Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Yes, I do. Unless Mr. Ellison had a special, super-duper contract unheard-of in Hollywood at the time, his scriptwork and all the characters in it, were works-for-hire and there are no residuals owing. This has been standard Hollywood practice since sound came out. He effectively acknowledges this in his forward to his book printing of his I, Robot script.
Yes, individual contracts can be cut, but I doubt even Harlan had the clout in 1966 to get a ground-breaking one made; especially for a marginal TV show (at the time).
This is the world of Hollywood, which has no correlation to anything we think of as "reality".
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Harlan Ellison is a friend of mine. If he were here, he would say, "You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to an INFORMED opinion."
"Work-for-hire" or not, Harlan Ellison has separated rights to City of the Edge of Forever. At least, that's his argument. It's not that they can't rebroadcast the episode endlessly; they paid him for that. But they did not pay him to re-use substantial elements of that script in books and now movies. Now, I'm not a lawyer and you're not a lawyer and neither of us have seen the original contracts so neither of us really knows. But Harlan believes he has a case, and win or lose I applaud him for standing up for the rights of authors. He's even suing the WGA because they *won't* stand up for author's rights. Harlan has been a strong supporter of WGA for decades, but on this he feels they are in the wrong.