Harlan Ellison Sues For "Star Trek" Episode 483
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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
Re:On one hand... (Score:3, Informative)
With your nick, I shall take you at your word. ^_^
Hah. Well, despite my name, I've made mistakes in the past and I probably should have provided a reference [wikipedia.org]
And here's the book [amazon.com] I mentioned he published.
Re:On one hand... (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, it was so horrible that "Harlan Ellison's original version won a Writers Guild of America Award for best dramatic hour-long script."
Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever [wikipedia.org] - under "Reception".
I don't understand why such misinformed crap gets modded up.
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.
Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Why now? It's not now, it's just continued from when he turned in the first draft. It really got heated after the first rewrite. I believe Ellison threw the first verbal punch but Roddenberry didn't hold back either.
Why this episode? Had you actually read the original you would not ask this question. When compared to the original script the aired version is like a bazooka bubble-gum comic version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream.
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."
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]
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.
Oh, boo f--king hoo.... (Score:3, Informative)
If you contract somebody to build an apartment complex for you, and they do so... let's say they design it, taking it all the way from blueprint to finished building, and you pay them for that job and then proceed to rent out the units in that complex, eventually starting to profit quite heavily, the people you contracted can't exactly come back later and start demanding a percentage from your profits just because it was their work that helped make you rich, can they?
He wrote something, he was paid, and that was it. Unless his contract specifically says that he was supposed to get royalties all along, he may need reminding that *HE* agreed to those terms. If he didn't like them, he shouldn't have agreed to them in the first place.
Re:On one hand... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
His claim is that his contract did, in fact, give him rights to a portion of any licensed publication rights, and that these were not paid. Paramount, further, refuses to even give an accounting of licensing. I'm not sure why you think he'd be bound by your work contracts.
Re:neat! (Score:3, Informative)
It could backfire badly if the Guild is held to be %100 liable. His award would likely be, $1.
But in reality a suit for $1 isn't going to get very far. As Phil06 notes, the law has no patience for trifles. I imagine that the first time a judge looked at that claim, it would get tossed. The general practice is, (and I may have this wrong for his jurisdiction, but I can't imagine why it would be different) to claim whatever your damages are against both defendants, and let them work out who owes how much (if anything). There are trickier issues depending on the nature of the claim and how damages are apportioned to the liable parties, but generally it's much better strategy to let the defendants worry about who is more or less responsible.
Tricky lawyers often get bit by their tricks!
Re:wow (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Why (Score:3, Informative)
Mote, Beam, Eye, NotPournelle.
If I buttress my note to you enough the DropDown crew won't trash your K.
There is no such thing as an external "fair price" for anything. Staff writing works on the theory that someone would rather be guarantee to make a mortgage than hope to get lucky enough to have $1.15 accrued per day in royalties off a minor hit.
If you think you've got the killer vision to make the next big hit, then go to it. Then shop it around, get turned down while the insider politics stomp on you for a while, and in 4 years you might land the contract you are looking for, so you too can buy a new car. Don't care to be broke for 4 years trying? Then don't disparage. It's that industry's risk-reward ratio. It's the IP lottery.
Larry Niven wrote he mainly got started because he could live off a family inheritance for some 3 years until he learned the trade.
Re:Ellison is an angry, angry man (Score:1, Informative)
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.
A library can help you out with that issue.