Harlan Ellison's Watching (49 page)

Terry Gilliam has not been allowed to preview the film here in America. Universal stopped two theater arts department showings at CalArts College and USC in October. Then Terry went on the
Today Show
and talked about it, with De Niro at his side. And all this, after Terry had voluntarily removed eleven minutes from the original version.

(Don't fret. Terry says those eleven minutes don't feel missing. He voices approval of the minus-eleven version.)

And so, all smartass aside, I must tell you that I was stunned by
Brazil
as I have not been stunned by a film in more than twenty years. I saw it by chance, at a very special bootleg screening, in company with half a dozen of the best critics in the country, all of us sworn to secrecy about who and where and how and when.

But it looks as if you, readers, will be cheated out of this extraordinary experience. Sid Sheinberg has always wanted to be a creator. The frustration of his life is that he is merely one of the canniest and most creative businessmen in the world. So he wants to make
Brazil
better in the time-honored tradition of businessmen who run the film industry. He wants to piss in it.

I tell you with cupidity,
Brazil
is one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. All gags aside, it is in the top ten.

I have given you twenty or more titles of what I think are
great
motion pictures, here in this column, because an opinion by a critic means nothing, unless the yardstick is there for you to measure the opinion. If you agree with me that the films I have named in this essay are among the greatest films ever produced, then you may give some small credence to one who eats his words of two months ago, and tells you that
Brazil
is certainly the finest sf movie ever made . . . and very likely one of the ten greatest films
of any kind
ever made.

And if you feel annoyed that you may never be allowed to judge for yourself, then drop a line to Sid Sheinberg at Universal, and tell him you want him to release Terry Gilliam's 2-hour, 11-minute version of
Brazil
.

And try to keep a civil tongue in your head.

I know how you are.

And Sid's already pissed at me, so you needn't bother to tell him that Harlan sent you. Besides, I've got my mouth full at the moment.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
/ March 1986

There are a few things in this life I have not gotten around to doing. I never did get that date with Sally Field, though I went so far as to script a segment of
The Flying Nun
for just such an opportunity. Never did drop that sugar cube drenched in acid given to me in 1968 by a well-known sf writer, though it lay wrapped in cellophane in the back of my refrigerator until 1980 when it was thrown out with a package of celery that had developed the consistency of Gumby and several Idaho potatoes which had grown such a set of eyes that we had to take the poor things in to have them fitted for contact lenses before they could be dumped. Never got to meet John Gardner, to tell him I admired his work but thought he was a meanspirited man. Still haven't had a homosexual encounter. I've got the shoes, but still haven't gotten around to taking tap dancing lessons.

These are important things I wish I had done, but the chances of getting around to them now seem slim, particularly if I'm going to get around to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, which I swear I
will
do, just stop shoving. Similarly, I have never gotten around to reading Barry B. Longyear's novella "Enemy Mine."

I should, I
know
I should; but, well, I put it off, and I put it off, and I put it off, and then it won the triple crown in 1979—Hugo, Locus poll and Nebula awards—and Barry got the Campbell award as Best Writer that same year, and I had to start lying when people talked about the yarn. "Oh, sure," I'd say, "some helluva piece of work. Just brilliant." But then I'd quickly switch the conversation to Celine or W. P. Kinsella's
Shoeless Joe
, which I
had
read, god forbid anyone would think I was inadequately prepared for social congress.

But now that I've set myself the chore of discussing
Enemy Mine
(20th Century Fox), I can't use flummery to cover my sin of omission. It is certainly going to enrage my critics that my unceasing dumb luck triumphs once again, because by
not
having read the story it redounds to my (and your) benefit in my capacity as film critic for this august journal. Dump me in cow flop and I'll come up with the Hope Diamond.

I've been wanting for some time to review a film in this genre that is based on a well-known published story, the original version of which I had never read. Purity of vision, is what I was hoping for. A total freedom from the mist and shadow of the original work. Couldn't do that with
Dune
or
Blade Runner
or
2010
or a host of others, because I was already "tainted" by a familiarity with the sourcework. So here it falls right in my lap, this secret shame I've borne since 1979, and (damn that Ellison, doesn't he
ever
fall on his face?!)
badoom!
it's a court-martial that turns into the Distinguished Service Cross.

So I went to my screening of
Enemy Mine
, looking forward to a movie that I'd enjoy—which is the way I go to
all
of them—and I came away thinking it hadn't been such a terrific film at all. Not a thorough stinker, not a
Damnation Alley
or
Outland
or
Gremlins
, but simply a flick that seemed to have had a chance to be 108 minutes and 4 seconds of pretty entertaining adventure. It left me, how shall I put this, unfulfilled. Like a long meal of cotton candy and readings from Kahlil Gibran.

I'll recap the story for you, in the event you've also been lying about having read the published version, and haven't caught the film. Won't take long.

Well, Robinson Crusoe, this human being, crashes on a sort of volcanic island called Fyrine IV, and he finds he's not alone there. This
other
castaway, Friday, also lives there. And at first they don't like each other, and then they do like each other because they've got to work together to survive, making a hut out of palm fronds or creature carapaces or like that. And in the end we understand that it doesn't matter that Friday is a black man with a funny way of talking and Robinson Crusoe is a kind of thick-headed whitey, because under the scales and cranial crests, we're all the same, and we call that brotherhood.

Wait a minute. I think I'm getting my movies mixed. Lemme try again.

Okay. So this white convict named Tony Curtis is handcuffed to this black convict named Sidney Poitier, and they manage to escape from this state work farm, called Fyrine IV, and at first they don't like each other, and then they do like each other because they've got to work together to survive the posse out to find them, and in the end we understand that it doesn't matter that this white guy is actually a Jew named Bernard Schwarz or that this black guy is actually an ex-basketball player named Lew Alcindor, because beneath the spacesuits and overacting we're all handcuffed together in the big prison break of Life, and we call that brotherhood.

Uh. I think I've mixed things up again. Let me go for it just once more.

Okay. So there's this U.S. Marine on a South Pacific island called Fyrine IV where he's forced to work with this alien creature called a nun, which is a female kind of person who dresses all in funny kinda clothes, and who is played by Deborah Kerr, who's really swell at playing this kind of alien creature, and at first they don't like each other, and then they do like each other because they're trying to stay out of the way of the entire Imperial Japanese Navy and because they're both pretty horny, and the Marine, whose name is Mr. Allison, suggests that it doesn't matter that she's this alien kinda creature, they should take off their clothes and their bad habits and sorta have social congress because they're all alone on Fyrine IV and who's to know, and the nun alien tells him, "Heaven knows, Mr. Allison." And from this we understand that it doesn't matter how weird you dress or whether you're a 20-year career man in the Marines, nuns ain't gonna let you screw them unless you're extremely glib, and we call that brotherhood.

Er. Wrong again? Well, then, how about
Hell in the Pacific
(1968) with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, which was all about this Japanese space pilot and this American space pilot who get stuck on
another
South Pacific island
also
called Fyrine IV (a Melanesian name that means
deja vu
) and at first they don't like each other, and then they do like each other because they both agree that if Robert
Mitchum
, for crine out loud, can't get laid, then what chance do
we
have, particularly with Deborah Kerr who
should
have been easy, considering how she rolled around in the surf with Burt Lancaster. And we understand that we should call this brotherhood. Or the birth of the blues.

All right, I'll get serious. I wasn't even disappointed in
Enemy Mine
, because for all its overproduced affect—you should see the weapons and ships and the suits and the communications gear: none of it form-follows-function but shiny and futuristic and must have cost a fortune—the movie has all the staying power of a Dalkon Shield. But the other day a famous sf film producer stopped by to chat—and I'm purposely
not
dropping his name—and he called
Enemy Mine
"megadumb." Which impressed me, because I hadn't thought it was
that
bad, and I'm curious to know if you readers thought it was "megadumb" also, and if so, why. Which comments I'll boil down and run in a forthcoming installment, depending on how vitriolic and original and clever you are with your denigrations. See preceding for format.

But just so you don't go for the obvious missteps the film makes, I thought I'd list a few of the more glaring, thereby throwing you back on native cunning and that dormant sense of filmic discrimination I know lies deep in each of you.

First, they begin the outer space stuff without sound. Nice, I thought. They went the Kubrick route instead of the George Lucas route. Then, of a sudden, they scramble the starfighters and we are treated once again to the
Star Wars
space dogfight
à la
Industrial Light and Magic, which firm continues to be hired by all and sundry to produce space battles in a vacuum that doesn't seem to hinder spaceships from acting like Spads and Fokkers, and they all go whooooosh and blow up with big bangs slightly smaller than the Big Bang.

Second, though we never see much of Fyrine IV except these fumaroles they shot down in the Canary Islands, and all this petrified wood or whatever, both the human and the alien can breathe without artificial assistance, and I just wonder how that can be on a planet without any greenery to produce oxygen, but I suppose Poul Anderson or Hal Clement could explain how it
might
be possible, which doesn't detract from the quibble because if it
is
possible, they should have given us at least a
small
indication, don't you think? I sure do.

Third, the mood of seriousness that hangs like a gray day over this entire production is gratuitously, and ridiculously, ripped apart by one of the silliest missteps I've ever seen made in a film put together by supposedly professional moviemakers. There is a sequence early on, in which a scuttling creature with a Chelonic carapace is trapped and sucked down into a sand pit by some thing like an ant lion with nasty complexion and one helluva glandular condition, and it gets sucked down screaming horribly, so we know either the human or the alien will soon be confronting the same problem, and we're scared for a moment until . . . the carapace is flung back up out of the hole and we hear . . . a burp. A low-comedy burp. And everyone laughs. And the mood is broken.

Fourth, that speech near the end where the big bully miner is fighting with the human space pilot, and he does one of those Jimmy Cagney routines about, "I'm gonna kill ya, cuz you killed me brudder Joey." And everyone laughs. And the mood is broken.

Well, that's just a sample. You can't use those when you write in. And don't complain that the human space pilot is carrying a bullet-firing pistol instead of some sort of laser gun, because it's logical that projectile weapons would still be in use as a personal defense a hundred years from now, because the engineering it would take to devise a way of mirror-stacking to make a laser small and portable, is way beyond the abilities of a society as dumb as the one presented in
Enemy Mine
. Also, drop a laser gun, smash one mirror, and you're up the Swanee without a scull. So that one's okay. But only because we were clever enough to figure out why, no thanks to the producers of the film.

So here's your chance to dabble in film criticism. Unleash those Visigoth tendencies! Defame multimillion dollar epics! Voice your paralogical opinions! Savage the great and the near-great! See what fun it is, and you'll understand why I wouldn't trade the writing of this column for anything in the world. Except maybe a date with Sally Field, things being the way they are between Deborah Kerr and me.