Given ... Ellison's ... history of (not unjustifiably) regarding himself as ill-treated by Star Trek...
Oh, it's completely unjustifiable. They treated him better than any other writer would've been treated in the same situation. He spent months laboring on a draft and was unable to come up with anything filmable, but they gave him every chance to keep trying, staying patient with him far longer than they would have with a typical author, because they had so much respect for him and his work. Bob Justman even let Ellison sleep in his office and eat leaves off his plant. And when they finally did have no choice but to assign the rewrites to someone who was capable of turning in a logistically feasible, filmable script, they nonetheless allowed Ellison to retain sole credit and thereby get all the money, even though as a rule Roddenberry was never loath to stick his own name on someone else's work. They treated him like royalty, and the so-called "wrongs" he's been screaming and whining about for 42 years are just par for the course in the TV industry, in any collaborative enterprise. Ellison's complaints are about as "justifiable" as someone who applies for a coal-mining job and then complains that his rights were violated because he was required to get his hands dirty.
What shit! Just because something's always been a certain way that doesn't make it right!
No, but the fact remains that if you're writing as a freelancer for someone else's show, you have a professional obligation to turn in a script that they can both use and that is consistent with the creative vision for their show. If Ellison wanted to do something that was unfilmable on their budget or that was inconsistent with their creative vision, he should have started up his own TV series.
They treated him like royalty, and he treated them like shit back.
Of course, all of that is separate from the question of whether or not his contract from 1966 gives him ownership of the characters he created for "The City on the Edge of Forever."
The entertainment industry's treatment of writers has been notoriously abusive. There's a real resentment towards the creators of filmed works. Especially once the fucking autuer theory migrated over to the United States. Autuer theory made sense when it was directors writing their own flicks but never every directory happened to be a writer. Unfortunately ever goddamn directed wanted to be known as an autuer whether or not they were the actual author of the fucking work. Over and over again the credit for the work if it was successful got heaped onto the director and denied the writer. Yeah the writer got credit if the work was unsuccessful because hey, that's the way it's always been!
You are now ranting about something that has nothing to do whatsoever with Ellison's failure to live up to his professional obligations.
Let's go ahead and villainize Ellison for having the balls to stand up for himself in a industry where most writers would just lube up and bend over. Let's hate on Ellison because he refused to spin the Hollywood wheel of abuse that keeps on spinning because writers agree to it because that's how it's always been done.
No, let's
criticize him -- no one has villainized him -- for being unwilling or unable to fulfill his professional obligation to write a filmable script that was consistent with the TOS producer's creative vision and for then pretending that he was a victim for it.
It's responses like your Christopher that make it clear to the world why the WGA is a fucking joke.
Not one writer in that town has the balls to actually call the studios bluff and strike.
There was a WGA strike not a year ago. Brought Hollywood to a stand-still. Hell, it's
SAG that's balking at striking right now.
To withhold their much needed creative services until they're given the power, the respect and the money that is their due. It is patently unfair that the director's get creative credit when their art is purely interpretive. It's unfair that directors get the big money when the people who create everything that they put up on the screen get peanuts.
It's completely fair to say that the writer ought to get both credit and money that's on par with the director, but it's not accurate to say that the director's work is less important than the writer's. Anyone who's ever seen how a bad director can butcher a good script, and how a good director can add to a good script, knows this. Directors and writers need to work in partnership, not rivalry.
I especially don't understand how a writer who has had no success in the entertainment industry could be anything but appalled that someone who has had success is standing up for his rights. I don't understand that at all.
That sentence doesn't make sense at all. If you don't understand why
Christopher isn't supporting Ellison, it ought to read, "... could be appalled...," not "... could be anything but appalled."
And I think it's pretty classless of you to call a professional author with several novels to his credit "a writer who has had no success in the entertainment industry."
You attitude almost makes me want to have the word "writer" removed from my custom title and have it replaced with "whore" or "chump" or "pussy" since according to you the words should all be recognized as synonyms.
Then again maybe I should have the word "writer" replaced with the name "Ellison" because that's a name that deserves a lot more respect that any mere job description.
Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
ETA:
Ellison has continually failed to enforce his perceived copyright. You don't enforce it, you lose it. 40 years later?
He's lost it. (In more ways than one, and if he ever even had it in the first place).
--Ted
It's my understanding that it's a
trademark that you lose if you don't enforce it, not a copyright. Given that, Ellison's lack of enforcement on previous copyright violations is actually immaterial to the validity of his legal reasoning.
Uhh... the WGA went on strike just last year. 
But that's neither here nor there.
Who do we see about making that the official motto of the Internet?
