Harlan Ellison's Watching (64 page)

1) You're correct. I
don't
do reviews. I'm not much interested in doing reviews. There is a plethora of such reviewing already being done. In magazines published weekly, in newspapers published daily, on telecasts aired hourly; in specialty magazines used to huckster forthcoming films, that are endowed by the film companies themselves, available at every video shoppe and theater lobby in America; on the radio, in
American Film
and
Starlog
and
Cinefantastique
and
Prevue
. We are hip-deep in reviewers, ranging from Pauline Kael and Molly Haskell, who know what they're talking about, to Gary Franklin and David Sheehan, who have the intellectual insight of a speed bump. I won't even comment on the Siamese-critics whose syndicated review shows demonstrate even greater snippiness and discordancy than
I
visit on you.

What I am interested in (and the vast majority of those who have commented on these columns seem to share that interest) is the concept of film as potential Art. Books are reviewed in these pages by Mr. Budrys in essay form, speaking to the intentions of the creators, the effectiveness of their vision, the value of the writing in the greater context of establishing artistic criteria by which we can make informed judgments as to what is, and what ain't, worth our valuable reading time. Why should films not be treated equally as seriously?

These are
essays on film
. Not academic, stodgy
Cahiers du Cinéma
wearinesses, intended to demonstrate the
cineaste's
erudition, or his Trivial Pursuit noodling of the least line from an obscure offering by Arnold Fanck (German director, 1889–1974, known for his mountaineering films), but an attempt by one who both loves and works in film, to illuminate technique, intentions, historical context, ethical values
 . . . choices . . .

The better to widen the aperture of a filmgoer's perceptions. The better to suggest a subtext for what may appear to be only momentary entertainment. The better, some might say, to educate and broaden horizons and afford more pleasure; as well as to suggest bases on which critical judgments can be made.

If the essays seem inconsistent, well, I rush to the words of Bernard Berenson: "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."

As for the
way
in which I write these essays, well, I write to please myself first. If they also please
you
, then that's swell. If they don't, sorry about that, kiddo, But if I were to write for a supposed audience, I would wind up as bland and shallow as most of the reviewers you channel-hop to avoid. I write what interests me, and that pretty well takes care of complaint 4) because I am utterly disinterested in most of the hack films slambanged at you in saturation tv advertisements. I have no axes to grind, I am on the secret payroll of no studio or filmmaker, and if you think I'm going to sit through
Evil Dead 2
or
The Barbarians
just so your avaricious little heart doesn't feel it's missed something, then you'd better get out pad and pencil and dash off one of those letters to the Fermans, threatening them with loss of readership if they don't recall the previous tenant; because that is not what I'm about, and stop eyeing the belt, I haven't threatened you once, have I?

2) is easily handled. I do the best I can. I appear as frequently as my often-otherwise-occupied schedule permits. I do have to make a living writing other things. And though suchlike as Charles Platt and Christopher Priest bend themselves into hyperbolic pretzels proving I'll never complete
The Last Dangerous Visions
, that and other matters of import command most of my attention most of the time. I
enjoy
writing these essays. I do them because they are things I
want
to write, not because I have a deadline that
demands
I write them. It is my naive belief that you would rather read something the author was compelled to write, rather than just space-filler because a presumed readership expected to see something in this space. Don't fret about it: when I'm not here, there'll be a nifty story in this space that has put food on the table of a deserving writer.

And sometimes—though I know you'll find this difficult to believe—even though I once did a column saying
just
this—every once in a while I have
nothing
to say. It may have been a dry period for films worth detailing, it may have been that my brain wasn't all that fresh with concepts, it may have been that even films worth noting had been covered
in kind
in a previous column.

So. Sometimes I'm busy. Sometimes I miss my deadlines. Sometimes the well is dry. That's life, kids. It's also Art. You can have it good, but you may not have it Thursday.

But I've never seen stone tablets with the "rules for columnists" (as one jerk suggested) on which it is chiseled that a columnist
has
to appear regularly. I do the best I can, and I trust that when I can, it serves. If not, turn the dial or get out that pencil and pad.

On the third count, 3) that is, many of you do not seem to understand that this is a
monthly
publication, assembled at least three months before you get it. I'm writing this column on September 17th, having missed two issues because I was earning my living writing a two-hour sf film for Roger Gorman and NBC. Check the date on which you're reading this.
That's
what the lead-time is, every issue.

Now, because I live and work in the center of the film industry, I get to screen a great many films long before they are released, so I can cut down the lead-time in certain cases. And you reap that benefit, for whatever it's worth. I mean, how many of you will
actually
avoid seeing
Robocop
on the basis of my warning? You do have, after all, Free Will, despite what John Paul II tells you.

But even if I were to see any film I wanted to discuss in rough cut (and finding producers who'll let you see a film in that state of pre-final edit, no matter how knowledgeable you may be, is like trying to find a viable concept of ethics in Fawn Hall's tousled head), we'd still get that critique to you after the film had vanished from your Six-Plex.

So I discuss films I consider of merit or demerit, with my hope that you will seek them out or not, when they hit the nabes, as they say. Apparently I don't do all that badly, because I get letters from you telling me that you took my comments on, say,
The Witches of Eastwick
to heart and looked for the little things I pointed out. And you told me it made the evening's entertainment richer, and that you made a lot of points with your crowd discussing all that obscure shit.

So. This isn't a Maltin Guide to what to see at this moment. It is a column of essays on film. That's what it's supposed to be, what it's supposed to do, and what I
want
to do. For those of you eyeing the belt, I know you'll advise the Fermans of your thwarted desires. For the rest of you, if you have a moment, you might drop a postcard to the editors.

They do so feel besieged from time to time. It's not easy having a resident feral child on the premises.

ANCILLARY MATTERS: While it is not, strictly speaking, the province of these columns to deal with books (heaven knows this magazine already boasts a small cadre of the best reviewers and critics in the game), every now and again I fudge the rules in a way I find ethically supportable—complementary in the mode used to make statistics gibber and dance so they unarguably prove contradictory theses—and I attempt to enrich your souls with special titles that have, at least, a thematic link to the fantastic in films. To that end, I draw your attention to a trio of slim trade paperbacks from Copper Canyon Press: three cycles of poetry by Pablo Neruda.

Having been lately disabused of the frivolous conceit that there are some things in the world that everyone
must
be aware of (a casual remark to a human being in its mid-thirties, the other day, on the long-overdue death of Rudolf Hess in Spandau, brought me a querulous stare and the response
Who?
), I hasten to repeat the name Neruda for those few of you who are unfamiliar with the exquisite writings of the late Chilean poet. (That anyone could reach his/her majority not having read and marveled at Neruda's
The Heights of Maccu Picchu
, is a concept I grapple with, with difficulty.)

Neruda, then.

The Separate Rose (La Rosa Separada)
is the first English translation (by William O'Daly, who has splendidly recast all three of these important works) of a poem sequence proceeding from Neruda's visit to Easter Island in 1971. Don Pablo was dying of cancer, and knew it (he passed away in September of 1973). The great poet had grown steadily disenchanted with much of the human race. As O'Daly puts it in his introduction, "By the late 1960s, Neruda had come to consider himself one member of a global civilization gone awry. He felt that the entire world was caught up in the trend of escalating national defense budgets at the expense of the human stomach and spirit." And so, perhaps to reestablish contact with an innocence of Nature that would succor him in those days dwindling to darkness, he journeyed to that last island in the Polynesian chain to be settled, called Rapanui by its inhabitants (who also identify themselves by that name), to touch, at final moments, the fantastic; the mysterious; the primal.

The sequence alternates sections called
The Men
and
The Island
. Here is one of the latter:

 
When the giants multiplied
and walked tall and straight
till they covered the island with stone noses
and, so very alive, ordained their descendants: the children
of wind and lava, the grandchildren
of air and ash, they would stride on gigantic feet across their island:
the breeze worked harder than ever
with her hands, the typhoon with her crime, that persistence of Oceania.
 

 

There is a moral plangency in every line of
La Rosa Separada
that cries Neruda had paid the price for sharing, perhaps at too severe a measure, all decent people's concern for the condition of the human condition. There is, as O'Daly notes, "the guilty pathos of our time" passim the work, a quality at once sobering and ineffably human, that reminds us how much of singing wind and stinging self-examination we derive from the Nerudas among us, who weep that we are no better than we think we are . . . rather than how much better we wish we were.

Still Another Day (Aún)
is special even as part of a special canon. In these 433 verses written in two days of July, 1969, the Nobel laureate—knowing he was soon to die—bid farewell to his beloved Chilean people. He said this:

 
Pardon me, if when I want
to tell the story of my life
it's the land I talk about.
This is the land.
It grows in your blood
and you grow.
If it dies in your blood
you die out.
 

 

Therein, resonating to the words of another poet, W. S. Merwin, that "the story of each stone leads back to a mountain," lies my rationale for including book reviews in what is usually an essay on film. In these days of the "harmonic convergence" we perceive that the places of power on this planet draw our noblest attention. Neruda's soul and artistry were similarly drawn; and throughout his
oeuvre
we encounter the Mystic Venue as both trope and supernatural icon. It is this specific element of Neruda's sensibility that provides me the interstice through which to wriggle his wonderfulness before you. Please do not upbraid me too severely for this jiggery-pokery; as your mother or the head matron at the Home used to say when she forced you to swallow such yuchhh as lima beans or castor oil, "It's for your own good." The difference being, Neruda goes down sweetly and easily, producing smile rather than stricture.

And finally,
Winter Garden (Jardín de Invierno)
, in O'Daly's lyrical, authorized translation, is one of the eight unpublished manuscripts found on Neruda's desk on the day of his death. In its twenty verses, this tidy offering sums up Neruda's life and work, expresses his understanding of his imminent death, speaks of solitude and duty as necessary for the proper life, but returns once again to Nature as the wellspring of regeneration.

Taken in sum these books are a legacy of buoyancy for the spirit; words that not only enrich and uplift, but ennoble; important art for a world too often compelled to contemplate mud and shoetops. For those of you who know not of Neruda, whose reading time is spent with paperback novels whose exteriors feature die-cut and embossing and whose interiors feature disembowelment and ennui, set yourselves the delirious, the heady task of soaring with one of the great souls this century has produced. Forego just one film and treat yourself to Neruda. It's for your own good.

And next time—now that the June-to-September hell in which I lived while writing
Cutter's World
for Gorman and NBC has reached an end—get your fangs set for an essay I've been dying to write for several years. I only needed a hook. The hook is Mel Brooks's
Spaceballs
, and the subject is my belief that
most
(not all, note that I said not
all
) sf fans and/or readers have no sense of humor, and that which they do have is fit only for films such as
Spaceballs
.