Chapter 76
But we had no money. So we had to go to Los Angeles by way of New York from Chicago. If I could sell a book, I would have the means to go West, young man, go West. (And that was the core of the problem, not money: I was a young man. I was twenty-eight, but I had never become an adult.) In a broken-down 1957 Ford we limped across to New York during the worst snowstorms in thirty years. My wife and her son stayed with a friend I'd known in the Village, and I slept on the sofa at the home of Leo & Diane Dillon, the two finest artists I know. Leo & Diane slept on the floor. They are more than merely friends.
It was December of 1961, and amid the tensions and horrors of that eight-week stay in New York, two things happened that brought momentary light, and helped me keep hold: The first was a review by Dorothy Parker in Esquire of a small-printing paperback collection of my stories. How she had obtained it I do not know. (When I met her, later, in Hollywood, she was unable to remember where the book had come from.) But she raved about it, and said I had talent, and it was the first really substantial affirmative notice from a major critic. It altered the course of my writing career, and provided my ego-which had been nouris.h.i.+ng itself cannibalistically on itself-with reason for feeling I could write.
The second happening of light was the sale of this book, ELLISON WONDERLAND. Gerry Gross bought it for short money, mostly because he knew I was in a bad way. But it provided the funds to start out for Los Angeles.
We traveled a hard road down through the Southwest, and in Fort Worth we were staved in by a drunken cowboy in a pickup. Rear-ended. He had a carhop on one arm, and a fifth of Teacher's in the free hand. Rammed us on an icy bridge, smashed the car, crushed the rear-end trunk containing our luggage and my typewriter, and I suppose it was that typewriter that saved our lives. The typewriter has paid the rent and put food on the table many times, but that time it physically gave up its life to save me.
We were laid up in Fort Worth for a week, with our money running out. Had it not been for the help of the then-police chief, a man whose name I'll never forget-Cato Hightower-we would never have gotten out of Texas. He got me a new typewriter, had the car repaired for a fraction of what the garage would have stiffed a tourist just pa.s.sing through, and he paid off the motel.
I arrived in Los Angeles on New Year's Day, January of 1962, with exactly ten cents in my pocket. For the last three hundred miles we had not eaten. There wasn't enough money for gas and food. All we'd had to keep us alive was a box of pecan pralines we'd bought before the accident and had in the rear seat.
The arrival in Hollywood was something less than auspicious.
My almost-ex-wife and her son moved into an apartment, and I took up residence in a fourteen-dollar-a-week room in a bungalow complex that is now an expensive high-rise condominium on Wils.h.i.+re Boulevard. I tried to get work in television, got some a.s.signments that paid the various rents, and bombed out on all of them. n.o.body had bothered to show me how to write a script. And when it looked as though I'd hit the very bottom, ELLISON WONDERLAND was published in June of 1962, the publisher sent me a copy, and the check for the balance of monies due on publication. It was enough to pull me through till I got another a.s.signment-writing Burke's Law for the Four Star Studios and ABC. It was the very moment my luck changed.
I remember the morning the mail arrived, with the book in its little manila envelope. I ripped open the package, and out fell the check. But I didn't even look at it. I sat in that room smelling of mildew and stared at the cover of ELLISON WONDERLAND. The artist, Sandy Kossin, had taken a photo of me, and he'd drawn me in sitting cross-legged atop a giant mushroom, while all around me danced and capered the characters from the stories in the book. Skidoop and Ithk and Helgorth Labbula and the crocodile-headed woman from "The Silver Corrider" and that little jazzbo gnome with the patois now long-outdated and so unhip.
There I was. And Hollywood became, for the first time since I'd arrived, not a grungy, lonely, frustrating town whose tinsel could strangle you...but a magic town whose sidewalks were paved with gold; a yellow brick road leading to a giant mushroom where I could perch if I simply hung in there.
And just to show that fairy tales sometimes do have happy endings, dear readers, be advised I'm really okay now. There is a mushroom, and I'm sitting on it, and I've been writing better here in magic town than I ever did anywhere else, and I'll keep on doing it till I run out of mushroom or magic (and that is not a reference to dope, which I don't, so I ain't).
Welcome to my world.
Somehow, I Don't Think We're In Kansas, Toto Six months of my life were spent in creating a dream the shape and sound and color of which had never been seen on television. The dream was called The Starlost, and between February and September of 1973 I watched it being steadily turned into a nightmare.
The late Charles Beaumont, a scenarist of unusual talents who wrote many of the most memorable Twilight Zones, said to me when I arrived in Hollywood in 1962, "Attaining success in Hollywood is like climbing a gigantic mountain of cow flop, in order to pluck one perfect rose from the summit. And you find when you've made that hideous climb... you've lost the sense of smell."
In the hands of the inept, the untalented, the venal and the corrupt, The Starlost became a veritable Mt. Everest of cow flop and, though I climbed that mountain, somehow I never lost sight of the dream, never lost the sense of smell, and when it got so rank I could stand it no longer, I descended hand-over-hand from the northern ma.s.sif, leaving behind $93,000, the corrupters, and the eviscerated remains of my dream. I'll tell you about it.
February. Marty the agent called and said, "Go over to 20th and see Robert Kline."
"Who's Robert Kline?"
"West Coast head of taped syndicated shows. He's putting together a package of mini-series, eight or ten segments per show. He wants to do a science fiction thing. He asked for you. It'll be a co-op deal between 20th Century-Fox and the BBC. They'll shoot it in London."
London! "I'm on my way," I said, the jet-wash of my departure deafening him across the phone connection.
I met Kline in the New Administration Building of 20th, and his first words were so filled with sugar I had the feeling if I listened to him for very long I'd wind up with diabetes: "I wanted the top sf writer in the world," he said. Then he ran through an informed list of my honors in the field of science fiction. It was an impressive performance of the corporate art-form known as ego-ma.s.sage.
Then Kline advised me that what he was after was, " A sort of The Fugitive in s.p.a.ce." Visions of doing a novel-for-television in the mode of The Prisoner splatted like overripe casaba melons; I got up and started to walk.
"Hold it, hold it!" Kline said. "What did you have in mind?" I sat down again.
Then I ran through half a dozen ideas for series that would be considered primitive concepts in the literary world of sf. Kline found each of them too complex. As a final toss at the a.s.signment, I said, "Well, I've been toying with an idea for tape, rather than film; it could be done with enormous production values that would be financially impossible for a standard filmed series."
"What is it?" he said.
And here's what I told him: Five hundred years from now, the Earth is about to suffer a cataclysm that will destroy all possibility for life on the planet. Time is short. The greatest minds and the greatest philanthropists get together and cause to have constructed in orbit between the Moon and the Earth, a giant ark, one thousand miles long, comprised of hundreds of self-contained biospheres. Into each of these little worlds is placed a segment of Earth's population, its culture intact. Then the ark is sent off toward the stars, even as the Earth is destroyed, to seed the new worlds surrounding those stars with the remnants of humanity.
But one hundred years after the flight has begun, a mysterious "accident" (which would remain a mystery till the final segment of the show, four years later, it was hoped) kills the entire crew, seals the biosphere-worlds so they have no contact with one another... and the long voyage goes on with the people trapped, developing their societies without any outside influence. Five hundred years go by, and the travelers-the Starlost-forget the Earth. To them it is a myth, a vague legend, even as Atlantis is to us. They even forget they are adrift in s.p.a.ce, forget they are in an interstellar vessel. Each community thinks it is "the world" and that the world is only fifty square miles, with a metal ceiling.
Until Devon, an outcast in a society rigidly patterned after the Amish communities of times past, discovers the secret, that they are onboard a s.p.a.ce-going vessel. He learns the history of the Earth, learns of its destruction, and learns that when "the accident" happened, the astrogation gear of the ark was damaged and now the last seed of humankind is on a collision course with a star. Unless he can convince a sufficient number of biosphere-worlds to band together in a communal attempt to learn how the ark works, repair it and re-program their flight, they will soon be incinerated in the furnace of that giant sun toward which they're heading.
It was, in short, a fable of our world today.
"Fres.h.!.+ Original! New!" Kline chirruped. "There's never been an idea like it before!" I didn't have the heart to tell him the idea was first propounded in astronautical literature in the early 1920s by the great Russian pioneer Tsiolkovsky, nor that the British physicist Bernal had done a book on the subject in 1929, nor that the idea had become very common coin in the genre of science fiction through stories by Heinlein, Harrison, Pans.h.i.+n, Simak and many others. (Arthur C. Clarke's then-current bestseller, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, was the latest example of the basic idea.) Kline suggested I dash home and write up the idea, which he would then merchandise. I pointed out to him that the Writers Guild frowns on speculative writing and that if he wanted the riches of my invention, he should lay on me what we call "holding money" to enable me to write a prospectus and to enable him to blue-sky it with the BBC.
The blood drained from his face at my suggestion of advance money, and he said he had to clear it with the BBC, but that if I wrote the prospectus he would guarantee me a free trip to London. I got up and started to walk.
"Hold it, hold it!" he said, and opened a desk drawer. He pulled out a ca.s.sette recorder and extended it. "Tell you what: why don't you just tell it on a ca.s.sette, the same way you told it to me." I stopped and looked. This was a new one on me. In over twenty years as a film and television writer, I've seen some of the most circuitous, sleazy, Machiavellian dodges ever conceived by the mind of Western Man to get writers to write on the cuff. But never before, and never since, has anyone been that slippery. It should have been all the tip-off I needed.
I thought on it for a moment, rationalized that this wasn't speculative writing, that at worst it was "speculative talking," and since
So I took the ca.s.sette home, backed my spiel with the music from 2001: A s.p.a.ce Odyssey, outlined the barest bones of the series concept, and brought it back to Kline.
"Okay. Here it is," I said, "but you can't transcribe it. If you do, then it becomes spec writing and you have to pay me." I was a.s.sured he wouldn't put it on paper, and that he'd be back to me shortly. He was sure the BBC would go bananas for the idea.
No sooner was lout of his office than he had his secretary transcribe the seven-minute tape.
March. No word.
April. No word.
May. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Marty the agent called. "Kline sold the series. Go see him."
"Series?" I said, appalled. "But that idea was only planned to accommodate eight segments... a series, you say?"
"Go see him."
So I went. Kline greeted me as if I were the only human capable of deciphering the Mayan Codex, and caroled that he had sold the series not only to 48 of the NBC independent stations (what are called the O&O's, Owned & Operated stations), but that the Westinghouse outlets had bitten, and the entire Canadian Television Network, the CTV.
"Uh, excuse me," I said, in an act of temerity not usually attributed to writers in Hollywood, "how did you manage to sell this, er, series without having a contract with me, or a prospectus, or a pilot script, or a pilot film... or anything?"
"They read your outline, and they bought it on the strength of your name."
"They read it? How?"
He circ.u.mnavigated that little transgression of his promise not to set my words on paper, and began talking in grandiose terms about how I'd be the story editor, how I'd have creative control, how I'd write many scripts for the show, and what a good time I'd have in Toronto.
"Toronto?!" I said, gawking. "What the h.e.l.l happened to London? The Sir Lew Grade Studios. Soho. Buckingham Palace. Swinging London. What happened to all that?"
Mr. Kline, without bothering to inform the creator of this hot property he had been successfully hawking, had been turned down by the BBC and had managed to layoff the project with CTV, as an all-Canadian production of Glen Warren, a Toronto-based operation that was already undertaking to tape The Starlost at the CFTO Studios in Toronto. It was a.s.sumed by Mr. Kline that I would move to Toronto to story edit the series; he never bothered to ask if I wanted to move to Canada, he just a.s.sumed I would.
Mr. Kline was a real bear for a.s.suming things.
Such as: I would write his series (which was the way he now referred to it) even though a writers' strike was imminent. I advised him that if the strike hit, I would be incommunicado, but he waved away my warnings with the words, "Everything will work out." With such words, Napoleon went to Elba.
At that time I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, West and I was very pro-union, pro-strike, pro-getting long overdue contract inequities with the producers straightened out.
Just before the strike began, Kline called and said he was taking out advertis.e.m.e.nts for the series. He said he'd had artwork done for the presentations, and he needed some copy to accompany the drawings. I asked him how he could have artwork done when the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p had not yet been designed? (I was planning to create a vessel that would be absolutely feasible and scientifically correct, in conjunction with Ben Bova, then-editor of a.n.a.log.) Kline said there wasn't time for all that fooling-around, ads had to go out now!
It has always been one of the imponderables of the television industry to me, how the time is always now, when three days earlier no one had even heard of the idea.
But I gave him some words and, to my horror, saw the ad a week later: it showed a huge bullet-shaped thing I guess Kline thought was a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, being smacked by a meteorite, a great hole being torn in the skin of the bullet, revealing many levels of living s.p.a.ce within... all of them drawn the wrong direction. I covered my eyes.
Let me pause for a moment to explain why this was a scientifically-illiterate, wholly incorrect piece of art, because it was merely the first indication of how little the producers of The Starlost understood what they were doing. Herewith, a Child's Primer of Science Fiction: There is no air in s.p.a.ce. s.p.a.ce is very nearly a vacuum. That means an interstellar vessel, since it won't be landing anywhere, and doesn't need to be designed for pa.s.sage through atmosphere, can be designed any way that best follows the function. The last time anyone used the bullet design for a stars.h.i.+p was in The Green Slime, circa 1969 (a Nipponese nifty that oozes across the "Late Late Late Show" in the wee'est hours when normal folks are sleeping; this excludes systems a.n.a.lysts and computer programmers, of course).
But it indicated the lack of understanding of sf that is commonplace among television executives who, for the most part, have not read an entire book since they left high school.
Look: if you turn on your set and see a pair of white swinging doors suddenly slammed open by a gurney pushed by two white-smocked interns, you know that within moments Trapper John, M. D. (or Ben Casey, or Dr. Kildare, or Marcus Welby) will be jamming a tube down somebody's trachea; if you see a snake-eyed dude in a black Stetson lying-out on a b.u.t.te, aiming a Sharps.52 caliber buffalo rifle, you know that within moments the Wells Fargo stage is gonna come a-thunderin' down that dusty trail; if Dan Tana (or Mannix, or Jim Rockford, or Ironside) comes into his inner office and there's a silky lady lounging in the chair across from his desk, showing a lot of leg, you know that by the end of Act One someone is going to try ventilating his (or Magnum's) hide. It's all by rote, all templates, all stolen from what went before by a generation of writers and producers whose only referents are what they grew up with watching television; it's all cliche, all predictable.
And while I make no brief for the reams and volumes of low-grade, moronic Star Wars imitation s.p.a.ce opera hackwork that has turned this into the worst period in the history of sf, the genre is not predictable. Or at least it shouldn't be.
(Though s.h.i.+t like Battlestar Ponderosa and Universal's Buck Rogers seem to a.s.sure us that the steamroller mediocrity of tv can even trivialize sf, despite the built-in deterrents.) A science fiction story has to have interior logic. It has to be consistent, even within the boundaries of its own extrapolative horizons. That's irreducible in the parameters of what a sf story or teleplay must do, in order to get the reader or viewer to go along with it, without feeling conned or duped or lied to. Rigorous standards of plotting must be employed to win that willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience; it allows them to accept a fantastic premise.
How many sf movies have you seen-Outland, Message From s.p.a.ce, Silent Running are perfect awful examples-during which you recognized soph.o.m.oric inaccuracies that made you groan and feel cheated? Errors that first-year science students would not make: sound in a vacuum, people walking around on alien planets without filtration masks, clones that spring fully grown from fingernail parings, robots that act like midgets in metal suits.
Break that logical chain, dumb it up, accept the insulting myth that no one knows or cares if the special effects are spectacular enough, and the whole thing falls apart like Watergate testimony.
But the ad was only an early storm warning of what troubles were yet to befall me. The strike was called, and then began weeks of a kind of ghastly hara.s.sment I'd always thought was reserved for overblown melodramas about the Evils of Hollywood. Phone calls at all hours, demanding I write the "bible" for the series. (A "bible" is industry shorthand for the precis of what the show will do, who the characters are, what directions storylines should take. In short, the blueprint from which individual segments are written. Without a bible, only the creator knows what the series is about.) Kline had no bible. He had nothing, at this point, but that seven-minute tape. With which item, plus my name and the name of Doug Trumbull-who, at that time had done the special effects for 2001 and had directed Silent Running-he'd been signed on as Executive Producer-Kline had-sans a contract with me!-sold this pipe dream to everyone in the Western World.
But I wouldn't write the bible. I was on strike. Then began the threats. Followed by the intimidation, the bribes, the promises that they'd go forward with the idea without me, the veiled hints of scab writers who'd be hired to write their own version of the series... everything short of actually kidnapping me. Through these weeks-when even flights out of Los Angeles to secluded hideaways in the Michigan wilds and the northern California peninsula failed to deter the phone calls-I refused to write. It didn't matter that the series might not get on the air, it didn't matter that I'd lose a potload of money, the Guild was on strike in a n.o.ble cause and, besides, I didn't much trust Mr. Kline and the anonymous voices that spoke to me in the wee hours of the night. And, contrary to popular belief, many television writers are men and women of ethic: they can be rented, but they can't be bought.
I remember seeing a film of Clifford Odets's The Big Knife when I was a young writer living in New York and l.u.s.ting after fame in Hollywood. I remember seeing the unscrupulous Steiger and his minions applying pressure to a cracking Palance, to get him to sign a contract, and I remember smiling at the danger-filled melodramatics. During that period of preproduction on The Starlost, I ceased smiling.
The threats ranged from breaking my typing fingers to insuring I'd never work in the Industry again. The bribes ranged from $13,000 to be placed in an unnumbered Swiss bank account to this: One afternoon before the strike, I'd been in Kline's office. I'd been leafing through the Players' Directory, the trade publication that lists all actors and actresses, with photos. I'd commented idly that I found the person of one pictured young starlet quite appealing. Actually, what I'd said was that I'd sell my soul to get it on with her.
Now, weeks later, during my holdout and Kline's attempts to get me to scab, I was puttering about my house, when the doorbell rang. I went to the door, opened it, and there stood the girl of my wanton daydreams. Bathed in sunlight, a palpable nimbus haloing that gorgeous face. I stood openmouthed, unable even to invite her in.
"I was in the neighborhood," she said, entering the house with no a.s.sistance from me, "and I've heard so much about you, I decided just to come and say h.e.l.lo."
She said h.e.l.lo. I said something unintelligible. (I have the same reaction when standing in front of Pica.s.so's Guernica. Otherworldly beauty has a way of turning my brains to prune-whip yogurt.) But it took only a few minutes of conversation to ascertain that yes, she knew Mr. Kline and, yes, she knew about the series, and...
I wish I could tell you I used her brutally and sent her back to where I a.s.sumed she had come from, but feminism has taken its toll and I merely asked her to split.
She split.
I couldn't watch any tv that night. My eyes were too swollen from crying.
And the cajoling went on. Kline, of course, knew nothing about the girl, had never had anything to do with sending her over, would be affronted if anyone even suggested he had tried such a loathesome, demeaning trick. h.e.l.l, I'd be the last one to suggest it. Or maybe second from the last.
But howzabout the scab writer threat? Well...
At one point, representatives of Mr. Kline did bring in a scab. A non-union writer to whom they imparted a series of outright lies so he'd believe he was saving my bacon. When they approached well-known sf writer Robert Silverberg to write the bible, Bob asked them point-blank, "Why isn't Harlan writing it?" They fumfuh'ed and said, well, er, uh, he's on strike. Bob said, "Would he want me to write this?" They knew he'd call me, and they told him no, I'd be angry. So he pa.s.sed up some thousands of dollars, and they went elsewhere. And this being the kind of world it is, they found a taker.
I found out about the end-run, located the writer in a West LA hotel where they'd secreted him, writing madly through a weekend, and I convinced him he shouldn't turn in the scab bible. To put the period to the final argument that Kline & Co. were not being honest, I called Kline from that hotel room while the other writer listened in on the bathroom extension phone. I asked Kline point-blank if other writers had been brought in to scab. He said no; he a.s.sured me they were helplessly waiting out the strike till I could bring the purity of my original vision to the project. I thanked him, hung up, and looked at the other writer who had just spent 72 hours beating his brains out writing a scab bible. "I rest my case."
"Let's go to the Writers Guild," he said.
It drove Kline bananas. Everywhichway he turned, I was there, confounding his shabby attempts at circ.u.mventing an honest strike.
I'll skip a little now. The details were ugly, but grow tedious in the re-telling. It went on at hideous length, for weeks. Finally, Glen Warren in Toronto, at Kline's urging, managed to get the Canadian writers guild, ACTRA, to accept that The Starlost was a wholly Canadian-produced series. They agreed that was the case, after much pressure was applied in ways I'm not legally permitted to explicate, and I was finally convinced I should go to work.
That was my next mistake.
They had been circulating copies of the scab bible with all of its erroneous material, and had even given names to the characters. When I finally produced the authentic bible, for which they'd been slavering so long, it confused everyone. They'd already begun building sets and fas.h.i.+oning materiel that had nothing to do with the show.
I was brought up to Toronto, to work with writers, and because the producing ent.i.ty would get government subsidies if the show was clearly acceptable in terms of "Canadian content" (meaning the vast majority of writers, actors, directors and production staff had to be Canadian), I was ordered to a.s.sign script duties to Canadian tv writers.
I sat in the Four Seasons Motel in Toronto in company with a man named Bill Davidson, who had been hired as the Producer even though he knew nothing about science fiction and seemed thoroughly confused by the bible, and interviewed dozens of writers from 9 AM till 7 PM.
It is my feeling that one of the prime reasons for the artistic (and, it would seem, ratings) failure of The Starlost was the quality of the scripts. But it isn't as simple a matter as saying the Canadians aren't good writers, which is the cop-out Glen Warren and Kline used. Quite the opposite is true. The Canadian writers I met were bright, talented, and anxious as h.e.l.l to write good shows.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of Canadian tv, which is vastly different from American tv, they had virtually no experience writing episodic drama as we know it. ("Train them," Kline told me. "Train a cadre of writers?" I said, stunned. "Sure," said Kline, who knew nothing about writing, "it isn't hard." No, not if I wanted to make it my life's work.) And, for some peculiar reason, with only two exceptions I can think of, there are no Canadian sf writers.
But they were willing to work their hearts out to do good scripts. Sadly, they didn't have the kind of freaky minds it takes to plot sf stories with originality and logic. There were the usual number of talking plant stories, giant ant stories, s.p.a.ce pirate stories, westerns transplanted to alien environments, the Adam-&-Eve story, the after-the-Bomb story... the usual cliches people who haven't been trained to think in fantasy terms conceive of as fresh and new.
Somehow, between Ben Bova and myself-Ben having been hired after I made it abundantly clear that I needed a specialist to work out the science properly-we came up with ten script ideas, and a.s.signed them. We knew there would be ma.s.sive rewrite problems, but I was willing to work with the writers, because they were energetic and anxious to learn. Unfortunately, such was not the case with Davidson and the moneymen from 20th, NBC, Glen Warren and the CTV, who were revamping and altering arrangements daily, in a sensational imitation of The Mad Caucus Race from Alice in Wonderland.
I told the Powers in charge that I would need a good a.s.sistant story editor who could do rewrites, because I was not about to spend the rest of my natural life in a motel in Toronto, rewriting other people's words. They began to scream. One gentleman came up to the room and banged his fist on the desk while I was packing to split, having received word a few hours earlier that my mother was very ill in Florida. He told me I was going to stay there in that room till the first drafts of the ten scripts came in. He told me that I was going to write the pilot script in that room and not leave till it was finished. He told me I could go home but would be back on such-and-such a date. He told me that was my schedule.
I told him if he didn't get the h.e.l.l out of my room I was going to clean his clock for him.
Then he went away, still screaming; Ben Bova returned to New York;; I went to see my mother, established that she was somehow going to pull through, returned to Los Angeles; and sat down to finish writing the pilot script.
This was June already. Or was it July. Things blur. In any case, it was only weeks away from airdate debut, and they didn't even have all the princ.i.p.als cast. Not to mention the special effects Trumbull had promised, which weren't working out. The production staff under the confused direction of Davidson was doing a dandy impression of a Balinese Fire & Boat Drill; Kline was still madly das.h.i.+ng about selling something that didn't exist to people who apparently didn't care what they were buying; and I was banging my brains out writing "Phoenix Without Ashes," the opening segment that was to limn the direction of the single most expensive production ever attempted in Canada.
I was also brought up on charges by the Writers Guild for writing during the strike.
I called Marty the agent and threatened him with disembowelment if he ever again called me to say, "Go see Bob Kline." In my personal lexicon, the word "kline" could be found along with "eichmann," "dog catcher," "cancer" and "rerun."
But I kept writing. I finished the script and got it off to Canada with only one interruption of note: The name Norman Klenman had been tossed at me frequently in Toronto by the CTV representative and Davidson and, of course, by Kline and his minions. Klenman, I was told, was the answer to my script problems. He was a Canadian writer who had fled to the States for the larger money, and since he was actually a Canadian citizen who was familiar with writing American series tv, he would be acceptable to the tv board in Ottawa under the terms of "Canadian content" and yet would be a top-notch potential for scripts that need not be heavily rewritten. I was too dazed in Toronto to think about Klenman.
But as I sat there in Los Angeles writing my script, I received a call from Mr. Klenman, who was at that moment in Vancouver. "Mr. Ellison," he said, politely enough, "this is Norman Klenman. Bill Davidson wanted me to call you about The Starlost. I've read your bible and, frankly, I find it very difficult and confusing... I don't understand science fiction... but if you want to train me, and pay me the top-of-the-show money the Guild just struck for, I'll be glad to take a crack at a script for you." I thanked him and said I'd get back to him when I'd saved my protagonist from peril at the end of act four.
When I walked off the show, the man they hired not only as story editor to replace me, but to rewrite my script, as well, was Norman Klenman who "don't understand science fiction."
My walkout on my brain child, and all that pretty fame and prettier money was well in the wind by the time of Klenman's call, but I was still intending to write the scripts I'd contracted for, when the following incidents happened, and I knew it was all destined for the ashcan.
I was in Dallas. Guest of honor at a convention where I was trying to summon up the gall to say The Starlost would" be a dynamite series. I was paged in the lobby. Phone call from Toronto. It was Bill Davidson. The conversation describes better than ten thousand more words what was wrong with the series: "Major problems, Harlan," Davidson said. Panic lived in his voice.
"Okay, tell me what's the matter," I said.
"We can't shoot a 50-mile-in-diameter biosphere on the s.h.i.+p."
"Why?"