Never More Timely: The Late Harlan Ellison on Paying The Writer

Today would have been Harlan's 89th birthday.

 

I Am The Liberal Media

I Swear They Are Trying

To kill that man...

So as some of you know, one of America's greatest living writers had a stroke a couple of days ago:

Harlan Ellison, the multi-award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy, had a stroke last week and is recovering in a Southern California hospital. He is grumpy -- and everyone considers that a good sign.

The redoubtable Patton Oswald, reporting live from the scene, said Harlan is doing OK:

"I gotta go do some physical therapy on my stupid fucking arm." -- actual quote from when I spoke to Harlan Ellison earlier. He'll be fine.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) October 13, 2014

So that's some good news, I suppose.

On the other hand, given his legendary contempt for a certain "hideous neologism". when I read this headline --

Sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison recovering from stroke

-- I had to wonder if there wasn't some larger conspiracy afoot to do in Unca Harlan in by just pissing him off to death.

From one of Harlan's many, many publicly expressed opinions on the subject:

First of all, the hideous neologism "sci-fi"--which sounds like crickets fucking--is at the core of this seeming malaise.  What is called "sci-fi" is not repeat NOT, science fiction.  It is special effects movie/television produced by and for imbeciles.  Giant lizards, moronic space battles with spaceships acting as if they were Spads and Fokkers dogfighting in atmosphere, recycled fairy tales, and illiterate appeals to paranoia.  They bear as much relation to science fiction of quality (whether film or tv or books or magazines) as Dachau did to a health spa.

God speed and good friends to you, you cranky old humanist.

The Evolution of Christian White

Once upon a time "Christian White" was a joke that a screenwriter tried to slip into a terrible script as an act of "Can you believe this crap?" subversion (emphasis added):

...

So I returned to New York to find that The Young Lawyers had barely escaped cancellation in the purge that blissfully rid us of The Immortal, Barefoot in the Park, The Most Deadly Game, The Silent Force, The Young Rebels, Tom Jones and Matt Lincoln.

But the price of being kept on the air is a high one.  It is total Agnew-ization.

No scripts dealing with drugs.  No scripts dealing with "youth".  No socially conscious scripts.  Lee J. Cobb comes into prominence.  Zalman King fades back quite a lot and a pure WASP attorney will be introduced to ease the identity crisis of the scuttlefish  (Steve Kandel, one of the more lunatic scriveners in Clown Town, when assigned the chore of writing the script that introduces the new characters, despising the idea, named him Christian White.  It went through three drafts before anyone got hip to Steve's sword in the spleen.)

...

-- Harlan Ellison, approx. February 1970, reprinted in The Other Glass Teat *

Four decades later, in the ever-darkening shadow of the Nixon's Southern Strategy, "Christian White" is now an overt statement of whiny dominionist paranoia by well-known "godbothering nuisance who once starred on a weirdly successful sitcom that ripped off everything it knew from Family Ties" (emphasis added):

...
[Kirk] Cameron said some of the claims that will be addressed in the film include: the notion that Christmas is really a church co-opting of winter solstice celebrations, that Jesus was not born on December 25, that Christmas trees are pagan and that consumerism is overshadowing the true reason for the season.

“It’s a scripted story about a guy named Christian White who represents the typical white Christian male and he’s got a bad case of religious bah humbugs,” Cameron said. “He is just deflating his wife’s entire Christmas party because he has come to believe that everything we’re doing at Christmas to celebrate is wrong.”

The movie includes reenactments of the original Christmas tree story, with portions and scripted scenes showing the nativity and the Council of Nicea, a pivotal event in the history of Christianity.

Cameron, who is also one of the film’s stars, told TheBlaze that he decided to make “Saving Christmas” to celebrate the spirit of the holiday season, while also pushing back against those who wish to “snuff out [the holiday's] holy root.”
...

And thus does entertainment history repeat itself, first as behind-the-scenes, Nixon-era dissent, and then as out-and-proud, anti-science, anti-history fundamentalist primal-scream.

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

*Why my brain retains these little details from stuff I read decades ago, I have no idea.

Harlan Ellison Talks Jazz, Race, and Chicago

The man has a million stories, all of which are amazing and only a handful of which have been committed to print or video.

This is The Cathedral in Which Your Cowardice Has Been Enshrined

The silence of the pulpit is the silence we heard when you did not answer cries for help. In the eaves of this place are the festooned remnants of the friends you did not come to assist. In the darkened rooms of rotted staircases are the tattered faces of lovers you betrayed- here your mother, there your father, both gone now and neither with any degree of calm or joy. Here is the sanctuary of your lost chances. There is no pastor, no choir, no stewards, no supplicants. It is a congregation of one. You will worship here all the remaining days of your life and at night your spirit will kneel on broken glass in the pews.

-- Harlan Ellison, "The Silence"

Harlan Ellison with Beard Added

Why?

Because I have a blog, and sometimes I do Photoshop five-finger exercises just because they amuse me.

Now, off to catch up on writing "Thank You" notes.

Happy Birthday Harlan Ellison

May 27th is the birthday of Harlan Jay Ellison.

In addition to mortaring together more award-winning words per page than just about any other writer I can think of, Harlan has also been a tireless, fearless ninja on behalf of just about any, dirty Liberal cause you can think of.

Especially free speech and respect for the rights
of the creative creator.

And the thing is, having bent those oars with Herculean strength and RCMP persistence for more than half a century, he's still at it; still working, still schticking, still a consumate practitioner of the very long con, still squiring the lovely Susan to various interesting places on planet Earth, still living the life you wished you lived and still raising welts and extracting tears using naught but that most ancient human craft of storytelling.

(And don't worry yourself into a hording panic, because there is plenty of New! Ellisonia! to go around.)

When I write about those who have been sounding the alarum bells in the night for decades, I put Harlan is near the top of that list. You cannot read "From Alabamy, With Hate" (1965) --

...

The redhead came over to me.

“We aren’t all as bad as they tell you we are down here,” she said, and seemed infinitely, genuinely sad about it.

“As bad as what, ma’am?” I asked, playing boyish and cute.

“Well, just like, you know, them others, like they tell you.”

“Who tells me, ma’am?”

“You know. We just aren’t all that bad, honest.”

“Yes ma’am.” I smiled at her. “But some of you are, and if you sit back and let them ruin your lovely state, then you’re as guilty as they are. I came all the way from Hollywood, ma’ am, just to see if I could help.”

She stared at me. I’d used a magic word. Hollywood. Then I wasn’t a Communist. A black-loving Jew, probably, but not a Communist. And I had such nice manners, and I obviously wasn’t a beatnik.

The fat one came out with the water. I took a long, deep pull from the kitchen glass, and returned it.

“Thank you, very very much, ma’ am.” I smiled, allowing the left-cheek dimple to show itself.

“You just tell ‘em we gave you a glass of water,” the redhead said, smiling, thinking she was sewing it up.

And if I’d been black? I thought. I didn’t say it, because the idea was to show them there were other ways to do it, not to antagonize them.

I loped back to the line of marchers and fell in, the line moved out again, and I repeated what had been said. They weren’t all that bad down here.

The Negro student turned a look of venom and truth on me.

“Don’t you fall for that okey-dokey,” he warned me.

Hoop-de-hoop. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

We turned down onto the main drag. Dexter Street. Past the Jeff Davis Hotel. The whites standing at every curb, and the rednecks, the denim—clad, white-shirted men, giving us the finger.

“Where you want freedom from, boy?” a redneck murmured at me from the sidelines. “New York? Philadelphia? Chicago?”

I smiled at him...frig you, Jack.

Past the Paramount Theatre. Elvis Presley in Girl Happy.

“That isn’t one of ours,” the Negro high school girl said.

My heart went cold in me. It’s so easy to forget. Past the J.J. Newberry five and dime. The second floor housed the Montgomery Citizens Council offices.

They had a gigantic poster hanging out the window. It showed Martin Luther King with some other people, and it said MARTIN LUTHER KING / COMMUNIST!

Hoop-de-hoop. Hoop-de-hoop.

...

-- or "A Love Song to Jerry Falwell" (1984) or "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look so Terrific Yourself." (1978ish) or "Norman Mayer" (1982) and not see the broad, medieval nightmare shadow of what was bearing down on us; not see the Reagan and Nixon years for what they really were -- Guernica-like dress rehearsals for the long-range plans of America's plutocrats and Christopaths.

Oh, and one last thing.

When I was a wee driftglass, the idea of meeting and talking to writers I greatly admired was like the idea of splitting a $20,000 hooker...with Santa Claus...in space: several layers of impossible.

I now know that meeting and talking to writers I greatly admire is both possible and often genuinely delightful.


Happy birthday, Harlan.

"Remember Harlan!" Update -- UPDATE

UPDATE/

I have been informed that the author of the Yahoo News article below was wildly premature in his reportage regarding the outcome of this legal action.

So while I stand by my own words, please accept my apologies for repeating Mr. Shirey's, uh, "premature adjudication."

/End UPDATE


For those of you keeping score at home, it appears that the "In Time" people have settled with Mr. Ellison.


From Yahoo News:

Harlan Ellison Just 'In Time' to Get Credit for the Movie

By Eric Shirey, Yahoo! Contributor Network

It looks like Harlan Ellison has won another lawsuit. The famous sci-fi author recently sued New Regency, director Andrew Niccol, and several unnamed John Does over plagiarism claims for the movie "In Time." Ellison settled for having his name added to the credits of the film. Whether they want to admit it or not, this may as well have been an admission of guilt for the movie's producing parties.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ellison filed the lawsuit back in September, claiming that "In Time" producers and director Niccol were committing copyright infringement. The Hugo Award-winning author alleged that "In Time" is based on one of his most popular short stories, "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman." The tale was published in 1965. Ellison's suit claims it's "one of the most famous and widely published science fiction short stories of all time." Critic Richard Roeper even saw the similarities and stated that the movie was "based on a short story by the great Harlan Ellison" in his Fall Movie Preview.

The short story "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman" and "In Time" really do have several similarities between them. The plot and setting of both are described as a "dystopian corporate future in which everyone is allotted a specific amount of time to live." In both the movie and the story, a government representative named the "Timekeeper" keeps track of how much time each citizen has to live.
...

The article continues on like that in even greater detail , but the lesson it imparts in it's subtext is a simple and familiar one to regular readers of this blog: Pay the writer.

It's just that simple.

See, I have it on good authority that Harlan Ellison doesn't just wander the Earth nailing writs to random strangers who might have plucked a line of two from one or another of his thousands of published works. He has far too many other, better things on which to spend the precious hours of his life. Rather, he is an old-fashioned gentleman who takes his craft seriously and is as implacable as the Hantavirus when he believes his work has been fucked over or ripped off.

And so, with his kind permission I am reprinting a short note penned by Mr. Ellison on this very subject in September of this year. It is as well-crafted and concise (no surprise) an explanation of the difference between a helping hand and a pickpocket's lift as I have read:

...

Yesterday, as I lay in bed, out of the blue I received a charming phone call, unsolicited, from a gentleman in Kentucky whose name is Mr. Wooten.

Apart from Mr. Wooten--otherwise unknown to me--having some years ago nicely sending me a "company chit" from the Ellison Coal Company from 'way back a hundred years ago, out of Harlan County, Kentucky, which he found by chance on e.bay or somesuch, because he thought it was a token that would make me smile--which it did--a tschotcke of small joy--I have no connection with the gentleman. Of any sort.

He asked me, "I've reread your story 'The Whimper of Whipped Dogs' and I'd like to take a go at writing an idea off it, sparked by your version. Do you mind?"

This is a trope, folks, pursuant to other prominent topics here currently. Pay attention.

I said to Mr. Wooten, instantly, "You have my blessing. Go for it. Absolutely. If you find the convenient space somewhere after the story, it would be nice if you kindly appended the phrase 'With acknowledgment to Harlan Ellison' or something similar. Nothing further need be worried about." I consider it true and proper and right for artist-to-artist crossover and feedback. That's what Art does. It soothes OTHER artists into reworking their imagination. I have no beef with that.

I am not a frivolous man when it comes to the creation of art. It is serious business, and takes what I have oft-quoted as "clean hands and composure."

Of the close onto two thousand creations that have flowed from me in 77 years, can you possibly calculate one-thousandth of the similar entities resembling mine that I have purposely NOT commented upon, toward which I've smiled and said, good on'ya, mate? Mr. Wooten's courteous request is one thing. Hands in my pocket are another.

If you pilfer a man's shovel, and he cannot get paid to dig the ditch, who is to call him a bad guy if he takes legal by-the-book steps to be compensated? Further, deponent sayeth not.

Which leaves me with nothing to add, except this:

With grateful acknowledgment to Harlan Ellison.

"Remember Harlan!" said the driftglassman

Andrew Sullivan has piled up a small berms-worth of so-precious-that-it's-swaybacked-under-the-weight-of-it reviews from a few of the Usual Suspect blogs, who all weighed in on the Marxism, or maybe the non-Marxism, or the god-fucking-knows-ism --

...he operates under the assumption that a redistribution will prove isomorphic to an “Operation Twist” and restore full employment equilibrium.

-- of "In Time".

However, for all of their many very large and impressive words, one item that none of the reviewers noted was that before it was 2011's breakthrough, visionary whatever, this story was called "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman".

It was written by Harlan Ellison.

In 1965.

It is one of the most famous and reprinted short stories in the English language.

It's plot --

"...a dystopian future in which time is strictly regulated and everyone must do everything according to an extremely precise time schedule. In this future, being late is not merely an inconvenience, but a crime. The crime carries a hefty penalty in that a proportionate amount of time is "revoked" from one's life. The ultimate consequence is to run out of time and be "turned off." This is done by the Master Timekeeper, or "Ticktockman," who utilizes a device called a "cardioplate" to stop a person's heart once his time has run out.

-- appears to have been cut from and lifted bodily out of Harlan's famous short story, then implanted into a Justin Timberlake vehicle without a backwards glance.

This has caused some controversy,

Ellison, a writer who is rightfully proud of the lengths he’ll go to to protect his intellectual property, attempted to prevent the release of In Time, claiming that it shamelessly rips off “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Tick Tock Man,” Ellison’s own short story.

In Ellison’s story, an impish rebel named Harlequin, jokingly modeled after Ellison himself, rebels against a futuristic society where the time that people have left in their lives is methodically monitored and even policed by the government. Residents in Ellison’s future have internal clocks that get processed by “The Master Time Keeper,” a heartless martinet that never hesitates before punishing tardy civilians by robbing them of precious hours or even years of their lives.

I’m no legal expert, and it is important to note that Ellison’s suit, which has not reached an official judgment yet, has not successfully stopped the theatrical release of Niccol’s film. Yet his case seems to have merit. In Time has the same exact set-up as “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Tick Tock Man.”

the outcome of which I am not 100% up-to-speed on.

The similarities were so striking and obvious that upon seeing just the trailer 4-5 weeks ago, I whispered to my wife (for I am a considerate movie patron) words to the effect that I was delighted that Harlan had finally been able to get one of his most famous short stories made into a Big Time Hollywood Movie.

"After all," I reasoned, "who is there left in the world of cinema still damn fool enough to steal from this guy?"


I find this completely unsurprising: maybe it is simply another lethal side-effect of a culture whose economics, politics and entertainment all depend entirely on almost everyone forgetting almost everything that happened before yesterday, but (for example) the number edgy, "new" insights that pop up on science fictionally illiterate blogs these days (and then run like a rash through the blogosphere) that are nothing but 3rd generation carbon copies of edgy insights that first appeared, fully articulated, in "Astounding Magazine" in the 1950s is both amazing and depressing.

Books I Would Pay

Cash-money to own.

Generally speaking, I don't need a lot of tactical help when it comes to managing projects unless I am, say, assembling Interocitors from scratch (never done it)

or explaining to the legal department for the 100th time why I should be permitted to cashier an employee who was absent for weeks on end, was incapable of completing a one-day assignment in a month and a half, lied constantly and incompetently, slept snoringly at his desk on the days he did bother showing up for work at all, and had already been verbally and written-ly warned to the point of it being comic opera (did that, and would rather lose a limb to a knife-wielding rat in an alley fight than ever go through it again.)

What I do need help with from time to time is a gentle reminder that while the working world may be a pinata full of loco being beaten with rebar by gorgons, I myself am not mad.

Nor am I alone.

Doomed, perhaps, but not crazy, which, as it turns out, is exactly the brand of parable which Harlan Ellison has been exultantly gift-wrapping in fury and terror and leaving on our doorsteps since before I was born.

Yeah, sure, from the "Glass Teat" books, to "The 3 Most Important Things in Life" essay to his vivid autopsy of what happened to the "I, Robot" script, to the fate of those who live in a world where "The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge" gets disappointed...interleaved throughout his sprawling body of work are all kinds of seams of pure labor relations gold.

But selfishly and frankly it would be a hoot to see a big, mean hardcover by Ellison in the Business Book and/or Current Events section of my local Book-O-Drome, leaping from shelf-to-shelf, chasing Hank Paulson's "On the Brink" out of the store and into oncoming traffic, chewing the heart out of whatever unholy globitarian oligarch dreck Tom Friedman just extruded and laying a clutch of eggs in it's still-warm corpse, and cackling in the corner with Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia".

Suggested titles you ask? What about...

"The Kyben Way: Kanbanning your way to Market Supremacy"

"Jeffty's Visioneering Meeting has been rescheduled to 5:00."

"The Cheese Stood Alone until Someone Moved It."

"The One-Minute Ticktock Manager"

"PowerPoint of the Lost Hour"

"The Man Who Offshored Christopher Columbus"

"The Beast That Shouted 'Synergy' at the Heart of the World"

And of course

"The Management Secrets of Cordwainer Bird"

However since this particular grand idea may never come to fruition, I will probably have to satisfy myself with scraping up a few dollars and running out to buy "Brain Movies".

I can live with that.