Ellison is pissed
- Thread starter Admiral Buzzkill
- Start date
Maybe Ellison knows he doesn't have a case, so he's going public like this to build public pressure on Paramount, who might be pressured into settling out of court even if Ellison doesn't have a case. Who knows? It's possible. After all, there's more then one court, and that's the court of public opinion.
Babaganoosh said:
Ellison was kind to fans? Humble before *anyone*? News to me.
I guess I must have caught him on a good day, then... either that, or I amused him when I had a snappy comeback to his smartass comment.
I suppose that "mercurial" would be the best word to describe him...
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Methinks you'se all might want to expand your horizons a lil bit ... in terms of his writing, I think of him first as an essayist, then as an issue-driven informed advocate for a variety of issues, then as a screenwriter and fantasist, with CITY not even at the top of his screenwriting creds.
He always like to say folks are entitled to their INFORMED opinions, not just to their opinions. I think some of the posts in this thread really reinforce this in my mind, since there are a helluva lot of totally UNinformed posters.
Personally I really hope that new documentary on him plays up here, I'd love to see in a crowded theater (though I think you could easily do a SERIES on his life rather than a single doc.)
Harlan Ellison, much as I like some of the work he's done, is an idiot. All he can do is complain and complain. And what's worse: Now he's doing EXACTLY what he has been accusing Gene Roddenberry for the past 40 years... stealing credit! Because the fact is: He did not invent the Guardian of Forever, at least not as we know it. In his script, there were several and they were bearded old people! Hence, if Abrams uses the time portal we know, Harlan Ellison has zero to do with it. He may be due compensation because his name was on COTEOF's credits, but I am angry that he makes it out as if someone were stealing his intellectual property which this most certainly is not.
That is like saying Albert Einstein is only known for E=MC2.
I develop merchandise for Pirates of the Caribbean and Disney asked that I refrain from using the Aztec gold coin on the packaging art because every time it's used "the writers need to get paid." I'm sure it has more to do with the headache it causes their licensing staff to track these uses rather than being fair to the writers involved [toke break] but they made it pretty clear that even a plot device could generate revenue for the writers who created it.
I need a little clarification on this whole residual thing...
Did the writers of the original episodes featuring Garak or Seven of Nine get residuals for every episode those characters appeared in? Even as an N.C (non-speaking role)?
Is it limited to specific characters? Or if, hypothetically, the first Bajoran to appear on Trek was simply referred to as "the Bajoran" in a non-credited minor appearance, would residuals be due everytime the race was used?
Did the writers of the original episodes featuring Garak or Seven of Nine get residuals for every episode those characters appeared in? Even as an N.C (non-speaking role)?
Is it limited to specific characters? Or if, hypothetically, the first Bajoran to appear on Trek was simply referred to as "the Bajoran" in a non-credited minor appearance, would residuals be due everytime the race was used?
IIRC, in one of Ellison's re-writes (published in the White Wolf edition of the original script), he bowed to budgetary constraints and made the Guardians into one Guardian, the donut portal. His re-write also contained a bit where McCoy didn't shot himself with the hypo but instead was bitten by a creature in his lab, whose poison caused him to become crazed and beam down to the planet.
Many, many, many people aren't "artists." They have steady jobs with benefits and don't have to worry about the next "hour" they'll work. This is one of the reasons why there's a writers' strike in Hollywood; the authors want a fair cut of the profits from their work.
Mr. Ellison – however unpopular with certain Trekkies – is correct; if Paramount is indeed using his work, they owe him. Knowing the system he probably won't get anything until after the movie's released (possibly years later if you ask Peter Jackson), but if his agent has a brain, he'll negotiate a percentage deal and a screen credit rather than a flat fee.
That raises another question: did PAD just read the same online rumor all of us did, or is he in a position to know for sure? I imagine it's not inconceivable that, say, he's in touch with the guy who's writing the Trek XI novelization (or is the guy who's writing the Trek XI novelization)...
I'd say there's a pretty good chance PAD knows no more about Trek XI than any of us do.
(unless he's doing the novelization...)
(unless he's doing the novelization...)
Surely Mr. David - who writes licensed Star Trek fiction - has more connections than Mr. Cawley - who produces a Star Trek fan series, yet who apparently has seen the new Enterprise design?
It doesn't seem impossible that David knows a little more than we do, or anyway is surer about the factuality of the rumours.
No, I don't think so. I remember when that stupid Nemesis rumor came out that Ashley Judd would be reprising her role as Robin Lefler (now married to Wesley Crusher), PAD found out it the same way we all did, and his only options were what we all did; Pray the rumor was false. This despite the fact that Robin Lefler is a main character in PAD's novel-only series, Star Trek: New Frontier.
If PAD couldn't find out whether or not a character vital to the books he was working on was in the movie or not, I doubt that he would have an inside source on a movie completely unrelated to his current projects.
Come to think of it, if Ellison only learned about this from PAD telling him the rumor, and Ellison only learned about Crucible from a fan telling him about seeing it in the bookstore, I think I've found an equitable solution for everyone: People need to stop telling Harlan Ellison what's going on with Star Trek. I mean, it's not like he cares (aside from that one subject). All it does is make him angry, and make the rest of us retell our old "Harlan Ellison can be such a petulant man-child" stories, which isn't good for anyone.
And they're so proud of their ignorance, too. It's remarkable. "City on the Edge of Forever" may have been where I first heard of Ellison, but before I was out of my teens I knew a lot more about him and his work than that. I read his magazine columns, I read Dangerous Visions, I read some of his own stories... and that was back around 1980, when you couldn't just connect to the Internet and type a person's name in Google to learn about them. It's so much easier to be informed these days, but people still can't be bothered.