Submitted by fictionfreesfools t3_zzbl5h in television
In "The Offer" (2022), Michael Tolkin is listed in the opening credits under "Executive Producer", "Developed by", "Created by", and lastly "Teleplay/Written by". In all but "Teleplay/Written by" is he listed once. The wording under "Teleplay by" is as follows:
> Teleplay by
> Michael Tolkin & Leslie Greif
> and
> Michael Tolkin & Nikki Toscano & Kevin J. Hynes
Why the double listing for this specific role?
Everybody who is involved in film making has it in his contract how and where exactly she or he is listed in the opening and the end credits with the exact words. Here it seems that parts of the script were written by Michael Tolkin & Leslie Greif and other parts by Michael Tolkin & Nikki Toscano & Kevin J. Hynes. So the persons of the one part are named and the persons of the other part too.
American writer credits typically use an & when writers are working together as a team. "And" means the writer or writers listed after rewrote an existing draft. So in this case, Michael Tolkin and Leslie Grief wrote a draft, then Tolkin, Toscano and Hynes significantly rewrote it
From Writers Guild of America:
>The word “and” designates that the writers wrote separately and an ampersand (“&”) denotes a writing team.
In this case, it looks like two writing teams worked on the episode, and Michael Tolkin was a member of both teams.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleplay
​
Accordingly, story and teleplay will appear as distinct credits on a television script if different people played those roles in the script's creation; if the same person or people performed both roles equally (unless they also worked on the concept with one or more people not directly involved in writing the script or developing the story concept), then the story and teleplay credits will not be used and instead a merged "written by" credit will be given.[2] However, a "written by" credit may be given to only three people maximum; if more than three people were involved, then the credits must distinguish those who were "story" contributors from those who were "teleplay" contributors.[2]
That's interesting that the middle "and" denotes a partition of the episode's script. I wonder what constitutes a part of the script? Number of lines, screen time, scenes, etc could all be part demarcators.
Okay so every rewrite gets an "and", followed by the writers involved, appended to the "Written by" credit?
In this case there were 2 rewrites for every episode and every rewrite included Tolkin?
Big thanks for citing your insight.
It's odd to think that there are two writing teams with the principal writer being on both teams. Do they both write their own version of the episode and then the 2 version of synthesized to create the refined finished episode script?
Wow. I didn't realize how formalized the writing/story credits were. Thank you.
It separation between "story" and "writing" credits is something I'll look further into.
I think it's more likely that it was written by one team, and then rewritten by the other.
WGA rules state that if the final draft keeps more than 33% of the original, the original writer (or writing team) gets a teleplay credit.
If it's less than that, and it kept a "basic narrative, idea, theme or outline," they get a story credit.
Thank you for the resource.
I'll take some time to understand this.
Writing credits aren't going to be determined by contract the majority of the time, that's for actors and maybe producers and some other crew. At least for Hollywood productions like the show being talked about.
Writing and directing credits follow guidelines from their respective guilds and they can be very specific. And at times very contentious.
In summary: the credits OP is talking about are almost certainly the way they are due to union rules. Going by those rules it seems there were two distinct teams that worked on the scripts and Michael Tolkin was a part of both. The team listed first is in that spot because it is felt that more of their work appears in the final product than the other group. Or because it is felt both groups made equal contributions to the final product and then the credits simply go in chronological order. If there are disputes about this stuff it is handled by arbitration.
Was it a double episode?
Every episode with a writer's credit is like this. The only variation being that "Michael Tolkin" isn't always the first name after the "and".
The 1st episode:
> Written by
>Michael Tolkin
The 2nd episode:
> Teleplay by
> Michael Tolkin & Leslie Greif
>and
>Michael Tolkin & Nikki Toscano
The 3rd episode:
The 4th episode:
> Teleplay by
> Michael Tolkin & Leslie Greif
>and
>Michael Tolkin & Nikki Toscano
5th episode:
>Teleplay by
>Michael Tolkin
6th episode:
7th episode:
8th episode:
9th episode:
10th episode:
> Written by
>Nikki Toscano & Russell Rothberg & Michael Tolkin
it looks like what's going on is these are double episodes. So it will kind of have two sets of credits at the beginning, only if/where the credits differ between the two episodes. So, for example, the won't list the actors twice, because it's the same actors appearing in both episodes. But if the second episode being paired with the first has a different writing credit, or a different directing credit, from the second episode, then there will be two sets of credits there.
So, when you start up the show, and it shows double-credits for a few things -- that episode is two hours, right? (Or an hour and forty-five minutes, or whatever.)
Back when miniseries were a thing credits like this used to be commonplace.
That was a long time ago though.
Or -- to be more clear -- if there are episodes with two sets of writing credits, followed by an episode with no writing credits, it would be because the episodes originally aired in pairs. And that might not make sense now if you're watching it later, on streaming...
Respectfully and after numerously repeated searches and pauses, I did not make a transcription mistake.
No episode is less than 50 minutes or greater than 55 minutes.
> Back when miniseries were a thing...
Limited series are still around. In my opinion, limited series will produce higher quality quantity due to a number of factors. Not least of these are the average viewers diminishing attention span and strictly parameterized expected investment to a series up front.
Much smarter people have probably hypothesized more succinctly and with substantiated sources the same sort of idea.
It must be at least 25% of the written material that makes the final cut.
If you're interested, the WGA lists the writing credits for all episodes here.
at least two of their personalities are writers
This is one of those odd regulatory things where it doesn't make sense unless you know some of the history. At some point, there was some dispute about how much contribution entitles one to be in the credits. So to avoid that problem in the future, they do it this way. This also makes a bit of sense when for screen entertainment, the plot, development, and such are done by one team, and the actual writing (dialog, actions, etc) are done by another team. The people who are highly creative aren't always the ones that understand how to make a movie, and vice versa.
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