PGA Leadership Discuss Fighting for Health Insurance, Better Pay for Members
variety.comScott Huver Film and television producers are, at the core, accomplished problem-solvers on myriad levels. For Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line, who currently share the presidency of the Producers Guild of America, the prevailing problems for its membership are downright existential. “The biggest refrain is ‘How can we get health insurance?’” says Allain, whose producing projects have included everything from “Boyz N the Hood” and “Muppets in Space” to “Dear White People” and the Academy Awards telecast. “And ‘How do you make a living as a producer?’” adds De Line, the former Touchstone Films exec responsible for mega-hits such as “Pretty Woman” and “Armageddon,” and whose prodigious producorial output includes “The Italian Job,” “Ready Player One” and a forthcoming Billy the Kid limited series.
De Line points out that the Producers Guild is not a union, like many of its professional counterparts for directors and screenwriters, but a trade organization, which has resulted in many years of work to overcome challenges in achieving healthcare goals for its membership, many of whom do qualify for Motion Picture Industry insurance on certain productions. “Stephanie and I want to make sure that … if [insurance] is not available, we get some kind of line item in every budget that would go toward covering producers’ healthcare costs to some degree, because we are the only ones on a call sheet who don’t have healthcare coverage,” De Line says.
Despite serving as the presumptive topline moneymaking role on productions, “producers for a while have felt the sting of doing what we love, but not being paid to develop things, relying on fees, the backend’s shrinking,” Allain says. “We’re the linebackers, we’re taking all the
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