The Ego Nickel

lareviewofbooks:

Closing our tribute week to Ray Bradbury,  LARB contributor Jeffrey Kindley recalls:

“Back in 1981 Ray Bradbury was hired by NBC to adapt his story “I Sing the Body Electric” as a TV special to be called “The Electric Grandmother.”  The network rejected the script he submitted, and he was angry.  NBC then hired me to write the script.  I loved the story and I loved Ray Bradbury; I was also keenly aware of the effrontery of trying to produce a “better” dramatization than the one submitted by the story’s own creator.  When my script was accepted for production I did a very stupid thing, something only a very inexperienced and ill-advised member of the Writers Guild would do: I requested an arbitration to get full Written By credit.  I lost the arbitration, quite fairly, and he and I shared the credit.  “The Electric Grandmother” starred the luminous Maureen Stapleton and won a Peabody.  Did Bradbury hate me, as he had every right to do?  Nope.  He was a generous, forgiving man.  He said he loved it, and that meant the world to me.”