Harlan Ellison's Watching (27 page)

As a writer who works in the medium of fantasy, both in print and in film, what
Star Wars
and its success portends is frightening to me. Already, Universal Studios is planning a Buck Rogers movie. Already, a major network that has bought one of my stories for a TV film and series, has asked me to alter realistic situations in a future society where absolute realism is the ground, to include "
Star Wars
kind of violence . . . you know . . . laser guns and all that."

The dispensers of mass information have once again discovered science fiction. They do it every seven or eight years. The last time was with
2001
. The only trouble is, they've discovered 1939 science fiction. Mindless shoot-'em-up and hardware. Paeans of praise to the grommet and spanner. And that means more of the same, just the way it happened in the wake of
2001
. It means that thought-provoking sf, the kind written by Gene Wolfe and Kate Wilhelm and James Tiptree, Jr. and Michael Moorcock, has no value. It means that an entire genre of fiction for our time, material that informs and educates
and entertains
, will be bypassed in favor of more cops&robbers in outer space, more cowboys&indians on Tatooine.

Goodbye science fiction, hello sci-fi. That's pronounced
skiffy
.

If you like peanuts, you'll
love
skiffy.

In the past month I have received calls from half a dozen film and television producers who are planning "sci-fi" projects. I won't even report on the call I received about a new Disney project-in-discussion called
Star Skirmishes
.

I'll only tell you about the producer who called to ask me if I wanted to do a space war sorta film, and all he could say was, "This is gonna be a winner. We've got really terrific state of the art."

I didn't know what that meant. So I asked him.

He didn't understand why
I
didn't understand, but he started saying they had Magicam and new miniaturization techniques, and computer graphics, and ChromaKey, and videotape crossovers, and "all the very latest state of the art." I finally got hip. He was talking about special effects, pure and simple. No story, no terrific idea for a film that would illuminate the human condition, not even a plot. He
had
no plot. That's why he was calling me.

To write something stupid around his stupid animation and special effects nonsense.

And nomenclature had struck again. Now they were calling it "state of the art." And I submit that when filmmakers begin thinking that pyrotechnics can replace stories about people, then the ambience of the toilet has set in.

So here we sit. Ben Bova and fantasy film director/animator Jim Danforth and cranky John Simon, and good old me; all alone grumbling about the most wonderful film ever made. Running our main squeeze of sour grapes over the heads of a multimillion person audience that goes back again and again to sit in awe as the Empire dreadnought Death Star roars overhead, making its big boom of passage through airless space. Specters at the Banquet. Loveless, lightless nuisances saying the Emperor has pimples on his bare butt.

And all I can think about, in childlike wonder, is that amazing scene in the 1939 version of
The Thief of Bagdad
where Ahbhu, the little thief, uncorks the bottle and lets out the seventy-foot-tall genie. And I ask myself: If
Star Wars
is so goddamn good, howzacome all I can think about is a dumb fantasy made almost forty years ago, that taught me so much about fighting to stay free and individualism and love and the value of friendship and honor . . . ?

And why do I remember that moment of characterization when the evil vizier, Jaffar, as evil as Darth Vader any day, shows how vulnerable his love for the Caliph's daughter has made him? Was that movie less "entertaining" because the evil villain had a touch of identifiable humanity?

Yeah, I sit and think all that; and in my adolescent heart of hearts I know that Luke Skywalker is a nerd, Darth Vader sucks runny eggs, and I'm available for light saber duels any Wednesday between the hours of D2 and 3PO.

Los Angeles
/ August 1977;
Gallery
/ March 1978

And Television begat Roddenberry, and Roddenberry begat
Star Trek
, and
Star Trek
begat Trekkies, and Trekkies begat Clamor, and Clamor begat a
Star Trek
animated cartoon, and the Cartoon begat More Clamor, and More Clamor begat Trek Conventions, and Trek Conventions begat Even More Clamor, and Even More Clamor begat T
^*
H
^*
E M
^*
Y
^*
T
^*
H, and T
^*
H
^*
E M
^*
Y
^*
T
^*
H begat
Star Trek—The Motion Picture
, and the behemoth labored mightily and begat . . . a mouse.

Fired by a decade of devoted, dedicated, often fanatical hue and cry, Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry have given fans of the long-syndicated series precisely and exactly what they have been asking for.

And therein lies an awesome tragedy.

It is not that
Star Trek—The Motion Picture
is a bad film; it isn't. Clearly, it is also not a good film. The saddening reality is simply that it is a dull film: an often boring film, a stultifyingly predictable film, a tragically
average
film. With a two-million-dollar production pricetag one could do no other than applaud it. Bearing a freightload cost of something in excess of forty-four million dollars (not counting how many millions will be spent on prints and sweep advertising) and the unbounded expectations held for it, the timid creation that crawled across premiere movie screens on December 7th, 1979—somehow appropriately on the thirty-eighth anniversary of another great tragedy—deserves little more than regrets and a weary shake of the head.

Nothing more need be said to buttress that view than to point out that
Star Trek—TMP
bears a MPAA censorship code rating of G. General audiences, all ages admitted. The same code can be found on
Mary Poppins, Bambi
and
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
. Our motto: We Take No Chances.

Why should this have come to pass? Certainly no other film in the history of cinema has been looked forward to with such willing suspension of critical reservations. Few films receive the joyous elevation, prerelease, to the status of
event
. No, strike that: to the status of Second Coming. Even those of us who had their reservations about the series were predisposed to
like
this film, to greet it with positive attitude, to review it evenhandedly, faithfully, as allies. So: take risks, be bold!

Yet after the Hollywood press screening I attended last night at the Motion Picture Academy's theater, I saw disappointment that slopped well over into animosity on the part of those who could only benefit from the film doing well. One young person was heard to say, "I waited ten years for
this?
" And on the late newscasts, when those who had seen the film were interviewed coming out of the theaters around Los Angeles, a most woebegone ambience could be perceived. These same sorts of filmgoers who had jumped up and down after
Star Wars
, who were confronted by a television camera on the sidewalk and who raved about Lucas's movie, who bounced off the walls exalting the first major sf flick of the decade, these same sorts of people stood quietly and said, "It's a swell film, very good." They were obviously rationalizing their disappointment. No insane delirium, no wild enthusiasm, just a subdued kind of polite, quiet, let's-not-do-the-movie-any-harm comment. It was obvious this was not the dream they'd expected.

But that's just the point, and cuts directly to the heart of the tragedy. It
is
what they expected! They got no better and no worse than what they deserved. For years the Trekkies have exerted an almost vampiric control over Roddenberry and the spirit of
Star Trek
. The benefits devolved from their support, that kept the idea alive; but the drawbacks now reveal themselves in all their invidious potency; because in Paramount's and Roddenberry's fealty to "maintaining the essence of the television series that fans adored," they have played it too safe.

Star Trek—TMP
is nothing more than a gussied-up two-hour television segment.

It thereby retains most of the crippling flaws attendant on
all
television episodic series: the shallow, unchanging characterizations; the need to hammer home points already made; the banal dialogue; the illogical and sophomoric "messages"; the posturing of second-rate actors; the slavish subjugation of plot and humanity to special effects.

They were afraid of losing that quality of familiarity generated by the TV series . . . and the tragedy is that they retained in fullest measure that which they should have dispensed with. A major film should be more than a predictable television episode; and
no
amount of special effects can dim that failure. There is simply no growth between the final segment of
Star Trek
and this hyperthyroid motion picture.

The fans have had their way and Paramount may have to pay the terrible price. But one cannot really pillory the fans. It is no crime, however destructive, to
care
deeply. The blame for this film's mediocrity must be heavily laid on the shoulders of Gene Roddenberry and the imitative tiny minds of the Paramount hierarchy. The latter probably more than the former: one cannot condemn Roddenberry too much because this was his chance to revive the dream. But the studio heads, confronted with the opportunity to capitalize—without substantial risk—on the goodwill and affection of a ready audience, to bring forth a production that would have expanded and enriched the original
Star Trek
concept, to go where no studio has gone before, chose to play the game of close-to-the-vest, to mimic
Star Wars
and all its subsequent clone-children.

But audiences have now seen
Close Encounters
and
Buck Rogers
and
Battlestar Ponderosa
and
Alien
and
Starcrash
and even lesser efforts. They are reaching their surface tension with films that offer nothing more than cunningly-cobbled starship models zooming through space.
That
cheap thrill is already a dead issue; and no matter how much they delude themselves that "latest state of the art" will bring in repeat business, audiences have come more and more to hunger for human emotion, involvement and identification with the problems of interesting people, not square-jawed cowboys in stretch pants and plastic booties.

Yes, there is more machinery in this film per inch of footage than one could find in a True Value hardware commercial, but even the models look cheesy, lacking both the gritty naturalism of
Alien's Nostromo
or the boggling cyclopean presence of
Close Encounters
' mother ship. And when we are confronted by a close shot on the principals, standing near a bulkhead that is intended to be stainless steel, when it is obviously a painted flat, all verisimilitude vanishes for the viewer.

Further, the direction in these scenes of great ships in space is slovenly. The point of view is frequently absent; we are left floating in a cinematic deep that confuses the eye and gives the attentive viewer no sense of correct spatial relationships. One would expect at least professional expertise in such a crucial area when a film has opted for machines over humans.

But Robert Wise, at least in this venture, has seemingly turned a deaf ear to the morphology of filming science fiction. It is bewildering. Wise learned at the knee of Val Lewton, and his credentials prior to this film are unassailable:
Curse of the Cat People
, the 1945 Lugosi
Body Snatcher, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Want to Live, West Side Story
, the brilliant adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel in
The Haunting, The Sand Pebbles, The Andromeda Strain—
not to mention that he was an editor on three undeniable classics,
Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons
and
All That Money Can Buy
.

Perhaps having directed
The Sound of Music
has caught up with him, belatedly. Certainly nothing in the Wise canon but that saccharine perennial casts an ominous shadow that solidifies in his otiose handling of
Star Trek—TMP
.

One has the niggling suspicion that Wise did not take this chore seriously, that he did it with his left hand, that it did not bulk large in his conception of "important" work. Static medium shots, persistent loss of p.o.v., a perplexing disregard for the overacting and mugging of almost everyone among the featured players, and a singular lack of freshness overall in selection of camera angles supports such a supposition.

Even common attention to detail,
de rigueur
for the most amateurish B flicks, is missing here. In one scene, as Shatner moves through the turbolift doors exiting the bridge, the woman sitting to my right (a total stranger) said (audibly enough to generate laughter around us), "Look, his toupee doesn't fit right!" Fortunately the mother of ex-Paramount President Frank Yablans didn't notice it: four seats to my left she had fallen asleep. In another scene, when a plaited headband is placed over the cueball baldness of the highly-touted Ms. Persis Khambatta—about whom more in a moment—a dangling ornament hangs on the left side. Instants later, after a cutaway shot, the ornament is hanging over the
right
side. Editorial matchup, a first-year film-school necessity, was beyond a production crew so multitudinous they could have been deployed as relief team against Xerxes's ravening hordes.