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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 nothing special for Ellison. He does this in every conversation. HE ordering breakfast: "No I will not have coffee. Enough with people offering me coffee. It is time those of us who like orange with breakfast to take a stand ..."
If you've ever wondered where the over-the-top language on Babylon 5 comes from, well, JMS learned his art at HE's feet.
Two questions: why is this coming up now? Yeah, the Star Trek franchise always ripped off its writers. That's why the writing started out good in the first episode of the first series and went steadily downhill from there. But why this particular episode and why now? It's not like it's anything special. Yeah, it's a decent story, but I always have to fast-forward over the parts where Joan Collins preaches about space travel to the tramps in her soup kitchen.
And also: Harlan, who are you to complain? You've been stalling the writers who contributed to Last Dangerous Visions for thirty years. At least your Star Trek episode actually got seen!
Regardless of what any contract says, regardless of who actually owes what, screenplay writers are the major breadwinners yet get paid virtually nothing for their efforts. Nobody got rich writing scripts, but many many rich actors and movie moguls got rich from bloody good stories.
Now, onto the crux of what he says. It is well-known that money brought in through lawsuits, etc, via the MPAA and RIAA have not been forwarded to artists. It is also well-known that artists repeatedly sue managers, producers and studios for payment of royalties. Is it too hard to imagine the studios rip off those who are respected and heard even less?
The totals are probably exaggerated a little. A Star Trek FAQ from the 1990s suggested the annual turnover of Star Trek merchandise was around 60 million dollars. Recent FAQs don't show any estimate and deny it's possible to calculate one, so this is the only figure I can really go on. It simply isn't possible for a single episode (minus residuals owed to everyone else involved) to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, even if we assume the FAQ figure to be about right. Tens of millions, divided amongst everyone, for the entire time since original screening - that sounds more likely.
Given the number of people involved wasn't many, I could see that he should have made somewhere in the low single-digit millions or upper three-digit thousands off a single script at this point. If he has made less than this, he has every right to feel like the studio is ripping him off.
Of course, legally, all that matters is what the contract says. If the contract says he should be paid X amount and he has been paid less than that (a common enough experience with artists, so why not writers?), then he has not just a moral argument but a legal argument.
Those who accuse him of kicking up a fuss over nothing should remember that the studios ARE rip-off merchants, and ARE making a great deal of money off Star Trek. There isn't the slightest possibility all of the money Paramount is making is legal. Maybe most of it is, but don't expect me to believe they're being honest for the first time in their lives over one of their biggest money-spinners. Their lawyers are bigger and their accountants are sharper. If there's a way for them to have hidden income, you can be certain they have.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wikipedia says he got a "cash settlement". More than he deserved, since his only contribution to that movie was to write some stories that James Cameron says "inspired him".
Didn't know about that incident before you brought it to my attention. Another reason to dislike a man I already despise. Compare with this incident over another Star Trek ep, "The Trouble With Tribbles": when Paramount asked Robert Heinlein to waive any claim over creatures that strongly resembled flatcats, Heinlein responded, "I have no patent on small furry aliens!"
No. Go one step further.
If the writers didn't need to go to paramount to get RIGHTS to write said book there would be no profits to paramount for him to go after.
The author wouldn't need to share any profits with Paramount and by extension there would be nothing to share with the original author.
In this case the original writer wouldn't be bound to any kind of compensation for his episode. He wouldn't be getting screwed by Paramount.
Furthermore broadcast rights wouldn't exist so paramount wouldn't be able to pick up re-run royalties. So all of those would ALSO no longer be payed to him.
The only time the author would get payed would be once by Paramount when he originally wrote the episode. Since Paramount wouldn't own any rights to merchandising that also means there is no reason for any of the toy companies or anyone else to pay Paramount for the rights to use Star Trek since none of them signed any contracts either.
That means Paramount can only make money from donations and 'first hand' DVD sales. (Which doesn't really mean anything because I could be competing with my free bit torrents legally. So why bother with Paramount?)
So Paramount makes no money from merchandising (They aren't a merchandise company.) They make no money from advertisers (NBC just broadcasts it for free. Everyone else downloads it for free.) And by extension the writers go unpaid.
Simply put. No intellectual property COMPLETELY FUCKS THE AUTHOR. Unless he begs and pleads for fucking charity. Yes. This is the world that most slashdotters believe in. One in which authors go back to their "Rightful place" of begging on fucking street corners for their dinner if you play them a song. But writers don't even get the dignity of being able to perform on a street corner. The moment their work is recognized as marginally worth selling a giant publisher will swoop in and sell a billion copies giving the author not a single pretty penny. The only source of income for authors in an IP free world is direct sales(They're authors not publishers! Let them do what they do... WRITE!) is to depend upon donations and charity.
Also no screenwriters will EVER SHOW ANYBODY THEIR WORK. Why would you shop around a screenplay if the first person who likes it and has 100 million dollars just goes ahead and makes it?
DOWN WITH IMAGINARY PROPERTY! DOWN WITH ARTISTS!
A few years ago at Worldcon, a famous SF author told a story about Harlan Ellison. It seems that Ellison once asked a friend and fellow SF author what he thought about his (Ellison's) latest book, and the friend told him, in polite terms, that he didn't feel it was Ellison's best work. Ellison never spoke to the man again.
But that's not the end of it. Years later, Ellison had a heart attack, and the former friend sent him a note to express that he was sad to hear it had happened and wish him a swift recovery.
Ellison wrote him a nine page letter to reject his get-well note.
I'm fascinated to see what's in Ellison's books, what comes from the mind of such an angry man that could fascinate people for generations, but I'm waiting for him to die before I buy any of them, I don't want to give him any of my money.