Harlan Ellison

[chardman]

I stand corrected then. I've clearly mis-read the scene between Beckwith and LeBeque, which I always thought was more of a not entirely friendly tit-for-tat exchange of favors, than a dealer holding out on a jonesing user.

And are you sure about the Jewels of Sound being taken orally, as opposed to aurally? Cause I thought sure I remembered that the name was derived from an actual sound the jewels produced which caused the mind-altering effects.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Sir Rhosis said:
^^^Not gonna get into the pissing contest, just wanted to note that, to me, McCaffrey, Gerrold and Duane are also "classic SF" writers. Especially McCaffrey, who got her start sometime around the early-1950s, and Gerrold whose first prose was published in 1969.

Sir Rhosis

True enough, but their STYLES are much more contemporary. It's like comparing Tolkein to Elaine Cunningham in fantasy.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

chardman, he swallows the jewel on page 114 of the Ellison book. If you don't have it, here is a bit of the scene in Beckwith's cabin.

BECKWITH: (with finality) But you'll pay a little more. Do I get what I want?

LeBeque nods painfully, reluctantly. Beckwith slowly opens his hand and the golden light shines. LeBeque grabs it quickly and swallows it.

darkwing, I'm showing my age as I have no idea who Elaine Cunningham is. One of Richie's family?

Sir Rhosis

 

[T'Bonz]

Never met the man, but he sounds like he would fit right in down here in S. Florida.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Nothing relevant whatsoever to the discussion of Mr. Ellison and his clashes with Gene Roddenberry, but as an admirer of the original script (as well as a fan of the rewritten aired version), I've always thought that if "City" had been shot as HE wrote it, young Dennis Hopper would have been superb as Jewel dealer Richard Beckwith, and Hopper's pal, Dean Stockwell, could have played the addicted LeBeque with quite the verisimilitude.

Sir Rhosis

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Sir Rhosis said:
darkwing, I'm showing my age as I have no idea who Elaine Cunningham is. One of Richie's family?

Sir Rhosis

Elaine Cunningham wrote a number of books for the Forgotten Realms series of novels for TSR/Wizards of the Coast. Like Tolkien, she is big on "world building", but UNlike Tolkien, she keeps story and characterization front and center, making her books MUCH more reader-friendly and entertaining.

 

[Kail]

Sir Rhosis said:
Nothing relevant whatsoever to the discussion of Mr. Ellison and his clashes with Gene Roddenberry, but as an admirer of the original script (as well as a fan of the rewritten aired version), I've always thought that if "City" had been shot as HE wrote it, young Dennis Hopper would have been superb as Jewel dealer Richard Beckwith, and Hopper's pal, Dean Stockwell, could have played the addicted LeBeque with quite the verisimilitude.

Sir Rhosis

While I also like Ellisons original version of COTEOF, it just is not Star Trek. The characters are WAY off. It would make a great episode of Outer Limits perhaps, but as Star Trek, it would not fly.

 

[Forbin]

MikeH92467 said:
Harlan Ellison is an outstanding writer, but he has a personality that pisses off everyone within hearing distance of his mouth.

I think that sums it up nicely.

I love his writing, btw. I discovered him in the 70s as a whiney fatalistic teenager who though the world was going to crap and everyone sucked. I was delighted to find a "speculative fiction" author who agreed.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The next time Ellison opens his yapper, anyone listening should remind him that he actually wrote an episode of "The Flying Nun".

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Gecko of Gorn said:
He owes alot to Trek and GR.

He owes them nothing - he was a well-known and successful writer before he wrote a teleplay for that show, went on to even greater success in arenas that were not at all influenced by it afterward, and immeasurably elevated "Star Trek" by his contribution. He did a great deal more for Roddenberry than GR or "Star Trek" could ever repay.

BTW, Ellison is funny and dead-on accurate about Trek in that interview segment. The actors are defensive.


BTW, a few nights after that episode of "Tomorrow," Snyder did have Ellison back on, alone, to tell his stories about working in TV and so forth - and it was a far more illuminating, funny and entertaining segment than this one. That show ought to be online somewhere.

 

[Mordock]

MikeH92467 said:
I agree with the earlier poster, writing novels is solitary work (although I suspect editors play a larger role than generally acknowledged) while TV is a collaborative effort.

Every script gets changed, sometimes because of budget constraints, time constraints or other reasons (maybe an actor gets sick and someone has to change a line to suit another character) that may have nothing to do with the quality of the original script.

To me it's kind of interesting that Ellison bitched about that like he had never run into it before, but if I'm not mistaken he had written for other TV shows before Star Trek. (Anyone else remember Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?) It seems to me he should have known full well the hazards of writing for TV.

Agreed. When reading the script via the White Wolf edition, I was amazed at how overwritten it was-and by overwritten, I don't mean florid and inelegantly overspecific in language, but that the script is absolutely crammed with superfluous details: fight choreography, prospective camera angles, design details, and other decisions that are important in prose writing but which screenwriters tend to leave to directors and designers out of necessity, partly because it's the prerogative of the different departments and not the writer, and partly because details in the script that can't be realized on the day will have to be changed anyway regardless of the writer's intent.

Now, perhaps this thoroughness is part of why the story lands so well that even its altered form is still talked about today, but on the basis of his script, it's as if he didn't realize (doubtful) or didn't care that he made a tremendous amount of work for himself trying to direct and anticipate the decisions that other people would have to make without him.

As I mentioned before it says something about TV that everyone involved with the writing, re-writing and editing of perhaps the most acclaimed episode of Star Trek ended up hating each other.

Yeah. I think it's healthy to keep in mind that even the portions of Trek I think are brilliant and note-perfect are the compromised result of a lot of (sometimes bitter) struggle.

 

[Mordock]

Babaganoosh said:
The next time Ellison opens his yapper, anyone listening should remind him that he actually wrote an episode of "The Flying Nun".

When this point is brought up, Ellison is usually at pains to point out that he did so not out of admiration for the series, but for the the express purpose of getting a date with Sally Field. Whether this makes it more or less defensible is, perhaps, best left as an exercise for the reader...

 

[Valin]

Many writers say that became writers because they thought it would help them pick up girls.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Mordock said:
Now, perhaps this thoroughness is part of why the story lands so well that even its altered form is still talked about today...

Well, yeah - the episode is great because Ellison's work was so strong that not even multiple rewrites by a writer as clumsy and limited as Gene Roddenberry could ruin it. Not that GR didn't inadvertently do his worst, like the meaningless drivel that he wrote for Edith Keeler when delivering her "sermon" to the guys in the soup kitchen.

 

[pookha]

Mallory said:
I think Ellison was a good writer with a highly inflated sense of self worth. But from everything I've read he was just not a good fit in the television world.

see that is it..
as bright and intelligent as harlan was he could get fixated on how things should work and not how they actually did.
he never did want to accept that in tv and in movies the piece of work will never be yours alone (or in some very rare cases).
i know he had it explained to him too over the years.
i know he knew and talked too leigh brackett for one thing.

a lot of harlan's non tv work is really fantastic.
some of it personally i find over rated including one of the hugo winning stories.

harlan the person is also all over the place.
yeah he has a big ego but there are a lot of people who will stand up for harlan who has been befriended by him over the years.

and if harlan is involved with a charity auction he will push himself and others to do the most he can to raise money for it.

all too often people seek out harlan just to have fight but a lot of fans who have encountered harlan who approached him in a nice intelligent way found he reacted back to them in the same way.

harlan is probably one of the most complicated complex people i have ever heard of.

 

[Esteban]

I just want to take time out to thank the original poster.

In 1976, when I was 17 (to crib from the "Shatner" work), I saw this and was immensely pissed at Harlan--whom I admired.

Now I watch it with fond rememberance, and say to self, "you know, he HAS a good point".

Regardless, it's great to see the smoke, Jimmy with the beard, De and his pinky ring, Walter and his earnestness...it's just great.

Thank you, TiberiusK, for bringing me the grins.

 

[TiberiusK]

Mordock said:

Babaganoosh said:
The next time Ellison opens his yapper, anyone listening should remind him that he actually wrote an episode of "The Flying Nun".

When this point is brought up, Ellison is usually at pains to point out that he did so not out of admiration for the series, but for the the express purpose of getting a date with Sally Field. Whether this makes it more or less defensible is, perhaps, best left as an exercise for the reader...

Well, he hooked up with Grace Lee Whitney for awhile, until he dumped her for smoking pot in his house.

 

[TiberiusK]

Esteban said:
I just want to take time out to thank the original poster.

In 1976, when I was 17 (to crib from the "Shatner" work), I saw this and was immensely pissed at Harlan--whom I admired.

Now I watch it with fond rememberance, and say to self, "you know, he HAS a good point".

Regardless, it's great to see the smoke, Jimmy with the beard, De and his pinky ring, Walter and his earnestness...it's just great.

Thank you, TiberiusK, for bringing me the grins.

You're welcome. Thanks for watching. There is much more content at the main trekumentaries page http://www.startrekdom.com/trekumentariesindex.html

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Ellison had done a shit-load of tv and movie scripts before and after Trek. He was a hardly a naif who couldn't accept the big, bad reality of screenwriting.

And considering how Roddenberry got Ellison to spearhead the first letter-writing campaign and how COETF is often cited by people who aren't Trek fanatics as the show's finest hour and one of dramatic tv's finest hours, I'd say Trek owes Ellison easily as much as Ellison owes Trek.

A lot of Ellison's vitriol comes from the shabby way Roddenberry, long established here and elsewhere as a pathological lair and glory hog even by Hollywood standards, treated him and his reputation vis a vis this script. Plus, he's saying something a great many SF writers have been saying for years: Trek is entry-level science fiction, not nearly as deep or sophisticated as Roddenberry or his fans (that is, us) would like to believe.

Having said all that...

The aired version of COETF was much superior to Ellison's lauded script. When I finally read Ellison's version back in 1996 with the White Wolf edition, I was terribly disappointed. Still, had Ellison not given Roddenberry, Carabatsos and Fontanna et al. the clay, they never could have sculpted the masterwork (relative to Trek) that was the filmed episode.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I thought the running encounter between Kirk and the veteran of Verdun was better all by itself than the final episode...Ellison had an authentic sense of time and place, and an empathy for even the most minor characters that showed throughout the script. I'd have liked to see his characters brought to life by those actors - put both versions on the screen and see which really is better.

The single failing of Ellison's script - and it's certainly not trivial, don't misunderstand me - was his refusal to write to budget. Still, most of the showstoppers could have been rewritten without diluting the heart of the drama as the producers did.