2022 - 08/2022 Meeting

Page Created: 02/24/22. Last Updated: 09/01/22.

ARTHUR SELLERS

ONLINE

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/arthur.sellers.16

Internet Movie Data Base: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0783334/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Harvesters-Arthur-Sellers/dp/B09M554WJW

Articles:

Meet the Raisins Writer Arthur Sellers Honored by Writers' Guild (variety.com):

https://variety.com/2015/film/news/arthur-sellers-writers-guild-meet-the-raisins-1201662114/

SELECTED TITLES

Novels:

.....Light Harvesters

Genre Television Series Scriptwriter:

.....Earth 2

.....Max Headroom

.....She-Wolf of London

.....Space Precinct

.....The Journey of Allen Strange

Movies (Co-Writer)

.....Modern Problems

Animated Works of Interest

.....Beast Wars: Transformers

.....Meet the Raisins!

Meeting Date: August 13, 2022.

Meeting Site: Zoom Video Conference.

Attendance: 34.

Meeting Program: Talk, Q & A with SF Author / Television Scriptwriter.

Notes:

Arthur Sellers was among the 11 attendees of the post-meeting Virtual Diner Run.

Newsletter Account:

Notes for Newsletter Account:

Will Artificial Intelligences have an Existential Crisis?

Like movie Ex-Machina.

HOLLYWOOD YEARS

Met Laraine Newman doing improv. They became a couple. He came to NYC with her for Saturday Night Live. He was an uncredited writer for the first season.

When SNL became a smash, anyone connected with the show was hot, so he moved to LA and was hired as a writer for the Tony Orlando & Dawn variety show. He became known as The Edgy Guy.

Other non-genre series he wrote for included Mary Hartman and The Richard Pryor Show.

THE RICHARD PRYOR SHOW - The series suffered from its time slot. Pryor was edgy, but 8:00 PM had to be family friendly. He wrote the unaired (but widely viewed through news / entertainment shows) opening segment with a nude Richard Pryor discussing how he had to sell out and give up his private parts get this series. When Arthur pitched the idea in the writers' room there was dead silence from the other writers, but Pryor fell off his chair laughing.

WRITERS REVENGE ON THE SHOW THAT WILL NOT BE NAMED - Arthur did name it, but I will not expose him to trouble by posting it publicly. The superstar of a show he was working on ranted about how writers sucked and trashing script writers in general and the writers of the show in particular. The star of the series became confused when all the best lines started to go to the show's guest stars. The star went to series producer to ask what was going on. The producer began, "Remember when you publicly humiliated your writing staff. Well ..." A truce was brokered and the show went on.

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMANN - Louise Lasser left the show, so they had to scramble to turn it into FERNWOOD TONIGHT. He created the show's bible.

STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION - He became friends with David Gerrold who at one point was supposed to be one of the main hotshots with the in-development Star Trek, the Next Generation series. Then there was a change and Gerrold was out and Sellers' script was put in the Deads Scripts bin.

EARTH 2 - There were four executives involved with EARTH 2 and they all had different ideas for the series. The show did film his script, Redemption.

MAX HEADROOM - The British show runners wanted to continue to do variations of the series Pilot, with a corporate villain of the week. The American script writers wanted to broaden the type of stories they would do. Another source of tension was that the Brits were not used to long season American television.

SPACE PRECINCT - Worked at Pinewood Studios. Gerry Anderson know that he needed Americans to help navigate seasons which were longer than the standard U.K. length.

MODERN PROBLEMS - Showed pictures of special bus they created to make the writers more productive.

He had praise for at least some of the Standards & Practices people. They took the writers to lunch and said, "No, you can't do it that way. But if you change it to this, we can let it slide." On the other hand, he did a sketch on during the CB Radio craze and used perfectly innocent CB terms, but the S & P people were convinced he was trying to put one over on them.

There are tons of dead scripts in Hollywood. An executive orders the script, then changes jobs or is canned. The new boss is not interested in producing the script but doesn't dare release it due to the fear that someone else may produce it and have a hit.

If you are working, Hollywood wants you. If you are out of work, it wants nothing to do with you.

LIGHT HARVESTERS

Hollywood and Arthur got tired of each other.

How can we get through our problem of what happens Artificial Intelligence Awakens and we must deal with the Other Mind?

AI's will be our superiors. Brains operate at the speed of neurons. Computers operate at the speed of electrons.

We are getting close to perfecting quantum computers.

Wanted to write a book for himself without having to get it past a committee, so he decided to self-publish.

Mass extinctions, climate change, and other disasters have deeply scarred the world, rendering most of it uninhabitable.

Three versions of humanity exist in his world: 1) those who live with their consciousness uploaded into synthetic bodies, 2) those who leave their bodies behind and exist solely as software, and 3) those who still maintain a corporeal existence but spend as much time as possible in a virtual reality.

It's always about the characters.

Star Trek always focused on the humanity of the characters, not the spaceship.

Sequel is in-progress.

Never lie to your audience.

We are living through the Sixth Mass Extinction.

Things will get really bad and 30 - 70 % of humanity will perish.

There will be a new dark ages, but if things go well we will ride it out and come out of it in 6,000 to 8,000 years.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AIs will soon become infinitely smart than humanity. The human brain operates at the speed of neurons. AIs will function at the speed of electricity.

Evolution does not necessarily limit itself to biology.

Mankind and its tools co-evolved.

Believes that AIs will be compassionate but that they will have other issues than those faced by biological organisms.