WGA’s John Wells and John Bowman decide to hug it out

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The two Johns have made peace.

John Bowman, who was chairman of the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America, West, last year, and union presidential candidate John Wells have ended an ugly feud.

In a letter to members last week, Bowman and outgoing President Patric Verrone had accused Wells of keeping the union leadership in the dark about his dealings with the Directors Guild of America and undermining their own negotiating efforts. Bowman and Verrone are backing Elias Davis, who is running against Wells in a tight contest.

But in a joint statement, made during a candidates forum Wednesday night, the men chalked up their dispute to an ‘honest misunderstanding between friends’ and said they were eager to move on for the sake of fostering unity in the guild.

Bowman acknowledged that ‘of course we knew that John was talking to the DGA’ but that the men had an ‘honest misunderstanding’ over what the scope of his talks would be. ‘But he is still my friend, I still like and respect him,’’ Bowman said.

For his part, Wells said he had nothing but ‘friendship and respect’ for Bowman and Verrone, adding that ‘we’ve all been through too much together to let one misunderstanding get in the way of that.’

So how come the two candidates, who were jabbing at each other just a few days ago, now are going all lovey-dovey? Well, according to people close to the matter, Bowman and Wells realized the dispute was an unseemly display of disunity that was hurting the guild’s image -- and threatened to become a distracting sideshow in the election.

-- Richard Verrier