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| Posted By : nathan - 2/16/2008 1:51 PM | Taken from Harlan Ellison’s online community, reproduced in its unedited entirety below:
HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:
Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal.
I ****in’ LOVE the Guild.
And I voted NO on accepting this deal.
My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…
THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A s**t DEAL.
We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse’s asses who kept mumbling “lessgo bac’ta work” over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer.
But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla s**t clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.
My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out. It gave away the EXACT co-terminus expiration date with SAG for some bullshit short-line substitute; it got us no more control of our words; it sneak-abandoned the animator and reality beanfield hands before anyone even forced it on them; it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot.
The WGAw folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day.
And I am ashamed of this Guild, as I was when Shavelson was the prexy, and we wasted our efforts and lost out on technology that we had to strike for THIS time. 17 days of streaming tv!!!?????
Geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?
You deserve all the opprobrium you get.
While this nutty festschrift of demented pleasure at being allowed to go back to work in the rice paddy is filling your cowardly hearts with joy and relief that the grips and the staff at the Ivy and street sweepers won’t be saying nasty s**t behind your back, remember this:
You are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another.
Please excuse my temerity. I’m just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards.
I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant.
Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." |
| Posted By : nathan - 2/16/2008 1:56 PM | Wow. I realize I'm skirting some langauge not usually seen on such a mild board (and good for that)--but they aren't my words there The Giant's Mr. H. Ellison.
I was so glad Lost was going to go on and that the writers were going to get *something* I didn't read to closely. Apperently Mr. E doesn't think too much of the deal cut.
Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise some of the talent haunting this board may move up into just such Big Leagues one day--even if only to have their prose opt'ed into a script. Sad to know that Hollywood and The Powers That Be have such a vested interested in keeping the help down--and that [according to the man who wrote the best episode of Star Trek ever] the people charge with their (our) defense don't have the Tony Soprano streak neccessary to provide for their flock.
On the otherhand I'd love to see the rebutal to Mr. E's words to get a more balanced picture ofwhat happened--but still that was a LOT of emotion.
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." |
| Posted By : erazmus - 2/16/2008 4:48 PM | No, Harlan's right. I can call him that, he said so a couple of decades back. I don't like the S.O.B. personally, though he can be charming too, I've seen it. But he's right.
The WGA lost the fight from way back on this one and didn't make up any ground here. At most they treaded water, and what Harlan is so bitter about here isn't so much the deal they got as the things they didn't ask for in the opening and the stand they never took and should have.
The guild got the writers something from streaming TV. They managed to establish that they should get something from it, and from other new technology revenue streams. That was imporatnt and they did it, barely, but it was all the good they accomplished and it is overshadowed by all the bad they let stand. The bad was mostly not on the table at all, and once the writers struck they should have put everything back on the table. There leadership didn't feel that way, and they were wrong.
You do know that "reality tv" is scripted, right? That the general goings on on a showlike Big Brother House and survivor follows an outline written for the players? It does, but the people writing those outines are not covered by the WGA agreement, because the shows are "unscripted" meaning no one writes the dialog, and the writers are not paid guild wages and recieve nothing after the fact. And those shows are displacing guild written shows in the line up and putting guild members out of work. The guild let it slide and shouldn't, and should have pressed for the show writers to be covered by the guild.
Thats one thing. He mentions many others, along with seventeen days of streaming revenue for which the producers can sell advertising with the writers getting none of the revenues. Since many shows still come out once a week, why get three free ones on the internet? What they got is better than nothing but only just, revenue wise it will prove for most to be . . .nothing. Income measured in the dozens of dollars instead of the thousands.
That won't stop me from watching the new shows, though I don't watch many anyways, but if ever I am in a position to join the WGA, it will make me think twice about it.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
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| Posted By : Jack Mackenzie - 2/18/2008 2:54 PM | I met Harlan Ellison many years back and I found him to be gracious, polite and a real gentleman. His rhetoric has, sadly, is no longer "hip" anymore. His speeches may seem antiquated, and his language crass, but his viewpoint has never been more valid and his message more necessary. His assessment about the WGA is correct. They caved in the face of a monumental corporation. A corporation, I might add, that has gotten rich on the backs of writers.
I'm sad to say that the WGA's leadership did not have the temerity to stand in the face of management and not flinch. In fact, they seem to have wet their collective pants and rolled over.
Ellison is right. If not for the writers that episode of the Sarah Conner Chronicles that you downloaded from iTunes for $1.99 would never have existed. How much of that $1.99 is the writer's due, do you think? How much do you think they are gonna get now?
Not enough in my estimation.
Jack Mackenzie
"Keep idling your vehicles. Greenhouse gases are the only things that will save us from the forthcoming ice age!"
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| Posted By : MichaelEhart - 2/18/2008 4:37 PM | |
While this is medium high for Harlan, it is in fact a fairly calm essay compared to the usual rhetoric of labor disputes. His main points are correct, and he uses no more hyperbole than Jack London in his famous definition of a scab, which was written, what? a hundred years ago?
Jack London's Definition of a Scab...
Scab
By
Jack London
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab.
A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.
When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out.
No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.
Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The scab sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a SCAB is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.
Harlan is right, of course, though in this gentle age of gangsta rap and "Super Bad" our tender ears are unused to such coarseness. 
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