And Back To The Ellison/City Lawsuit...

But have you ever been to Croydon?

And until this thread was started, I never knew that such a man exsisted!

 

Because you're supposed to go into a work-for-hire process with the knowledge that it's a collaborative medium that will require compromise and consensus, not with your head full of ego and convinced that you'll get everything you want. That he let his ego get away with him simply because his talent was solicited does not constitute a good reason to behave like a jackass.

I never said any such thing. I have no problem with the unaired drafts of "The City on the Edge of Forever" being available. I'm just saying that Ellison's an asshole.

 

You're confusing different topics here. For all I know, Ellison may have some unusual contract that gives him the right to nix adaptations or whatever, but that's not what I'm talking about in the comments you quoted. I'm talking about the rewrite process of "City" itself as a television episode. And WGA members (I don't get what you mean by "WGA winners," since the WGA is a union, not an award) write scripts all the time and get them rewritten all the time. If they had some huge objection to the normal collaborative process that results in revisions, then presumably they'd quit writing for TV and write novels or plays instead. It's a simple fact that TV is a collaborative medium, and it's a simple fact that in a collaboration, the final product contains ideas from multiple different people, not just one. It's just plain stupid to agree to cooperate with other people on a production they created and then act all wounded when they insert their own ideas into what you wrote for them. That's like agreeing to fill in as the fourth member of a barbershop quartet and then getting angry that the other three people insist on singing along with you rather than staying silent. It just doesn't make sense.

So, what, are you endorsing terrorism here? If you're using the idea of setting off a bomb as an analogy for Ellison's reaction to the situation, I think that's basically making my case for me. Whether the problem is valid or not, that's hardly a legitimate response to it.

 

When the man's right, he's right. trevanian's right.

 

But, the terms "something good" and "letting everyone piss on it" are terms subjective to the opinion of said artist.

 

I just now noticed that the tags on this thread are "harlan ellison," "harlan ellison is god," and "crazy as a soup sandwich."

I have nothing else to add, I just like the phrase "crazy as a soup sandwich."

 

One of the few gems to come out of the third season of the 80's Twilight Zone.

 

No human being is capable of anything other than a subjective observation.

 

Exactly. I don't know what it was like in the '60s, but I've read several blogs and articles written by writers were they disucuss exactly this. In fact, when you are writing for a show like Heroes, or Battlestar Galactica, it is a standard part of the process. Usually you write you script, then it travels through several people and groups of people who all make what ever changes they feel are neccissary. And doubt that this is really all that different from the ways things were done in '60s, it's still all the sme jobs after all, and I am almost certain that whether you were are a staff writer or an invited writer. Like Christopher has said, as long as you are writting for a TV show, you should be aware of the fact that the script (no matter how much you love it) will have to fit in with the story and the universe that you are writing in. Then again, I think most writers are just happy to see any of their ideas appear on screen.

 

As you were the one who shot off his keyboard claiming it was filmable as a "very expensive feature", based on, apparently, nothing more than the word of Justman and company, and not an actual study of the script, I frankly submit that you have even less room comment on this than I. You're accepting their word, whereas I've done the homework.

Frankly, even my quick breakdown of real cost items (cast, sets, visual effects, etc.) illustrates that there's no way this would have been a "very expensive feature", and I'd appreciate your having the decency to admit you overstated at least this point.

Fine. But to think that Solow, Justman and Roddenberry were being entirely truthful about the costs and revision circumstances of Ellison's script, especially decades after the fact, is naive, given that a) stories tend to get exaggerated with each retelling, and b) all of them had ample reason to want to justify rewriting someone of Ellison's stature. You can believe Justman's stories if you want, but I've devoted the time to study the script, and I call bullshit on it being as impossibly expensive as these stories would have us believe, even in its first draft.

 

You know, DS9Sega is providing fairly detailed analysis supported by the text and some experience and you're still working out of emotion and defending it with no more than this truculent expression of "faith" without knowing the actual facts of the matter. You might want to move off of that; you're not holding up your side of the debate.

 

^^^ Star Trek was on a very tight budget, so they had to save every dollar they could without hurting the final product too much. And IIRC the script that was filmed already was over the budget and DS9Sega already has conceded that it would have been more expensive (most likely not as much as some say, but still more expensive) to film Ellison's so I don't really see what all of you are arguing over, especially since the final product in this case is among the favorite episodes of large chunks of the fandom.

 

^^I agree. There's nothing remotely unusual about the rewrite process of "City," except that it took longer than usual and that Ellison has spent decades voicing sour grapes over it and creating the deceptive impression that some kind of injustice was done. I'm sure many, many other TOS scripts went through the same kind of revision process, but I never see anyone arguing over whether the first draft of "Amok Time" or "The Trouble with Tribbles" or "Journey to Babel" should've been filmed. (Okay, it's been argued that "Joanna" should've been filmed instead of "The Way to Eden," but never with this level of intensity.) So this is a wholly artificial controversy. People don't argue over this because there was something objectionable or anomalous about the rewrite process; they argue over it because Ellison is an attention whore and he's generated and sustained the controversy to feed his own monumental ego. There's really nothing here to argue about; Ellison just wants people to think there is because it gets people talking about him more.

 

Forget about cost, one feature of the original script was that it wasn't McCoy accidentally injecting himself, it was a member of the crew who was a drug dealer. That absolutely wasn't going to be part of Gene Roddenberry's vision. So yeah, there was going to be a re-write on that aspect of that alone.

One thing I liked more in the original script was the bum that died in the show actually died saving Kirk's life and at the end Kirk is left to wonder why that guys life didn't matter but Edith Keeler's did.

I just happen to have finished Final Frontier and there's a bit in there were McCoy says that whole thing was his fault because he should have known better than to handle a hype like he was while the ship was being rocked. I like that. My favorite Diane Carey novel so far.

 

Please ...

This dead horse is flat from everyone beating it. Might we please start five more simultaneous Ellison/City threads, and get this meaningless crap out of our systems so this frigging topic will finally go away?

No one here has a copy of the original contract, so no one actually KNOWS JACK about this specific instance. And apparently only a few here understand the process of pitching, writing, revising and selling a script for series television.

Move on, for God's sake. Or move this to TNZ.

Bah humbug.

--Ted

 

^ You know what? I agree with that.

This thread is now closed, if anyone has more news, they are welcome to start a new one.

Goodnight.