An odd couple, not invested in the clubby ways of show business, the pair have upended Hollywood by leading some 12,000 screenwriters on a strike that is now ending its 11th week. This weekend, however, the two men are stuck deliberating a question that may bode ill for both: Is their writers’ rebellion over?
On Thursday the Directors Guild of America, which represents Hollywood’s movie and television directors, reached an agreement with production companies covering many of the same issues over which the writers are striking. Within Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young’s own union, a growing contingent, many with rich careers now on hold, is eyeing the directors’ settlement as a path to immediate peace, even though its terms fall short of the writers’ demands.
The moment promises a severe test of their staying power. In deciding whether to fight, fold or do something in between, the pair — and the guild’s membership, which is demanding a direct voice in the next decision — will determine just how long this strike will last.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Verrone said he believed “negotiations will resume” between writers and the companies soon, adding that he expected to meet with the membership in small groups and at a general assembly of members within the next two weeks.
For Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young, those moves will add to personal journeys that have thrust them into the limelight — courted by agents, chased by the press, lionized by stars — but may send them quickly back in the shadows if they fail at what has usually been an insiders’ game.
Even the most seasoned Hollywood observers are hard pressed to remember a time when such outsiders took the business on so wild a ride.
“One idea that comes to mind is David Puttnam,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, which studies entertainment, commerce and society, referring to the British film producer who briefly took charge of Columbia Pictures in the 1980s. “The system chewed him up and spit him out in 10 minutes.”
The word “Hollywood” says nothing much about either man. Gaunt and dark-haired, Mr. Verrone, 48, who graduated from Harvard, favors white shirts, crisp suits and the sort of ties most accountants might find in need of pepping up. Mr. Young, 49, who attended San Diego State, is blue-eyed, with softer features, and is comfortable with open collars.
The two do not socialize regularly. But they share a deep suspicion of the conglomerates — the News Corporation, General Electric, the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner and others — that now dominate show business as owners of the largest studios and television networks.
In an interview last April Mr. Verrone described himself as having inherited the mission of correcting decades of erosion in the status of writers, actors and filmmakers under pressure from profit-obsessed corporations. If trends continued, Mr. Verrone said, “then somebody else like me would come along. Somebody else would have to.” Mr. Young, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was best known as a principal player behind a hard-fought attempt in the mid-1990s by the Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees to organize workers who were making clothes for Guess? Inc. That drive failed when Guess? simply moved most of its work out of the country.
Mr. Verrone likes to speak of his own approach as “zealous advocacy,” a term he adopted in his law school days at Boston College. His zeal has proved contagious since taking over as president of the West Coast writers’ guild in September 2005.
He and Mr. Young won overwhelming support for the strike from members last October, as they tapped a deep well of resentment over declining income from movies, television’s drift toward reality programming and the deep-seated unfairness of a Hollywood system that perennially blames the script for problems that often have more to do with a runaway budget or a temperamental star.
Dennis Palumbo, a screenwriter-turned-psychologist whose practice includes a number of Hollywood writers, said guild members — many of whom have come to regard the companies as negative parental figures — appear to see Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young as friendlier alternatives. “Which parent do you go with, the big, bad parent that you know, or someone who’s presenting himself as an Alan Alda parent?” Mr. Palumbo said
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