So the guy makes a big stink and demands that if he is going to be replaced the bank has to buy out his contract.

The bank offers him 30 million dollars to take a hike.

“That isn’t good enough,” the guy says. Not only does he want his money but since he is being let go a lot of his staff will also lose their jobs. So he demands another 12 million so they all enjoy a soft landing.

The bank says “ok” and pays out the money.

How do you think the Obama Administration would have reacted? What do you think the coverage of this event would have been in the mainstream media? I think there would have been all sorts of outrage in the press and on TV. I also think every leftie from President Obama to Nancy Pelosi to David Axelrod would be screaming about getting our money back from these thieves.

So why is nobody screaming about the huge failure-bonus being paid with our money to Conan O‘Brien? Because that is exactly what the money NBC paid to O’Brien is; a huge golden parachute for failing on The Tonight Show. More importantly, it’s money from the people of the United States. I wish I had a blackboard so I could go a little Glenn Beck on you, but follow me for a minute.

NBC, National Barack Communications, and its other so-called news outlets like MSNBC, are a part of General Electric. General Electric is run by Obama loyalist and advisor Jeffrey Immelt, who until recently allowed GE to continue to do business with Iran through middlemen, as documented by Bill O’Reilly. General Electric, as part of the economic bailout, received billions in loan guarantees for its GE Capital division. So why no Obama outrage over a company that took our money and paid out huge dough to an under-performer? Why no Tim Geithner or Larry Summers demanding that salaries at GE and its subsidiaries be kept to $500,000?

Imagine if Conan had a real job, perhaps at a bank or one of those evil health insurance companies the current administration loves to demonize, and he dropped the business by half when he took over. Would the President and his friends be alright with him walking away with a huge payout? Why is it cool to honor Mr. O’Brien’s contract but not the contracts of hundreds of bankers and other Wall Street employees who at one time actually made money for their employers?

My theory is that like AIG and GM, Conan was too big to fail!

Side Note: Why is it that Mr. Obama wants to make sure there are no banks that are too big to fail but doesn’t feel the same about car companies? Could it be that car companies have union employees whose bosses funnel hundreds of millions from their members’ dues to the Democrat Party?

For those of you here at Big Hollywood who think you are playing a whole new game in taking on the Tinseltown establishment in force, I have news for you. Scribe Extraordinaire and futurist iconoclast Harlan Ellison beat you all to the punch by about forty-five years. And if you don’t know who Harlan Ellison is, shame on you! He is a living legend with more Hugos and Nebulas than I care to count, as well as four WGA Awards and an Emmy nod. And all that’s just for starters.

Much of Harlan’s writing defies description or genre. If I had to describe it, I would say that Harlan paints with words like Picasso and Salvador Dali painted with canvas. Even that description is severely lacking. Perhaps Dali on acid would be more apropos. Harlan’s writing does have a peyote-flavored tinge to it than can induce a trippy narcosis in readers, yet Harlan has never touched a drug in his life. Some studio execs, producers and others in the screen trade who have meddled with or lifted Harlan’s work in the past might find that news surprising, given Harlan’s reactions to those mortal offenses resembled a tiger on methamphetamine.

In point of fact, there are two kinds of Harlan Ellison people in Hollywood, and both are foaming-at-the-mouth types. There are those in the studio system who despise Harlan with every atom of their being, and those who would take a firing squad for him. I have a blindfold on standby just in case. Have for about thirty years now. But let us discuss some of the other foaming-at-the-mouth types, why that is, and why he is my Hollywood hero and role model as a writer in that regard.

As noted in the preamble, Harlan does not care who he offends for the sake of pure art. Never has. How about we start at the top with Gene Roddenberry on the set of Star Trek in 1967? Though City on the Edge of Forever won Harlan Hugo and WGA Awards and is considered by many Trekkies to be the finest episode written for that show, Harlan begged to differ at the time. See, Harlan’s original script contained various moral ambiguities (including a drug-addled Enterprise crewman) that countered producer Roddenberry’s less dark and dystopian vision of the Star Trek future.

So Roddenberry rewrote it. Harlan protested vehemently, to the point of trying to replace his own name on the script with that of his oft-used contemptuous pseudonym Cordwainer Bird, which literally translates to “He who makes shoes for birds.” Roddenberry refused to let Harlan make the change, and added insult to injury in later years by proclaiming he had saved the script.

Ten years later, while working as creative consultant and staff writer on the darkly brilliant but highly underrated Twilight Zone reboot in the mid-1980s, Harlan once again came to artistic blows with the show’s producers over his proposed episode titled ‘Nackles,’ a story of good and evil Santas having at it on a Christmas Eve most dark and dystopian. Seeing a trend here? Harlan refused to budge, so the studios canceled ‘Nackles at the last minute, fearing it was too dark for the ‘fragile’ American market. Imagine that. A dark and dystopian Twilight Zone episode. Who’d a-thunk it?

Had the studio forced a rewrite not to Harlan’s liking, Mr. Bird’s name would no doubt be on the credits. Alas, the evil St. Nick was not to be.  And we are all the lesser for it, I can assure you. I guess Bad Santa is as far as the studios will go. Harlan also sued Jim Cameron over the original Terminator film as being derivative of his two scripted Outer Limits TOS episodes Soldier and Demon With a Glass Hand, and won. A settlement was reached, and Harlan is now acknowledged in the film’s credits. Harlan also sued and won over City on the Edge of Forever residuals, and recently settled with Paramount Pictures on the matter.

For me, the toppings on the Harlan Ellison Hollywood Rebel cake are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, Harlan’s two collections of scathing essays on television’s moral and intellectual vacuity, previously published in the Los Angeles Free Press in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even today they are enthralling reads, and are required reading in many college media classrooms. Example. Harlan thought the concept of Hogan’s Heroes, i.e. a comedy set in a German POW camp, was offensive in the extreme given the real-life brutality in those settings. In response, Harlan asked the pressing question, “What next for a studio sitcom? Bernie Goes To Auschwitz?”

Love him or hate him, Harlan Ellison cannot and will not be denied. Yet Harlan’s approach to screenwriting and storytelling as a pure art form is as relevant to Hollywood today as it was forty years ago. I can guaran-damn-tee you, even if Harlan thinks Al Gore doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in his alarmism on Global Warming, God have mercy on the poor studio bastard who would try to compel Harlan to inject An Inconvenient Truth into his scripts. I’m thinking a response less Academy Awards and more tiger on meth.

And that is what is truly disappointing to me in Hollywood today: that so many great studio writers are so willing to pervert their art and God-given storytelling talent just to keep working a show. Or worse, to corrupt it willingly for the sake of propaganda. I understand their real world concerns, but I wish at least one WGA writer would toss up a Cordwainer Bird-like pseudonym to let us all know there’s at least one ghost in Jeffrey Immelt’s Big NBC Green Machine. At the very least, lay down some wood here in the comments section. I’m 99.9% sure Harlan would. Hollywood could use a few good rebels right now. Rebels that may sell their work to make a living, but draw the line at prostitution.

And Harlan, if I’m wrong on any of this, please feel free to give me Hell. Even if you do, that get-out-of-a-firing-squad-free card will always be good with me. I would also be greatly interested in hearing from any other creative film artists tossed into the political mud pits at NBC and elsewhere who could not be more offended if they were Harlan Ellison. Your secrets are safe with us. Trust me.

Be a Hollywood Rebel! Let ‘er rip! Fight The Power! Do it for Harlan