Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed

by Harlan Ellison

  HOW YOU STUPIDLY BLEW FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS A WEEK, AVOIDED HAVING AN ADENOID-SHAPED SWIMMING POOL IN YOUR BACKYARD, MISSED THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE LOVE AFFAIR WITH CLINT EASTWOOD AND/OR RAQUEL WELCH, AND OTHERWISE PISSED ME OFF

  As this is a significant position statement for me, and has some import for SFWA, I’m really delighted to see such a nice spotty crowd. The title of my talk is not “Hollywood” as it appears in the program, courtesy of the timorous management. It is a somewhat longer title and was intended to raise sufficient wrath and ire, with the feeble hope that the room would be crowded. No such luck; typical SFWA non-interest; they’re all in the bar.

  No matter: I intend to say a number of things people will not enjoy hearing today, and it’s best most of them don’t hear it; I don’t want to disturb their long sleep. I hope to raise a lynch tenor in the mob. Sort of social work among the somnolent.

  The actual title of my talk is “How You Stupidly Blew Fifteen Million Dollars a Week, Avoided Having an Adenoid-Shaped Swimming Pool in Your Backyard, Missed the Opportunity to Have a Mutually Destructive Love Affair with Clint Eastwood and/or Raquel Welch, and Otherwise Pissed Me Off.” That is the title. Tom Purdom says it’s not an appropriate title for the program book. I hadn’t realized we were taking ourselves so seriously these days, but then, one can expect little better from SFWA.

  This may be a bit disparate because a number of things are coming together; but I’ll try to get to it in a fairly coherent manner…if I can get past my anger.

  Over the last few years I’ve been extremely concerned about the way the drama category of the Nebulas has been handled and I went so far as to suggest a way in which it could be handled more propitiously. You may recall seeing the article in the SFWA Bulletin.† But with this slavish dedication to preserving the rights of the common man, people said no, no, we cannot remove the wonderfulness of the drama category from the hands of the membership (who don’t know shit from Shinola anyhow, but what does that matter) and we must continue to let them vote on things they neither understand nor care about.

  Thus, we have continued awarding the drama Nebula, that wonderful, expensive Nebula…to people who frankly could not care less. They don’t know SFWA exists; they think of us (when informed we exist) as another group of self-serving amateurs. They don’t show up at the banquet; they don’t give a damn, and it’s not their fault. They think sf is “sci-fi.” And they do not care about SFWA. To them, if we impinge at all, in their minds we are a bunch of pishers. The persistence of their attitude is to me another indication of the sophomoric and amateurish way in which this organization is run; that such an attitude continues to prevail unchecked in the film industry says much about us.

  Now, I would say this to our recently-reelected President, Mr. Offutt, but he, I think, is down in the bar again; at least he passed me heading in that direction about five minutes ago, as I was entering this room to begin speaking, which is all to the good, I suspect.

  But. Let me start with an exemplary anecdote.

  A couple or three or four years ago, Damon Knight had a Milford conference in Madeira Beach, Florida, and he invited a number of us to come down. Madeira Beach was going through, I think 120° heat with sand fleas and ugliness and a lot of rancid tourists from Kankakee and places of that nature, and there were fifteen motels in Madeira Beach, all of which had air conditioning. One did not have air conditioning. But it was $2.00 less per day than all the others. Guess which one Damon booked us into? Gordy Dickson and the others who got there first managed to flee for their lives and got into the air conditioning. I, unfortunately, was condemned to Gehenna.

  Now, what this meant to me was that Damon, who had grown up as a poor fan, though he now had money, and he had a home, and he was married to Kate Wilhelm—which is enough joy for any one human being—Damon was still thinking like a poor fan. No malevolence, just amateurishness. And he thought saving $2.00 for each of us was more important than our comfort. Therefore, Andre Norton had a cardiac arrest and fell down half-dead. Burt Filer only survived by staying stoned. Gene Wolfe began speaking in tongues. I lost about twelve pounds, and couldn’t sleep at night; and everyone was bitter and vicious to one another and damned near had to stay drunk to stay sane throughout the entire conference. Unfortunately, I don’t drink. Damon meant well, but by extension this was indicative of much of the thinking that goes down in SFWA. It is a provincial, insular, hidebound, cocoon kind of thinking that goes back to 1926, when science fiction readers had to hide their copy of Amazing Stories inside the National Geographic for fear someone would laugh at them. Those days is gone, friends. We are very much legitimate now. Serious reviews, college courses in sf, academic studies…and Hollywood. In the last year, the last fiscal twelve months, by precise count on my calendar, I have received 51 calls from members of SFWA asking me to assist them with some matter that involves the film or TV industry in Hollywood. Would I find them an agent…here is a book that somebody has made a bid on…what can I tell them about this producer or that…somebody is offering $1.26 in Blue Chip stamps for a year’s option…what should they do…would I mind just kinda looking into it for them? All of that good stuff. I unfailingly helped, not because I am a noble and wonderful human being, but because it seems to me that with all the schleppers who are writing science fiction out there, a few of our people should have a chance.

  But every single time it happens, our people don’t know how to act. They don’t know how to make a deal. They don’t know what an agent is for. They have absolutely no conception of what it’s all about on the Coast. They are constantly being ripped off. The classic story is Robert Bloch selling Psycho for something like $700, because a stalking horse intermediary was employed, instead of Alfred Hitchcock’s people at Universal dealing directly.

  It goes on and on and on; and I say to myself, “Well, you know, they don’t really care. They don’t look at Hollywood in a rational way: it’s something alien to them, and they don’t want any part of it.”

  As witness: what goes down with the drama category, which now, in case you haven’t read your latest Forum,† has been permanently killed, by enlightened vote of the membership in Kankakee.

  You have now gotten rid of that odious, troublesome drama category. I bring to your attention, however, the current edition of The Third Degree, which is the newsletter of the Mystery Writers of America. They have their nominations for the 1977 Edgar Allan Poe Awards in here, and they have the usual categories: best novel, best first novel, best paperback, best short story.

  They also have best motion picture, best teleplay, and a couple of other categories involving the visual media.

  They understand. They understand that out on that far Coast there are an infinite number of clowns who have come out of mailrooms, publicity sinecures, advertising agencies, their mother’s wombs…directly into ownership of production companies or studios. And these people like to steal properties. They don’t understand that they are not allowed to steal properties. They just do it!

  I had a meeting with a producer, and he wanted me to do a giant ant movie. And I said that’s a dumb movie; I don’t want to do that. He said, well, if you don’t like that one I’ve got a lot of other ideas. I said, oh yeah? And he pointed to a stack of old pulp magazines. And he said, yeah, I just poke through there and I pick out whatever I like.

  Fred Pohl tells a similar story; maybe about the same guy, I don’t know.

  They don’t know that you exist. They don’t know that you own those properties. Therefore, when The Man Who Fell to Earth is made, and they rip off Walter Tevis again, as they did with The Hustler, so that he winds up in an alcoholic ward someplace in Ohio, for the second time, I get a call within a month of the release of that film and its huge box office returns, from two different networks and three unrelated independent production companies, wanting to do, specifically, ripoffs of The Man Who Fell to Earth. And I, being the ethical lad that I am, say I’m sorry. I cannot rip off
my friends. I will come in and think up another idea for you, equally as original and sensational as an alien falling to Earth. But I won’t be a party to screwing Walter Tevis. Let’s talk about something else science fictional. No, they say, we don’t want science fiction, we want The Man Who Fell to Earth! We want to do that. And so, friends, next season there will be a TV series that is a direct ripoff of The Man Who Fell to Earth. But Walt Tevis won’t see a dime, nor will any of you ever see a dime when they rip off your books and stories.

  But do you, does SFWA, have any concern about this ongoing loss of millions of dollars? Fuck, no! You’re too busy worrying about a lousy 5 cents a word, while living in a sophomore’s fantasy about EEE-vil Hollywood.

  I stand before you today, with considerable rage. I’m up for the drama award this year, for an album that Roy and Shelley Torgeson produced on Alternate World Records. There’s no doubt in my mind that I will lose; I simply will not win that award. Understand: much of what I say to you is out of pique at knowing upfront, in my bones, that I’m not going to win. But neither of the movies on the ballot will win, either. Logan’s Run and The Man Who Fell to Earth, put on the ballot, arbitrarily, are not going to win either. “No Award” will win, friends. Mark my words.†

  It is the final indictment of this organization. Because you people do not seem to understand that a penny a word, 2 cents a word, 5 cents a word is not Valhalla, for Christ’s sake. Shamelessly, with nasty pleasure, I will brag at you; not from Cloud-Coocoo-Land, but from the World of Reality. I just made a deal for a two hour television pilot in January. They paid me $35,000 to write it. It’s six weeks work. $35,000, friends, will give me nine free months this year to write whatever I please, for whatever market I please. I can write as many stories for Ed Ferman, and for Dave Hartwell and for Midnight Sun with its modest budget as I choose. I can indulge myself. I am free. Television and films are patrons of the arts. They are the Pope. They will let me paint my Sistine Chapel’s ceiling any way I damn well choose.

  But this organization still maintains that crazed, East Coast mythology that what goes on in Hollywood is madness. That if you wind up out there you’re either going to die like Nathanael West or Scott Fitzgerald, or wind up face-down in Gloria Swanson’s swimming pool like William Holden.† Monsters, you think. Ghouls, you think.

  You’ll fall off the end of the flat Earth, you think. Simply stated, that is provincial thinking, pure bullshit; it purely is not the case. There are writers out there who have managed to make enormous sums of money, who continue writing their books and continue producing work that has enriched all of us. Consider: Bloch, Matheson, Nolan, Bradbury, Gerrold, Niven, myself; and to lesser note, because of personal problems and who they are…Sturgeon, Bixby, Russell, even Silverberg, who lobbied against the Drama Nebula.

  But there are people who are stealing out of your pockets, and you are being dumb about it. I’m sorry I can’t be more polite, but the lemming-like urge of this organization to destroy that category, not to handle it in an intelligent and financially enriching manner, to present the award in places where it can do us some good, get us some P.R. value, is to me absolutely blind and ridiculous. I will open this up to questions at any point. Anybody has anything to say or an insult to fling, please fling it. I’m extremely angry. But I’m feeling strong and secure in my position.

  (NORMAN SPINRAD asked the first question; or rather, made the first audience comment.)

  NORMAN SPINRAD: You know we did try. You know I was one of the people behind getting the damn category installed when there was a lot of resistance to it to begin with. But the first year that we did it in the Century Plaza out there, we contacted all the studios, we told MGM they were going to win long in advance, and what they did for us was fuck us. [Note: This is a reference to MGM’s promising Charlton Heston would accept the Nebula on behalf of Soylent Green, but instead sent only a minor production official to the banquet.]

  ELLISON: Okay. Let me deal with that for a moment. First of all, they don’t even know SFWA exists at MGM.

  SPINRAD: We told them.

  ELLISON: We told them. Terrific! A guy calls them up; a guy calls a producer and says “Hey, we exist, and we really want you to come to this banquet.” They get five thousand of those a day. Every halfwit group in America has some worthless award that doesn’t mean a dime at the box office. The P.R. simply didn’t cut it; that’s why we were dismissed by MGM.

  Recently a thug named Jack Laird at Universal sent out a brochure, a questionnaire, to something like two hundred members of SFWA saying, “Project X…we’re thinking about maybe doing it. And we want to do a thing about science fiction and we don’t really know, but would you mind answering these few simple questions?” Thereupon followed five pages of the most detailed kinds of questions about how to build a society. Clifford Simak could have done 15 novels off the answers to those questions. What did our people do? They answered them. Instead of telling Laird he was a thief, or suggesting he pay for this special knowledge, or advising him to shove it, many of our people sent him pages of answers. David Gerrold knew what to do, Silverberg knew what to do, Bova and I knew what to do, Dorothy Fontana knew what to do: we immediately called The Writers Guild and said, “This man wants spec writing. This man is trying to bleed our minds.” But what else happened? Larry Niven, flattered to death that someone in the Industry would write him, filled it out. Filled it out! So did a dozen others I know about. I don’t know—how many of you others got that one? How many of you filled it out and sent it back?

  JOE L. HENSLEY: I put down “up yours” and sent it back!

  Good. That’s showing him! Joe’s an attorney: he understands.

  I called the Writers Guild and complained about it. I advised the officers of SFWA. But nobody seemed really to understand the seriousness of that hype. Nobody seemed to care. They sent him all the material he could use! And that series is going to get done, no doubt. If he got only five of those questionnaires back, he’s got enough stuff to cobble up a series, and nobody in SFWA is going to get a dime. And who are the writers who’ll get the assignments to write segments of that series? Not Niven or Herbert or Asimov or any of you! It’s going to be creative typists who sit there in their palatial homes in L.A. and write this shit night and day for television. You aren’t going to see a dime of it. You’re going to continue living in palatial squalor and then come together at circle-jerk gatherings like this one and stroke each other, or at fan conventions, lying to each other about the humble majesty of writing that holy literature, “sci-fi” while George Lucas gets fat off Star Wars!

  But you need not have that. Pay attention: here’s the sermon.

  We live in a mixed-media society. For good or bad, television and films are with us for keeps. Tragically, the illiterates keep multiplying, and the audience for books must be kept alive! To be financially able to keep writing books—if one hasn’t a career as a science teacher or as a used car salesman—one can subsidize the books by writing TV and films because—like it or not—that’s where the action is. Take it or leave it: a show biz world. I am not saying desert books. Books are my first interest, books should be your first interest. They count. But the way to support the writing of your books is to get some of that film and TV money. To live comfortably. It’s no sin!

  And if you don’t get it, they’re going to give it to the turkeys. And by staying stupid about it, by refusing to understand what goes down in that town, by refusing to take some action and have a drama category that is marketed properly to these people, you are slicing your own wrists.

  Now, you say how? There are any number of ways. One of the ways is you spend a little money hiring a P.R. person. It can be done very inexpensively. A professional public relations company, not some friend of the family, some amateur helping us out in his or her spare time, but a solid, professional outfit that knows how to get into the studios. Somebody who works with the Motion Picture Producers Association can be hired for a stipend. There are many of
them who are science fiction fans who would love to be associated with us, who in exchange for a few bucks and a dinner with Bradbury would happily do all the P.R. work for us.

  These people and the more knowledgeable people in production, the younger people, are dying to meet you. Your names are legend to them, for Christ’s sake. Your books inform and delight their days and nights. They think of you as Gods on far mountaintops. It’s the entrenched old tigers who are unaware you exist. So go through the awe-struck young turks. And here you sit in your strange little places, eating Rice-A-Roni. How can you be so out of touch with reality?!? What does it take to destroy these outmoded myths? What does it take? What does it take?

  JOE L. HENSLEY: Harlan, last night at the Mystery Writers of America banquet it was the same thing. Nobody shows up to accept the awards in the categories. There were some people there from ABC and CBS. But the movie things and so forth were accepted by yucks that nobody ever heard of, or people that had been designated out of the awards committee, and that sort of thing. Same thing.

  ELLISON: Yeah, it happens. But the difference is that on the Coast detective novels are not ripped off. They know M.W.A. exists.

  CLIFFORD SIMAK: But, several times a year I get an offer from the West Coast from the visual media. They want to pay me peanuts. I say to hell with that and then nothing happens. How do you go from there?

  ELLISON: Okay, good question, I’ll give you an example. Oddly enough, it’s Damon Knight again. Damon called me about two weeks ago. He had had an offer from someone…it’s a nibble. They all nibble, they love to buy up properties. They like to take options and hope they can blue-sky it somewhere. Even if you’ve signed the biggest stars in the world, without a property you’ve got nothing. First came the word. They know that. Banks won’t give them a dime. But they want to blue-sky it. They want to try to build it into something. So they’ve got to get hold of a property. The name of the game is “Hustle a Cheap Option.” So they send off a letter and say, “we’re interested in such and such.” They don’t know where to write you. They write your publisher; they write the Author’s League; they write to some magazine in which your story appeared (which usually loses the letter for six months); maybe they find a clue to where or who you are and they write to your agent…if you’re very lucky. Or they find you in the telephone book.