Harlan Ellison sues Paramount and the WGA
Science Fiction writer Harlan Ellison is suing both Paramount and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) over the original Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever.
From ICv2:
Harlan Ellison filed suit on Friday against Paramount and the Writers Guild of America over the Ellison script for the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever. Ellison alleged that he has received no accounting or payment from Paramount for uses of his teleplay, and that the WGA has failed to act on his behalf on the issue.
Among the uses of the script for which Ellison wants compensation from Paramount are a trilogy of paperbacks, the Crucible series, which use elements of the script, and a Hallmark Christmas ornament in which a character speaks lines from the episode.
Ellison is asking only $1 (plus fees) from the WGA, with which he’s been closely associated throughout his career.
Ellison described his motivation with his typical élan. “…[A]t the moment some studio mouthpiece calls me a mooch, and says I’m only pursuing this legal retribution to get into their ‘deep pockets,’ tell ‘m Ellison snarled back, ‘F*****in’-A damn skippy,’” the announcement of his suit said. “I’m no hypocrite. It ain’t about the ‘principle,’ friend, it’s about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie! Hell no! I’m doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!”
City on the Edge of Forever is my favorite original Star Trek episode. Ellison wrote the original script, but it had to be rewritten many times before it was used on the show. If I remember correctly, Ellison’s original story involved a drug dealer that escapes from the Enterprise and goes back in time and alters the time-line resulting in the Enterprise becoming a pirate ship. Not a old fashioned wooden sailing ship from the 18th century, but a space pirate ship.
I’m not familiar with the Crucible series of Star Trek novels, but evidently the stories involve time travel and use the City on the Edge of Forever’s Guardian of Forever device. If that’s true, they wouldn’t be the first Star Trek novels to use the Guardian of Forever device. Peter David’s Imzadi also featured the Guardian of Forever device.
Why is Ellison not suing for that?
Sometimes I have to remind myself that Ellison is above all, a science fiction writer. I tend to just think of him as just a guy that enjoys suing people for dumb reasons. Has anyone ever been sued over a Hallmark Christmas ornament before? Is this what some mean when they talk about a supposed war on Christmas?
A copy of the lawsuit can be read here.
Yet another Hollywood strike?
One might think that after the recent Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and the blow back it caused to the TV industry, it would be a very long time before anyone in Hollywood wanted to go on strike again. It would seem that thought would be wrong.
The Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) is planning on seeking authorization from it’s members to go on strike. From Vanity:
SAG hasn’t yet disclosed exactly when it will send out the authorization, which will require a 75% approval from those voting to go on strike. The guild will need at least three weeks to conduct the vote, so it’s still unclear whether SAG could be on strike in time to disrupt the Jan. 11 Golden Globes.
SAG members have been without a contract for months now. Why doesn’t SAG just agree to the same deal that the other six (6) Hollywood labor unions got? I thought that was why so many actors supported the WGA during their strike. They knew that they as SAG members would be getting the same deal as the WGA got.
Evidently they want more.
SAG president Alan Rosenberg insists that SAG members are different. From The Hollywood Reporter:
“Management continues to apply its one-size-fits-all demands to SAG actors,” he said. “And we continue to stress that actors have unique, reasonable needs that are different, not better, but different than writers, directors and crewmembers.”
The SAG should just take the same terms that the other unions got and be done with it.
I guess the writers strike is over
The rank and file members of the Writers Guild of America still have to vote, but it appears the 14 week writers strike is almost over. From the Washington Post article:
The most immediate beneficiaries of a settlement could be the thousands of production workers — grips, caterers, camera operators, makeup artists — who were thrown out of work when the writers struck. Although movie production mostly continued during the strike, TV shows on both coasts quickly came to a halt when the strike began Nov. 5.
This has been precisely my contention from the very beginning; This strike was highly damaging to a vast amount of people that work behind the scenes on TV shows. People that never stood to gain a single penny from Internet residuals.
Also from the Washington Post article:
On the key issue of compensation for work streamed over the Internet, both sides gave a little. The studios and their network allies originally asked the guild for time to study the issue and declined to offer any residuals for digital media when talks broke off in early December. The guild, in turn, held fast, arguing that writers had to share in the profits of what may become the preeminent way to view filmed entertainment.
But the writers never wanted to share in the profits. The writers have always insisted that they be paid whether their work generates a profit or not. Their cut has always come from the gross, not the net.
More on the WGA strike
I’ve been trying to learn more about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers strike. Much of what I’ve read or heard about the reasons for the strike seem to be contradict other things I’ve read or heard about the strike. I found a list of points at the WGA.org website. Here’s a quick summery of the main sticking points:
- Home Video (Videocassettes and DVDs) Residuals – They currently get 0.3% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.36% thereafter. They want 0.6% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.72% thereafter.
- Non-Traditional Media Residuals – They currently get .3% of the gross for downloads where the customer pays for the download. They currently get paid nothing when the customer pays nothing. They want a residual payment of 2.5% of the distributor’s gross for re-use on non-traditional media, including the Internet. I’m not sure what they want to be paid when the content is free. It’s hard to assign a percentage to free.
If you go back and watch the YouTube video I posted the other day from the people from The Office, what they say in the video seems to contradict the information found on the WGA website. B.J. Novak, actor and writer for The Office, says that every time he meets a new viewer to The Office, they are watching it on the Internet or on DVD. I’m assuming that when they say they were watching it on the Internet, they were downloading the episodes from iTunes. Only recently did NBC start streaming episodes from free. The inference is that Novak and the other writers aren’t getting paid for the episodes on the Internet or on DVD.
That’s not true. If money changes hands, the writers are getting a percentage.
The great Hollywood writers strike of 2007
Talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended with the two sides not being able to agree to a new contract, resulting in television and movie writers going on strike. The conflict seems to be over on how to divvy up money generated from DVD sales and the Internet.
Much of the disagreement seems to be over how earnings will be generated in the future using technology or mediums that may not even exist today.
Jay Leno and David Letterman will be in reruns until the strike comes to an end. Evidently they both need their zany wisecracks written out for them before hand. The same applies to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No new episodes until the strike is over.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t understand the concept of residuals and perpetual earnings. I’m a simple electronics technician. I repair frequency drives used to power three-phase AC electrical motors. I work for the company that makes these drives. When I repair a drive and ship it back to it’s owner, I don’t continue making money from the profits generated from the drive I repaired.
I don’t understand why somebody that wrote something for Jay Leno to say on TV should be paid more then once. I don’t understand why they should continue getting paid for said writing on a continuous basis. Its hard for me to grasp.
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