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Harlan Ellison Sues For "Star Trek" Episode
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Mar 17, 2009 06:31 PM
from the dangerous-visions dept.
from the dangerous-visions dept.
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.'"
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wow (Score:5, Funny)
Tell us what you really think dude ;)
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
"REPENT Harlanquin!" Said the FatCat man.
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Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
I'd personally give them shit but "I have no mouth and I must scream!"
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Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
Hate to explain a joke, but-
The line is from one of Harlans more famous books and goes " "REPENT Harlanquin!" Said the TICTOC man."
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Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
It's a reference to a storiy by Ellison:
"Repent' Harelquin" Said the TicdkTock Man [wikipedia.org]
Same as my reference (same thread - to those who modded it troll) to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" [wikipedia.org]
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Re:wow (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, Hollywood has always ripped off its writers
Fixed that for you.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
That's right. We should support those Hollywood writers by buying their stories, not just watching re-runs that make money only for the studios.
Here's one way to support Harlan: buy the book. [ebay.com] Make sure he gets paid for his fabulous story.
Oh, wait. It's out of print, and that's a site that sells used copies. Sorry, Harlan!
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Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
why this particular episode and why now?
Apparently a series of book have been released based on characters and situations from that episode. His contract specified that if such a thing were to happen, he would be paid. Paramount didn't pay him, even though he says he's been trying to get them to pay for a while. And the guild didn't defend him like they're supposed to. So after some months of going back and forth, he decided to sue them both (the guild for just $1 though).
So that's why.
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Re:Law (Score:5, Informative)
$1 is a minimum dollar amount required to trigger "consideration" aspects of law, and is not considered a "trifle". There are many suits calling for $1, and no I'm not going to get flyswatted by a lazy "Citation Please". It's because the elements of contract law of Offer, Acceptance, *Consideration*, Capacity, Legality usually require Consideration>0.
What Harlan is suing for is to establish precendent for future cases that if the Guild does not assist authors in certain ways, Bad Things will happen.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
"why is this coming up now?"
Because a recent novel trilogy—Crucible by David R. George, III—was based significantly on that episode (among others). The books came out in late 2006, and Harlan announced at that time that he was planning to sue Pocket Books/Paramount to either scrap the books or get gobs of money.
As for why it took two and a half years from "I'll sue!" to actually suing, I'd imagine that his lawyer(s) tried negotiating with Paramount/Pocket first.
davidh
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Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
Harlan DID say that. See his press release [harlanellison.com]:
Slashdot links to a blog post by some jerk who dislikes Harlan intensely and makes fun of him (admittedly, Harlan is easy to dislike) with selective quotes and comments. Entertaining in its own way, but certainly not fair to Harlan.
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Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)
"You'd "all" nod your heads in agreement? What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I am one of those "no intellectual property rights" and I find no contradiction. This is not a case of property rigths. There was a *contract* between parts able to negotiate (Harlan and Paramount; not one of those take-it-or-leave-it CLUFs and the like) that stated that if Paramount did X, Harlan would recieve Y. Once the conditions got agreed, Harlan went to work and now Paramount must comply on his side.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I think the "limited IP rights" crowd outnumbers the "no IP rights" crowd by about 20-1. I'm all for a reduction of IP rights. I think 50 years from date of first publication is an adequate term for copyrights, and would support a scheme whereby they have to be renewed in order to stand after the first 25 years. I think patents should be limited in scope to the truly innovative; anything that can be described as simply an incremental improvement over a preexisting idea (e.g., doing this thing that could be done before, but with a computer!) should be ruled out totally. Trademarks should only apply to people attempting to compete directly with the holder. But I defintely support IP rights, and I think most other people here on /. would agree with most of the statements I just made.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
We've tried this system; that's how art was funded prior to the invention of copyright in, what, the 18th century? The problem with this system is that it encourages funding of a few big name artists while everyone else struggles to get noticed. The resulting body of artwork lacks diversity and tends not to challenge the status quo for fear of offending the people holding the purse strings.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
We've tried this system; that's how art was funded prior to the invention of copyright in, what, the 18th century? The problem with this system is that it encourages funding of a few big name artists while everyone else struggles to get noticed. The resulting body of artwork lacks diversity and tends not to challenge the status quo for fear of offending the people holding the purse strings.
Did you just describe the current situation or the 18th century? I couldn't tell.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
HE, by contrast, has had no real impact on anything, beyond pissing a lot of people off.
While I'm not personally a fan and find it trite and overdone, there's a general consensus of those in the know about such things that Dangerous Visions really did push the boundary of what was acceptable to publish a long way forward, and started a new trend in SF that is still having impact today. The fact that as a modern reader looking back we see nothing remarkable about it is, I'm told, a testament to just how much influence it had: nothing before was like it, but everything since has been.
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Ellison is an angry, angry man (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
Tell us what you really think dude ;)
What is Star-Trek?
It's an old TV show where men in tight-fitting outfits and women in mini-skirts and tight-fitting nylons flew a primitive warp-drive spaceship around, interfering in the development of numerous civilizations around our part of the galaxy on a weekly basis. That fine tradition was continued in the various Star Trek spinoff franchises that popped up (rather like weeds) in the decades since the original series was aired. Note to first-time viewers: the various characters in TOS (i.e., The Original Series) were conveniently color-coded for longevity: those wearing tight-fitting red outfits generally didn't make it out of any given episode alive.
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Oh Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not YRO. This did not happen online. The summary is so bad that I'm not even sure that this is about his rights.
Re:Oh Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
This is not YRO. This did not happen online.
It's been argued numerous times in the past that "YRO" means "Your rights, discussed online" not "Your online rights."
I subscribe to the former school of thought myself.
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Re:Oh Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
is there a non-online version of this forum that things are discussed on, then? Because your online rights (your rights while online, your rights online, etc) makes sense. Adding the completely pointless "discussed online" bit makes no sense; of course it's discussed online. Is there a "ask slashdot, online" option too? How about "hardware, discussed online?" "Science, discussed online?" No?
Oh, well then, let's go with the option that actually makes sense.
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Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!"
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Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, actually. Her case was thrown out.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp [snopes.com]
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It was over 40 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Get over it. Your copyright should have expired anyway by any sort of good definition of limited term.
Reading Comprehension: D- (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawsuit is based on the master Writer's Guild contract in effect in 1967.
The contract defined who was entitled to be credited as a writer. It defined the writer's share in derivative works and merchandising.
It doesn't matter who owns the copyright on the script as broadcast.
The geek is abysmally naive about copyrights.
He forgets who owns the master prints. The trademarks that protect logos, character designs and props.
He forgets that Disney or Paramount has a corporate line of credit. Production facilities. Talent. Marketing and Distribution.
The screenwriter - the pro - never - forgets that without a strong union - without out a strong contract - the studios will find ways to profit from his work for all eternity.
The Last Dangerous Visions, the third volume of the anthology series, has become something of a legend in science fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book. It was originally announced for publication in 1973, but other work demanded Ellison's attention and the anthology has not seen print to date. He has come under criticism for his treatment of some writers who submitted their stories to him, of which some estimate to be nearly 150 (many of the authors have died in the subsequent three-and-a-half decades since the anthology was first announced). Harlan Ellison [wikipedia.org]
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Re:It was over 40 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
I would rather it go out in the manner the contract said.
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Re:It was over 40 years ago (Score:4, Informative)
AFAICT, he's suing precisely for that reason. It said in the contract he would get paid royalties on any books based on his works, which happened 2 years ago with the crucible trilogy, and they're not interested in paying up.
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I really... (Score:5, Funny)
On one hand... (Score:5, Funny)
On one hand, we have the tired old story of a writer/creative not receiving due credit for his work. On the other hand, said creative is possibly the most obnoxious asshole still living that I've known of.
On the third hand, this is Star Trek.
God, I'm so conflicted here, who do I want screwed over the most?
Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
> On one hand, we have the tired old story of a writer/creative not receiving due credit for his work. On the other hand, said creative is possibly the most obnoxious asshole still living that I've known of.
Yes, but he is a very eloquent asshole and his rants are high entertainment. Besides, being an asshole doesn't mean he's wrong.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, all kidding aside, yeah he is (wrong). Amusing, possibly. But wrong, definately.
He did the work under contract. Just as the work I do under contract isn't mine, neither was his. He's pissed because back then, he agreed to such a setup (or more accurately the Writers Guild agreed, which he was a member of), but legally he's got about as much ground to stand on as someone living in New Orleans during Katrina.
That's the beast, and it's been that way for a long long time. Artists own their work, employees don't. He chose to go the route of sure food and became an employee. Now he want's the lottery winnings of being an Artist. Someday they might make it work that way, but I doubt that day will be today, or tomorrow.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Funny)
Harlan has tilted at windmills his entire life.
This is where he is happy, fighting the impossible fight that gives him the limelight one more time...
I will never forget my personal berating at the hand of the man. The profanity he spouted when I handed him a book to sign, he signed it and when I got it back I said in jest, "Wait I though you were Kurt Vonnegut"...
He came unglued.... It was spectacular.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Informative)
On one hand, we have the tired old story of a writer/creative not receiving due credit for his work. On the other hand, said creative is possibly the most obnoxious asshole still living that I've known of.
Well, let me simplify things by giving you a bit more information. City on the Edge of Forever wasn't written by Harlan Ellison. Oh, Harlan Ellison did write a TOS episode called City on the Edge of Forever, which included a drug dealer, multiple humanoids guardians of forever, a pirate ship that replaces the Enterprise when the timeline gets changed, the bad guy being stuck in a supernova explosion, and a Captain Kirk who doesn't actually make the decision to let Edith Keeler die, thus forcing Spock to step up to that role.
I read the original script once. It was horrible. The adapted script took the Edith Keeler character and the overall general idea, then made the script good. Harlan Edison made a lot of noise about them spoiling his brilliant script, and then later published the original. Now he has the gall to say that, 'The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I'm bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.' No. The Trek fans who know his original screenplay think he should thank the studio for paying him for his original script and for letting him keep the credit as writer. He doesn't deserve a penny of residuals for the actual episode. Forty years later, he really shouldn't get anything anyway, but if he is entitled to something, its royalties from his published original version.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Funny)
With your nick, I shall take you at your word. ^_^
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Re:On one hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
.. and a Captain Kirk who doesn't actually make the decision to let Edith Keeler die, thus forcing Spock to step up to that role.
I remember seeing Harlan Ellison talk about this particular point. He was so adamant regarding why logical Spock was the only one able to do this, and how the show's producers totally ruined the script when they rewrote it so Kirk had to let her die. But in my mind the rewrite is perfect in the way it defines Kirk's character in a nutshell - the ultimate devotion to duty and "what's right" above all else, and the self-imposed purgatory that comes with it.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a reason it's pretty much universally hailed as probably the very best Trek script, of ToS or the spinoffs, and that's precisely because of what you said. It's an incredible bit of tragedy, dare I say a Shakespearean moment. It also goes a great distance to defining Spock and Kirk's relationship. When Spock defends what to Bones seems like an insane action of allowing her to die, Spock demonstrates his fundamental empathy with Kirk; nowhere else is Spock's underlying "humanness" so clearly, and yet with understatement and respect for the character, made. This isn't Spock infected by some weirdo alien virus losing his composure, this IS the logical, contained Spock seeing his friend's unbelievable pain at allowing the woman he loved to die to save the future.
Only once after that did Shatner's acting approach the sublime; and that was in the otherwise so-so Star Trek III, when he finds out his son has been murdered. For the most part, Shatner was an over-actor, although I suppose it did fit the character of Kirk (or more likely, Shatner put his own stamp on the character).
At any rate, I think I'll watch the episode again, and ponder, whatever it's murky origins, how The City On The Edge Of Tomorrow is the greatest of all the Treks.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank goodness. I thought I was all alone in feeling this way about Ellison's "City" script. It's a steaming turd of poor writing that respects none of the conventions of the show in which he brutally tried to shoe-horn it. It makes characters act in uncharacteristic ways, gets preachy at the wrong moments, and all in all just plain sucks. I'll go further: I haven't read anything by Ellison that even remotely justifies his reputation as a mover-and-shaker in science fiction. It's all pretentious, tedious, smug crap. He's just someone who caught the New Wave and rode it for all it was worth, and was catapulted far beyond his meager talents.
Harlan Ellison is a nightmare from which science fiction is waiting to awaken.
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Re:On one hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it was so horrible that "Harlan Ellison's original version won a Writers Guild of America Award for best dramatic hour-long script."
I don't know about you, but I don't let the WGA or anyone else decide for me which scripts I like or dislike. Did you read it, or are just look it up to see if it had won any awards?
I don't understand why such misinformed crap gets modded up.
Other than our disagreement about the quality of the original script, which is purely a matter of opinion, was anything factually incorrect my post? He's trying to get residuals for a script that has little resemblance to what he actually wrote, and for which he actually considered disowning because he disliked it so much. He does that, I assume, because the TV show which he dislikes, earned a lot more money than the book he published with the version he did like.
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Harlen (Score:4, Funny)
Is it in your contract? No? too Fucking bad, boo hoo, you shouldn't sign contracts you don't agree with.
You whiny pain in the ass.
Re:Harlen (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't take $$$ from the profits. You take them from gross revenue. Accounting can make all the profits vanish into thin air. Of course, this was done to deprive people with % of profits clauses in their contracts. Every solution that comes up, the studios will always try to find ways to minimize those numbers, to keep all the money to themselves.
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First he bitches about it then wants more credit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ellison is one of my favorite sci fi writers but the version of the screenplay he wrote only vagely resembles the one that was used in the film, it was rewritten several times himself and by 4 others including D.C. Fontana and Roddenberry himself before it was finally filmed. As is the original script was unfilmable, it was written from a writers skew not a screenwriters one and also dismissed alot of the established character traits of the crew. He was originally upset enough by the rewrites that he threated to pull his name from the script.
Fast forward 42 years and a Hugo and now he wants all the credit? I take it his books arent selling like they used to? Seriously Harlan maybe you need the cash or something but get over it.
He has a point. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Terminator and this guy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Look them up. Though I admit it can be murky at times, inspired by [wikipedia.org] and written by are NOT the same thing.
Seriously, when you get down to it how many things are inspired by Biblical stories and old fairy tales?
hey, this can only end well (Score:5, Funny)
Greedy, arrogant writer sues greedy, arrogant corporation.
Time Travel Plot Devices (Score:4, Funny)
If he wants credit for shit, then how about we all give him credit for starting the Trek trend of bullshit time travel plot devices that have been pulled out whenever they need a ratings boost or plot holes need filled.
He can also take the credit if the new Star Trek movie sucks because of its time travel plot device. Its not about the art with him, its about the credit, so take it Harlan, its all yours! The shitty Voyager two part episode where they went back in time - Its yours!
The terrible DS9 holodeck episodes set during WW2 - yours too! You were the first to do a WW2 theme in Trek.
After all, its all about the money, your words. Let that be your epitaph, while after your death we continue to celebrate real sci fi authors like Phillip K. Dick who died penniless, but left amazing art.
Re:Sounds like someone is jealous (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know what is contract said, but if he's like most of us it's called "work for hire" and he's already been paid. Unless he has a contract that promises a percentage of the future royalties and licensing he's just upset that he didn't negotiate said type of contract back in the day.
How many of us negotiate compensation not as $120k/year but as 1/4% of future royalties?
Yep.
Parent
Re:Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
What other industry do you get paid over and over again for work you have already done?
What industry do you get paid vacations? Yours? What industry can you show up for work, surf the web, and be otherwise unproductive for two-three hours so long as you steer clear of the PHB? Yours? What industry do you get -- I love this one! -- "sick days," where you can make a phonecall to some suit and then stay home under the covers and still be paid the same amount of money that week as if you had had 40 productive hours? Yours?
Or you can try being a writer. Sure they get residuals, money for something they've written a while back. Does that make up for not being paid for the sick days, Christmases, vacations, overtimes, whatever other downright wacky (when you think about it) conventions of the modern workplace in which they do not share? Maybe, maybe not. But the writers knew what they were getting into when they started their careers, same as the corporate clock-watchers. Seems a bit wrong to change the rules somehow...
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