Harlan Ellison's Watching (38 page)

I think the answer contains the deepest sort of insult.

Because sf and fantasy have
always
been considered trash by "serious" filmmakers, the sort of stories that a director chooses to film as a lark, not to be taken as seriously as his/her "important" work, it follows that dismissing a failure and the fools who went to see it as a cartoon intended for cartoon-lovers, is logical. No one ever heard the makers of, say,
Gandhi
, suggest to its critics that it wasn't intended as meaningful, that it was just a lark. Not even a Dirty Harry flick gets that kind of write-off. Oh, perhaps, it might extend to the last ten years' James Bond travesties, but I cannot think of too many other candidates for the life-as-cartoon award.

But "sci-fi" and fantasy are clearly marketing fodder; visual aids to sell gremlin soft toys; loss-leaders intended to lure us to the popcorn and candy counter; elegant
merde
shot with state of the art SFX on the new ultrafast Kodak 5293 film. Only that which is conceived as intended for a less discriminating audience would
dare
to be palmed off as unworthy of complaint on the same level as that directed toward "real" movies, "serious" movies, "important" movies.

The excuse that we weren't supposed to be bothered by mean-spiritedness in
Gremlins
, the brutality toward children in
Temple of Doom
, the violence and emptyheadedness blown on a breeze of rock'n'roll in
Streets of Fire
, the plot silliness of
Cloak and Dagger
because they are just "cartoons" intended for a malleable, substandard intelligence audience that will settle for zooming rocketships and flashing light-shows, is a reflection of the deepest-held views of those who run the film industry.

And as long as they can make a buck or five or ten from such a gullible audience, we can stop asking
Why doesn't Hollywood make good sf films?

For my part, when I want a cartoon, I'll turn on Daffy Duck. Until that time, when I hear the apologia, I will respond as would the Tasmanian Devil.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
/ March 1985

Uncle Ayjay (to whom I seem to make reference an inordinate number of times, though reports that we are "an item" are wholly unfounded; we are just friends, despite
USA Today's
front page revelation on December 13th that he gave me a 20-carat oval sapphire engagement ring) once, a long time ago, when he was trying to teach me how to write, said: "It is not acceptable in trying to create characterization to say, 'He looked exactly like Cary Grant, except the ears were larger.'" By extension, what
Obergruppenfuehrer
Budrys was telling me, is that describing something solely by reference to an existing icon ain't strictly kosher. I mention this as admission of malice aforethought when I write the words that follow:

In 1983 20th Century Fox released a film titled
Monsignor
, starring Christopher Reeve. In merely one year it has levitated to the top of the list of Worst Movies Ever Made. Worse than
Plan 9 from Outer Space;
worse than
A Countess from Hong Kong;
worse than
The Terror of Tiny Town;
worse than
The Oscar
.

Monsignor
is the most astonishingly stupid, cataclysmically wrong-headed, awesomely embarrassing, universally inept stretch of celluloid ever thrown onto a movie screen. One views the film with one's mouth agape in stunned disbelief that so many alleged professionals could so totally have taken leave of their senses as to delude themselves that this cosmic stinkeroonie was worth making; or, having so deluded themselves that, once having screened it, the abomination was worth releasing save for cruel laughter.
Monsignor
is an Olympian exercise in imbecility.

Describing something solely by reference to an existing icon ain't strictly kosher.

Supergirl
(Tri-Star Pictures) exists and functions on precisely and exactly the intellectual and artistic level of
Monsignor
.

This has been a review.

On the other hand, Tri-Star has given us a genuinely spiffy sf adventure written and directed by Michael Crichton; goes by the name
Runaway
. And it is what, in my view, a good sf movie ought to be: imaginative, logically consistent, entertaining, unpredictable, exciting and filled with stuff we've never seen. It's not dripping with memorable characterization, but apart from that one scant deficiency which is an acceptable trade-off for the goodies it proffers in abundance (and a last line I can live without),
Runaway
is the filmic equivalent of "a good read."

Tom Selleck is engagingly cast as a police sergeant in charge of the Runaway Squad of a major metropolitan city's law enforcement department in the not-too-distant. Runaways are robots that have gone bonkers and are doing what they oughtn't. The first part of the film swiftly and neatly delineates a society almost identical to today's, with the addition of many kinds of household and industrial machines that perform the kind of scutwork labor white folks abhor and consign to peoples bearing green cards. And though prophesying what our world will be like twenty years hence, with robots to do our cooking and welding, is a mugg's game (and not even sf's vaunted claims of being able "to predict the future" hold up under close historical scrutiny), Crichton has been a model of rectitude injecting those little extrapolative touches we all slaver for. It all seems plausible, which is the most we should ever ask of this kind of woolgathering.

When people start getting killed by otherwise innocuous mechanical helpmates, Selleck finds himself going
mano-a-mano
with the psychopathic high-tech killer, Dr. Luther, played with exquisite malevolence by rock star Gene Simmons, leader of Kiss. (Who walked up to me at the screening to say he was a fan of my work, and scared the shit out of me even
without
his concert makeup. Thank god he didn't stick out his tongue at me.)

Additionally, as if a good original plot, endless action, terrific visuals and heartstopping danger were not enough,
Runaway
showcases the talents and beauty of three women for whom one might gladly burn the topless towers of Ilium: Cynthia Rhodes, Kirstie Alley and Anne-Marie Martin (regularly seen on the
Days of Our Lives
daytime serial). Now ordinarily, making a remark about the pulchritude of the actresses in a film would get both Vonda and Joanna tsk-tsking at me; but since the star of this movie is a sex object for
women
, I take obscene advantage of the opportunity to reprise that blissfully ignorant condition of chauvinism in which I existed for thirty years before Vonda and Joanna put me on the floor with their knees in my chest and pointed out logically where my thinking was screwed.

As for that last line, it's goodness knows a tiny enough nit, but I mention it so Michael doesn't do it again. At the end of the film—and I'm giving nothing away by telling you this, trust me—Selleck and Rhodes have fallen in love. Both are cops, and both have performed athletically and competently throughout the story. But as they kiss, Selleck says to her, "Do you cook?" She answers, "Try me." Apart from the grating cliché of "try me" (which, if the universe is kind, I will never hear from a movie screen again as long as I live or even after, on a level of awful familiarity with someone saying "Just like that?" and reply being "Just like that"), and the recidivist resonance of times past when no matter how competent a woman might be at non-housewifely occupations, she would only be fulfilled as a "real woman" if she could cook and clean and bear homunculi, the film prominently includes Lois, a cook/babysitter robot in Selleck's home. So Ms. Rhodes should have replied to Sgt. Ramsay's question with a line something like, "I don't have to; Lois can do it. I can fuck; Lois can't do that."

But perhaps I ask too much of the universe. Then again, when I'm elected god this year . . .

The ultimate variation of the cinematic convention commonly referred to as "Boy and Girl meet cute" (ref. Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli in
Arthur
) can be found in a sappy, nay,
goofy
, clinker called
Starman
(Columbia Pictures).

Here in glamorous but Machiavellian Hollywood the Writers Guild has long fought the battle of the possessive credit. You know what I mean: Walt Disney's
Pinocchio
(written by Carlo Collodi); Richard Attenborough's
Gandhi
(written by John Briley); Brian De Palma's
Scarface
(written by Oliver Stone). Directors can continue to flummox the studios and the public only as long as they can continue to cloud our thinking with the
auteur
theory that puts them forward as "the creator" of a film. We are talking about power and money in the possessive credit. They get around it in a thousand ways, this bad feeling they stir in those of us who
actually
create the dream: A Brian De Palma Film / Brian De Palma's Film of / A Film of Brian De Palma . . . you get the idea. So the Writers Guild goes on fighting this one, against the Producers Guild and the Directors Guild, and not much progress is made, because we're talking about power and money.

However, in the case of
John Carpenter's Starman
, I suspect not even bamboo slivers under the fingernails could get scenarists Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon to ask for the possessive credit. It's that dumb.

(On the other hand, which I've been doing a lot in this installment, they
are
the guys who wrote this emgalla, so who's to say how deeply runs their brain damage.) (Emgalla: a South African wart hog.)

Starman's
plot is at least thirty-five years old. It is a first contact story that acts as if
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951),
The Thing
(1951),
The Man Who Fell to Earth
(1976) and
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
(1982) had never been made. Out goes our space probe, it's found by an alien intelligence, the e.t. comes to Earth, the e.t. shape-changes to assume the persona of a woman's dead husband, they fall in love, he runs around a lot trying to evade people trying to capture him, he gives her a baby, and he leaves the planet. No explanation is ever given as to why he was here or why, if he went to the trouble to come here, he runs around madly trying to escape contact with the species he sought to contact in the first place.

Again we have the stupidity of a spaceship whoooooshing noisily past in airless vacuum, again we have the inept and malevolent scientists and military schmucks who seek only to imprison or kill the visitor, again we have sophomoric definitions of "love" and "friendship" as explicated by subliterate characters.

What we have here is a 1948 movie made in 1984.

A waste of time.

A contrived, simpleminded,
sappy
film. My patience is fast running out with John Carpenter, who is a talented man, yet who seems hellbent on cranking out one dreary clot after another. And they crucified Michael Cimino for
Heaven's Gate
.

Just wait'll I'm elected.

I'll save
2010
and
Dune
till next time, because it has become necessary to say something about
The Terminator
(Orion Pictures).

Yes, folks, I'm more than painfully aware that
The Terminator
resembles my own
Outer Limits
script "Soldier" in ways so obvious and striking that you've been moved to call me, write letters, send me telegrams and pass the gardyloo along by word-of-mouth with my friends. You really must cease waking me in the wee hours to advise me I've been ripped off.

As I write this, attorneys are talking.

Despite the foregoing, permit me to recommend
The Terminator
. It is a superlative piece of work and deserves its success. Director and co-author James Cameron has made an auspicious debut. The film is taut, memorable, and clearly based on brilliant source material. More than that I am not at liberty to say.

If for no other reason, I would celebrate this nifty movie on the grounds that someone has, at last, figured out a way to use Arnold Schwartzenegger effectively. I suppose I'm a bit tired of seeing that
Friday the 13th
horror ending in which the dead monster comes back to life again and again, but in context it plays like a baby doll this time.

Now if you go to see this movie, I want you to put out of your minds all memory of "Soldier" or my other
Outer Limits
script "Demon with a Glass Hand" or my short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." Also, do not think of a green cow.

I would be less than responsible if I did not recommend a few non-sf films for your attention.

Beverly Hills Cop
with Eddie Murphy is a joy. It was directed by Marty Brest, who needs a hit, so go see it. And do take notice of the actor who plays the role of Taggart, a cop. His name is John Ashton, and he damned near steals the film from Murphy, if you can conceive of such a thing.