[JimmyDimples]

Say, had anyone had been concerned about backlash from corporations if your work ever made it to the commercial sponsorship level? 

I was thinking about it while watching The Twilight Zone, and reading about the episode "Judgment Night," where a navy crewman on a ship asked for a pot of tea.  A sponsor, which sold instant coffee, protested, demanding that the tea be stricken from the story.  Creator Rod Serling and the sponsor went back and forth over this a short while, and finally, they just had them bring in a tray with a service, but didn't say what was being served.

Rod later quipped that it was a good thing the coffee sponsor didn't stop to think that one could drink water, or the story might have happened on land instead.  :-

[AlexG]

Say, had anyone had been concerned about backlash from corporations if your work ever made it to the commercial sponsorship level? 

I was thinking about it while watching The Twilight Zone, and reading about the episode "Judgment Night," where a navy crewman on a ship asked for a pot of tea.  A sponsor, which sold instant coffee, protested, demanding that the tea be stricken from the story.  Creator Rod Serling and the sponsor went back and forth over this a short while, and finally, they just had them bring in a tray with a service, but didn't say what was being served.

Rod later quipped that it was a good thing the coffee sponsor didn't stop to think that one could drink water, or the story might have happened on land instead.  :-

Well, assuming the natural course of going from a novel to television or a movie, of course there's going to be "changes" in the storyline – there always is.  Remember, Sterling was specifically writing stories for television, rather then the process of being a published author having one of his works turned into a visual format.  Thus he had to please his corporate masters.

If you ever wondered why it took so long for some of Robert Heinlein works to reach the screen, you'd have to read "Grumbles from the Grave", his posthumous autobiography to understand why during his lifetime he refused the numerous offers he received to have them made into movies.

Working with Hollywood idiots, once was enough – Destination Moon.  Not to mention that he had sue the producers of Outer Limits for plagiarism about an episode that was a outright rip-off of The Puppet Masters.

Lastly, I seriously doubt that as an author a corporation is going to care if you insert a real world product into your story – i.e. Coke Cola – being casually drunk by one of the characters.  However, they might get "concerned" if that story, which becomes a best seller, has Coke Cola being the vector for an outbreak of biological terrorism.  In that case, you might want to "make up" a product that does not really exist in the real world.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

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