Came across an interesting clip from an upcoming documentary today, and it seemed like a good jumping off point for tonight’s article.

Warning, the following clip contains Harlan Ellison being himself.

Needless to say, being a writer, I kind of agree with Harlan, although I may be biased.

Also needless to say, he makes his point in the most asshole-like way he possibly can, including a tale of how he verbally abused some random studio flunky because she had the gall to suggest he do something for free.

But buried somewhere in that giant stinking heap of Harlan’s highly toxic personality is a good point or two, I think.

First off, yeah, sure, all the other people agreed to do their DVD stuff for free. That’s because they are all actors who have gone on to do other things and legitimately can think of this as publicity for themselves.

Or they are J. Michael Straczynski and are worshiped as a god by nerds worldwide, and have no need for such petty offerings as “money”.

But writers are just writers, even when they are as (in)famous as Harlan. They need to get paid for what they do, and paying work is scarce in the world of writing (which is why all those “amateurs” have to work for free, Harlan, you douche nozzle) and so every writer is best served by being pretty fierce about getting paid for their work whenever possible.

And it’s not like he is asking for money from some earnest group of hard-working fans who are scraping something together out of love for the show and are putting it all together on their friend’s MacBook Pro because they all work at Starbucks.

This is Warner Brothers here. They can afford to pay, and they should pay, if asked.

That didn’t justify Harlan being such a dick to the nice lady on the phone, though, and I can only hope he is embellishing the story and was not actually that rude to her.

But you never know with a prime dickhead like Harlan. Maybe he was even worse, who knows?

The problem boils down to the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who want to be writers in the world. It is a job with a high degree of appeal to those of us who are shy and highly verbal and big time readers and/or consumers of other media.

And when you have such an enormous supply with such a (relatively) low demand, it becomes rather heavily a buyer’s market and we poor sellers are left in a very poor bargaining position. Sure, we would all like to be able to demand to be paid for anything we do. Do that as a struggling, unknown writer like millions of others, and you will find yourself unpublished and obscure for the rest of your life.

I know it’s hard for you to remember, Harlan, but there was even a time before you were famous, and when you might well have been willing to work (or even take a piss) for free just to get your name out there.

Of course, you haven’t written jack shit in the last twenty years anyhow, so I supposed you have to lunge for every potential revenue stream you can lest you end up working for a living. By the way, when’s that next Dangerous Visions coming out? Real Soon Now?

Myself, I would love to be a paid writer. What wannabe writer wouldn’t? We all dream of being able to make a comfortable living just typing away and creating our magic, with all the little mundane details of life taken care of by others who are paid to do so. with just the occasional book tour to shake the cobwebs out of our furrowed brows and air out our leather-elbowed tweed jackets. It’s an intellectual’s wet dream, and one I am haphazardly pursuing even just by writing this article.

(I think it might involve getting my shit together enough to take something I wrote and polishing it up so I can send it to the sort of people who publish things. Boy, that’s going to be a tough one. )

And Lord knows, a lot of people are eager to completely ignore the writer’s role in things, and a lot of writers are more than willing to go along with that because of the aforementioned buyer’s market, and, honestly, low self-esteem amongst introverts.

But that does not excuse all those people for trying to cut the writer out of the deal, as thought the parent is the least important part of a childhood.

So pay the writer already!