated," she says.
Katherine Gaidos
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