Writers' Credits

Question. How come Friends episodes are credited to one or two writers, when they show that a whole gang of writers work on it?

Thanks.

One or two writers are assigned an episode to write, and then when they've written the script, they bring it back to the rest of the writers and everyone revises and rewrites it together. Then the original one or two writers get the credit.

Larissa

That is an excellent, excellent question....That IS exellent!

Same kind of principle as why we don't see companies crediting the entire editorial team in newspaper and magazine features, or giving the cameraman same billing as the news reporter (which is actually more unjust, seeing the amount of danger these guys are often in, and how much of the work they do). It's about "bylines" and those who do the perceived bulk of the work (plot line, major percentage of script etc) get the big credits. How many "authors" do ALL the work on their manuscripts themselves? In some cases the editors produce more of the book than the credited writer does (ghost writers, major editing work, plot suggestions etc)... that's life.

The one that bugs me more is when a film director gets ALL the artistic/plot/script credit: all the reviews I've read for Gangster No 1 have failed to mention the original stage play, or the RL people who had a major input into the film, it being essentially a set of true anecdotes.

Jac