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Harlan Ellison Sues For "Star Trek" Episode
Miracle Jones writes "The ever-quotable speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison has launched a lawsuit against Paramount and the Writer's Guild West for rights to residuals surrounding his famous and award winning 'City on the Edge of Forever' episode for the original Star Trek series. Ellison, recently featured in the documentary 'Dreams with Sharp Teeth,' said that 'The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I'm bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.' Regarding his lawsuit, he had this to say: 'The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who "have more important things to worry about," who'll have their assistant get back to you, who don't actually read or create, who merely "take" meetings, and shuffle papers — much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams — they refuse even to notice... until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you've made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars... from OUR labors... just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.'"
This is not YRO. This did not happen online. The summary is so bad that I'm not even sure that this is about his rights.
Get over it. Your copyright should have expired anyway by any sort of good definition of limited term.
> On one hand, we have the tired old story of a writer/creative not receiving due credit for his work. On the other hand, said creative is possibly the most obnoxious asshole still living that I've known of.
Yes, but he is a very eloquent asshole and his rants are high entertainment. Besides, being an asshole doesn't mean he's wrong.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Actually, all kidding aside, yeah he is (wrong). Amusing, possibly. But wrong, definately.
He did the work under contract. Just as the work I do under contract isn't mine, neither was his. He's pissed because back then, he agreed to such a setup (or more accurately the Writers Guild agreed, which he was a member of), but legally he's got about as much ground to stand on as someone living in New Orleans during Katrina.
That's the beast, and it's been that way for a long long time. Artists own their work, employees don't. He chose to go the route of sure food and became an employee. Now he want's the lottery winnings of being an Artist. Someday they might make it work that way, but I doubt that day will be today, or tomorrow.
Ellison is one of my favorite sci fi writers but the version of the screenplay he wrote only vagely resembles the one that was used in the film, it was rewritten several times himself and by 4 others including D.C. Fontana and Roddenberry himself before it was finally filmed. As is the original script was unfilmable, it was written from a writers skew not a screenwriters one and also dismissed alot of the established character traits of the crew. He was originally upset enough by the rewrites that he threated to pull his name from the script.
Fast forward 42 years and a Hugo and now he wants all the credit? I take it his books arent selling like they used to? Seriously Harlan maybe you need the cash or something but get over it.
Q: What would you say to a little fuck?
A: Hello little fuck!
Look them up. Though I admit it can be murky at times, inspired by and written by are NOT the same thing.
Seriously, when you get down to it how many things are inspired by Biblical stories and old fairy tales?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
What other industry do you get paid over and over again for work you have already done?
What industry do you get paid vacations? Yours? What industry can you show up for work, surf the web, and be otherwise unproductive for two-three hours so long as you steer clear of the PHB? Yours? What industry do you get -- I love this one! -- "sick days," where you can make a phonecall to some suit and then stay home under the covers and still be paid the same amount of money that week as if you had had 40 productive hours? Yours?
Or you can try being a writer. Sure they get residuals, money for something they've written a while back. Does that make up for not being paid for the sick days, Christmases, vacations, overtimes, whatever other downright wacky (when you think about it) conventions of the modern workplace in which they do not share? Maybe, maybe not. But the writers knew what they were getting into when they started their careers, same as the corporate clock-watchers. Seems a bit wrong to change the rules somehow...
Yeah, it was so horrible that "Harlan Ellison's original version won a Writers Guild of America Award for best dramatic hour-long script."
I don't know about you, but I don't let the WGA or anyone else decide for me which scripts I like or dislike. Did you read it, or are just look it up to see if it had won any awards?
I don't understand why such misinformed crap gets modded up.
Other than our disagreement about the quality of the original script, which is purely a matter of opinion, was anything factually incorrect my post? He's trying to get residuals for a script that has little resemblance to what he actually wrote, and for which he actually considered disowning because he disliked it so much. He does that, I assume, because the TV show which he dislikes, earned a lot more money than the book he published with the version he did like.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Y'know, instead of saying how dumb the mods are for not understanding Jeremiah's post, why not instead tell people why such a post isn't a troll? I know I for one would be grateful to anyone who could clue me in.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
This is why you don't take $$$ from the profits. You take them from gross revenue. Accounting can make all the profits vanish into thin air. Of course, this was done to deprive people with % of profits clauses in their contracts. Every solution that comes up, the studios will always try to find ways to minimize those numbers, to keep all the money to themselves.
The lawsuit is based on the master Writer's Guild contract in effect in 1967.
The contract defined who was entitled to be credited as a writer. It defined the writer's share in derivative works and merchandising.
It doesn't matter who owns the copyright on the script as broadcast.
The geek is abysmally naive about copyrights.
He forgets who owns the master prints. The trademarks that protect logos, character designs and props.
He forgets that Disney or Paramount has a corporate line of credit. Production facilities. Talent. Marketing and Distribution.
The screenwriter - the pro - never - forgets that without a strong union - without out a strong contract - the studios will find ways to profit from his work for all eternity.
The Last Dangerous Visions, the third volume of the anthology series, has become something of a legend in science fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book. It was originally announced for publication in 1973, but other work demanded Ellison's attention and the anthology has not seen print to date. He has come under criticism for his treatment of some writers who submitted their stories to him, of which some estimate to be nearly 150 (many of the authors have died in the subsequent three-and-a-half decades since the anthology was first announced). Harlan Ellison
It's a short story, not a book. Ellison is a master of the short story. He's written some longer fiction, but his genius is in the format of the short story.
"You'd "all" nod your heads in agreement? What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I am one of those "no intellectual property rights" and I find no contradiction. This is not a case of property rigths. There was a *contract* between parts able to negotiate (Harlan and Paramount; not one of those take-it-or-leave-it CLUFs and the like) that stated that if Paramount did X, Harlan would recieve Y. Once the conditions got agreed, Harlan went to work and now Paramount must comply on his side.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I think the "limited IP rights" crowd outnumbers the "no IP rights" crowd by about 20-1. I'm all for a reduction of IP rights. I think 50 years from date of first publication is an adequate term for copyrights, and would support a scheme whereby they have to be renewed in order to stand after the first 25 years. I think patents should be limited in scope to the truly innovative; anything that can be described as simply an incremental improvement over a preexisting idea (e.g., doing this thing that could be done before, but with a computer!) should be ruled out totally. Trademarks should only apply to people attempting to compete directly with the holder. But I defintely support IP rights, and I think most other people here on /. would agree with most of the statements I just made.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
We've tried this system; that's how art was funded prior to the invention of copyright in, what, the 18th century? The problem with this system is that it encourages funding of a few big name artists while everyone else struggles to get noticed. The resulting body of artwork lacks diversity and tends not to challenge the status quo for fear of offending the people holding the purse strings.
HE, by contrast, has had no real impact on anything, beyond pissing a lot of people off.
While I'm not personally a fan and find it trite and overdone, there's a general consensus of those in the know about such things that Dangerous Visions really did push the boundary of what was acceptable to publish a long way forward, and started a new trend in SF that is still having impact today. The fact that as a modern reader looking back we see nothing remarkable about it is, I'm told, a testament to just how much influence it had: nothing before was like it, but everything since has been.
We've tried this system; that's how art was funded prior to the invention of copyright in, what, the 18th century? The problem with this system is that it encourages funding of a few big name artists while everyone else struggles to get noticed. The resulting body of artwork lacks diversity and tends not to challenge the status quo for fear of offending the people holding the purse strings.
Did you just describe the current situation or the 18th century? I couldn't tell.