I always had the impression Ellison decided one day that if the squeaky wheel got the grease, the shrieking whiny obnoxious wheel would get a lot of grease.
“Trooper” was a great character that didn’t make it from Ellison’s script to the episode.
For arisu, who hasn’t seen the episode in question :eek:
Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 28: The City On the Edge Of Forever Starring Joan Collins as Edith!
Unfortunately, he also failed to realize the squeaky wheel also gets the kick.
Butt-Kicking, For Goodness!
Actually, Ellison addresses this in the book. He lists a string of TV producers with whom he had no trouble working at all. In particular, he talks about his experience writing episodes for THE OUTER LIMITS, in particular, his “Demon With A Glass Hand” episode – basically a chase in which a man with a talking glass cyber-hand, but no memory, is fleeing aliens in an abandoned segment of Los Angeles that has a force field around it.
The producer loved the script, but said they didn’t have the budget to chase around several blocks of LA. Could Ellison confine it to a single building?
Ellison apparently considered, and he and the producer agreed that a chase could be horizontal… or VERTICAL … and agreed that the chase could take place between floors on the old Bradbury building in LA, which is where the episode was filmed. Ellison cheerfully rewrote the episode, the producer liked it fine, and all was filmed happily, and everyone got paid.
Ellison’s point was that he was perfectly peachy to work with when he worked with grownups and reasonable men. Note that I’m paraphrasing HIM, since I personally have no idea what the guy is like.
It is legend, though, in fandom and in Hollywood, that if Ellison thinks you’re a shithead, he is NOT afraid to tell you so, in grand and glorious and caustic detail…
More from the aforementioned book (it’s great, look for it):
The addictive “drugs” in Ellison’s original were “sound jewels”.
In an interview in “The Humanist”, the interviewer said to Roddenberry, “You drew on your father for parts of the Edith Keeler character”. Roddenberry’s reply didn’t contradict this. The character in the filmed episode is not significantly different from Ellison’s original.
Yah, it really sounds like they tried to screw over Ellison on the Starlost. The interesting thing is, in that essay Ellison mentions how Roddenberry, at point, stands up for him against the studio people on the Starlost show.
Mm… from what I remember, it wasn’t so much that they wanted to screw Ellison over, so much as it was … just… “hollywood.”
Some people were arrogant jerks.
Some people were sure they knew what would work better than anyone else did.
Some people wanted to save money.
Some people wanted to do this.
Some people wanted to do that.
…and nobody really wanted to listen to the writer, even after they paid him for his time and effort and input.
It seemed to me that the lesson here was that once one has sold one’s story or idea to a company, one should kiss it goodbye. Being attached to it means you get to watch a team of persons of varying competence gut the friggin’ thing…
Wang-Ka: Its that act of passivity that Ellison is known to rail against. He hates hates hates it when when people fuck with ideas. If Ellison is sufficiently pissed (it doesn’t seem to take much), he’ll evoke his contractual nom de plume “Cordwainer Bird” as a statement that ‘this script is for the birds.’ Or is that "I flip you the bird?’
Either way, the man’s artistic temperament is legendary.
Thanks, everybody for your input. Live long and…oh, you know! 
Never kiss an animal that can lick its own butt.
Ah, yes. Cordwainer Bird.
Wrote at least one episode of “The Flying Nun,” ole Birdy did…
(hee, hee)
Hmmm… never thought of it before, but I wonder if J Michael Strazinsci (sp?) was inspired by that. Regarding Dr. Franklin’s addiction problems
Anyone know if he’s ever mentioned it?
Not that I’ve kept up on this whole controversy, so I have nothing to add to that part of it. I have met Ellison though, many years ago a book auction and got the chance to spend quite a while chatting with him.
He struck me as extremely intelligent, interesting, outspoken and a complete asshole. It was a great experience, and there’s no way in hell I’d invite him over for dinner.
Well CRUD! Askia beat me to it. I was going to say that Ellison is VERY well known it science fiction circles for this temperment. ANd for the fact that he absolutely totally HATES to have any of his stuff messed with by ANYONE! He, apparently, is an editor’s worst nightmare. Both of Asimov’s biographies talk about Ellison’s temper in some depth.
And Wang-ka Harlan Ellison has NEVER kissed a story goodbye!
Ellison was supposed to write the script for the first Star Trek movie, however (as Ellison recounts in his introduction to his screenplay for Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot [which is not going to be used for the Will Smith film:mad: ]) one of the studio types was an absolute idiot, and was making all kinds of dopey suggestions for Ellison to put into the script. Ellison got totally pissed off and stormed out, never to work on the Trek franchise again. (Interestingly enough, one of the themes from Ellison’s script did make into the final episode of TNG. Of course, Ellison may have borrowed that particular idea from Douglas Adams, who stole it from himself when he used it in one of his Dirk Gently novels.)
And, if I recall correctly, wasn’t the producer for that segment Robert Justman?
I think Justman was the AD on “Outer Limits,” before becoming the Associate Producer on TREK. Not 100% sure, though. It was Justman who actually took Ellison to the Bradbury and showed him around. Not sure if Justman came up with the idea to use the Bradbury, though, or if it was someone higher-up.
Trivia. During his “Demon” rewrites, Ellison says he went to the Bradbury, and actually raced from the top floor to the bottom, feeling it necessary for Trent (the titular “Demon”) to make it down in under twenty seconds. Ellison found that the only way to do it was vault over the rail and leap from the final landing. He sprng his ankle doing so (and dutifully noted in his script that the run down took 17 seconds).
During filming, Culp’s stunt man sprung his ankle as well doing the jump.
Sir Rhosis