Harlan Ellison's Watching (77 page)

PHILISTINISM MAKES LUCID COPY FOR DOLTS.

The important difference between Rock O'Bannon and the larger measure of his brethren, is that Rock has it in him to reach an artistic level most writers can only shade their eyes and aspire to from far below. Up there in the sun, where the air is crisp and the mind seeks to unravel the secrets of the human condition and the universe, few of us are given to exist. For the Steven de Souzas of the world, the Chris Columbuses, even the Steve Cannells, it is a summit unreachable and forever intimidating. They do the best they can, but it is the difference between Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. Jefferson and Dukakis/Bush.

The kick in the ass is necessary, because Rock O'Bannon is
better
. He wrote "Wordplay." He can go there again. For him to get his foot in the feature film door with
Alien Nation
was cynical and self-destructive. Like the film, it was a calculated act of empty calories, artistic vacuum. For the soul, no surge of enrichment; there were only money and "clout" to be garnered.

For those who now ask, "Well, what's wrong with that?" I suggest you find another film columnist to read: surely we are dealing with concepts of self-respect and responsibility forever beyond your ken. For those of you who remain, let me digress only slightly to explain why this film was doomed from the starting blocks . . . and please bear in mind that quotation from Ring Lardner, Jr.: "No good film was ever made from a poor script."

Only god and Bill Warren know where the idea of the buddy-movie began. It has to be somewhen subsequent to the Edison Kinetoscope filmstrip
The Kiss
(1896), but prior to the most recent Pee-wee Herman extravaganza. After Cain and Abel, but prior to Sly and Brigitte. After the creation of the Heaven and the Earth, but prior to Burke and Hare. If you get my drift: this is an
old
formula we're looking at.

Even before the spate of flying buddies movies—exemplified by Cagney and Pat O'Brien in 1935's
Devil Dogs of the Air—
the genre was in full swing, but the chum flick as a separate form was most obvious in the aeronautic alliances. Perhaps the lineal descent is from the first attempt to put Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on film (about which more in a moment), though the Quirt and Flagg buddydom of the 1926
What Price Glory?
certainly sticks out as a watershed event.

For those who contend the buddy-movie reached its highest point of originality and vigor with the 1939
Gunga Din
, in which Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Doug Fairbanks, Jr. stood off Eduardo Ciannelli and his ravening hordes howling "Kill for the low of Kali," I'd like to point out that Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who cobbled up that cockeyed adventure plot, were only rewriting their 1931 hit
The Front Page
, as perfect an example of the buddy-movie as has ever been remade more times than we can count.

But by the forties it was a staple commodity, requiring not much more thought for inclusion on a production schedule than an offhand "Who'll we buddy-up with whom?" Or is that
who?

A staple commodity, having manifested itself in dozens of Republic and Monogram westerns of the "Three Mesquiteers" type (and does anyone else remember that ventriloquist Max Terhune and Crash Corrigan were but two-thirds of that rootin' tootin' shootin' trio completed by John Wayne?), reprised to the point of fugue state boredom in all the Dennis Morgan—Jack Carson "Two Guys From—" comedies, the Crosby—Hope roaders, and even proffered in the Batman&Robin mode with Wild Bill Elliott as Red Ryder, Bobby Blake as Little Beaver.

Through all such flotsam and jetsam (another terrific buddy pairing), the huffingpuffing exhausted idiom dragged itself into the modern era with Duncan Renaldo as The Cisco Kid and Leo Carillo as Pancho.

("Oh Seesko!" "Oh Pancho!" "Ha ha ha ha ha!" Which is the way all Saturday morning cartoons and most tv sitcoms from Lucy to Cosby end.)

This discounts all the Mr. and Mrs. North or Nick and Nora Charles
Thin Man
flicks, which really don't fit the mold, and I discount them openly just to remind you that I'm being nothing but fair in my selections as the form burgeoned in feature films when
The Defiant Ones
(1958) proved that if you made the buddy-buddy connection a bizarre one, you might triumph at the box office using a template already hoary and creaky, because critics would tend to overlook the paucity of invention at a plot level, and focus on the acting of the principals, their "relationship": just manacle a tough-but-heart-of-gold black convict (Sidney Poitier) to a bigoted white convict (Tony Curtis), let them escape from the chain gang, and send them on the run. This was the great icon of the buddies-with-animus-toward-each-other subgenre, most recently reprised with Secret Service bodyguard Charles Bronson "manacled and on the run" to his real-life wife, Jill Ireland, as the First Lady in
Assassination . . .
and bounty hunter Robert De Niro "manacled and on the run" with bail-jumping Federal witness Charles Grodin in
Midnight Run
.

Seriatim, the gang-buddy idea overinflated two years later with the success of
The Magnificent Seven
(from Kurosawa's
Seven Samurai
), followed by
The Professionals
in 1966,
The Dirty Dozen
in 1967,
The Devil's Brigade
in 1968, and Peckinpah's 1969 gang-buddy classic,
The Wild Bunch
, ending the decade that year with the buddy-movie that sent the entire film industry scrambling to flood the screen with chums, pals, mates
 . . . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. And the sluicegates were opened.

By 1971 you could spot the variations sans recourse to dowsing rod:
They Might Be Giants
, like the aforementioned
Assassination
a male-female buddy-up, recasting George C. Scott as Holmes with Joanne Woodward as Dr. Watson. (This is such an obvious duo for the perpetuation of the genre, that hardly a year goes by without a new note being sounded as coda to Conan Doyle's original duet, echoic currently with Michael Caine as a dunderhead Sherlock and Ben Kingsley as a brains-of-the-act Watson in
Without a Clue
, which I recommend unreservedly.) Other boy-girl buddy-ups:
The Late Show
(1977) with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin,
Foul Play
(1978) with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn,
Hanky Panky
(1982),
Runaway
with Tom Selleck and Cynthia Rhodes and
Romancing the Stone
(both 1984), and
Stone's
sequel,
Jewel of the Nile
and
Into the Night
with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer (both 1985). And that's just iceberg-tip of boy-girl buddy-movies.

To demonstrate how interchangeable these phony-friendship-flicks are,
Hanky Panky
was originally intended as a followup to the successful buddy-movies of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor
—Silver Streak
(1976) and
Stir Crazy
(1980)—but for reasons I'm too weary to recount, Pryor's role in
Hanky Panky
was revised for Gilda Radner, and no one noticed any dichotomy.

But wait, there's more!

Scarecrow
with Hackman and Pacino;
City Heat
with Eastwood and Reynolds;
Partners
with John Hurt and Ryan O'Neal;
The Sting
with Redford and Newman;
Wise Guys
with Piscopo and De Vito;
Ishtar
with Beatty and Hoffman;
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
with John Candy and Steve Martin;
Lethal Weapon
with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; and
Running Scared
with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines (as we return to black and white pairings
à la The Defiant Ones); Buddy Buddy
, the Billy Wilder—I. A. L. Diamond remake of the French
A Pain in the A—
, recast with Lemmon and Matthau;
Red Heat
with Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi; another girl-boy linking that substitutes Debra Winger for Paul Newman in
Legal Eagles
with Redford;
The In-Laws
with Falk and Alan Arkin;
Mikey and Nicky
with Falk and Cassavetes;
¡Three Amigos!
with Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin;
48 Hrs
. with Nolte and Eddie Murphy;
Tough Guys
with Lancaster and Douglas;
Dragnet
with Aykroyd and Tom Hanks;
Stakeout
with Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez;
Real Men
with Belushi and John Ritter;
Number One with a Bullet
with Billy Dee Williams and Robert Carradine; and
Nighthawks
with Billy Dee Williams and Stallone.

Not to mention all the girl-girl buddy-ups—"biddy-movies"?—like
Outrageous Fortune
with Bette Midler and Shelley Long or
Big Business
with a pair of Bette Midlers and a pair of Lily Tomlins, which makes it the first buddy-buddy-buddy-buddy movie . . .

Or such offbeat pairings as those found in films like, uh, er,
A Boy and His Dog
with Vic and Blood played by Don Johnson and Tiger . . .

Or even precursors of the human-alien tieup in
Alien Nation
(which makes it an even
less
original conception) such as
The Hidden
with Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan, or
Enemy Mine
with Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr. And all of them foreshadowed in print by Isaac Asimov with his human-robot pairing of R. Daneel Olivaw and Lije Baley in
Caves OF STEEL, et al
.

Which list, rendered here as exhausting (though hardly exhaust
ive
) evidence that the buddy-buddy idea was worn to the nub long before Rock O'Bannon came to it, should indicate just how hackneyed and cynical is the core of
Alien Nation
.

We would expect no better from a producer like Gale Anne Hurd, whose contract with 20th Century Fox was not picked up this summer in large part because of the disposability of
Alien Nation
; but we are
required
to expect more from Rockne O'Bannon.

Now here's the good news.

O'Bannon won't be killed by this film. Unlike my situation, which parallels Rock's, it will do him no harm.
Alien Nation
is
so
empty of calories,
so
forgettable, that it will not cast a pall over his name. With the sharp eyes and Me Decade smarts of his scriptwriting brethren, Rock understood that to get what he wanted in this business, he had to toss out a commercial film like this one.
It got made
. And that is the lowest factor of survival in film work. It got made, and because it got made at a major studio, with major stars, and had a big budget, he has sold another. And next year he gets to direct it.

Perhaps the means justify the end in a business where Art is anathema. Perhaps.

But the free ride is ended. Rock O'Bannon is a rare and original writer when he struggles against the rigors of the marketplace. He wrote "Wordplay." And if we choose to give him a pass on
Alien Nation
, if we choose to let that one go through our memory like shit through a tin trumpet, let him understand this: the free ride is over.

The next time—and we're all going to be watching—he had damned well better do battle with the gods. And even if he doesn't win, we'd damned well better see some sweat.

This has been a public service announcement.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
/ March 1989

Right around World Series time last fall, readers of these columns in California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington, also Hawaii, suffered mild cognitive dissonance when they turned on their television sets and saw Your Obedient Servant as oncamera spokesman in a series of Chevrolet commercials, extolling the virtues of a line of Japanese-designed, American-built cars called the Geo Imports. In these sixty- and thirty-second mini-encounters, as I walk through an elegant museum setting, the super that flashes across my body says
Harlan Ellison
, and under the name appear the words
Noted Futurist
.

This designation—however marginally appropriate—however startling to, say, Isaac Asimov or Alvin Toffler or Roberto Vacca, who are commonly held to be both futurists and noted as such—was the appellation of choice of Chevrolet, its West Coast advertising agency, and the director, Mr. Terry Galanoy.

Friends, acquaintances and casual thugs (who suggest I was selected for these commercials not on the basis of charisma or ability, but because I make the cars look larger), have expressed some startlement at my having been labeled
Noted Futurist
. "What the hell does that mean?" they codify their confusion, further asking, "Why did they call you that?"

To which I respond: "It seemed to Chevrolet that it was a more trustable identification than
Paid Liar
."

As a creator of fictions, I have frequently referred to myself as a
Paid Liar
; that is, a storyteller; one who receives monies from publishers and moviemakers for cobbling up what Vonnegut called
foma
, "harmless untruths." Thus, a paid liar in the context of dreaming fantastic dreams . . . not (he said very sternly, looking them straight in the eye) in any way suggesting that what I say about the Geo Imports is less than the absolute truth, spoken with conviction and sincerity. (It is not my intention to get into discussion of these commercials, why I did them, or the astonishing effect their airing has had on Susan's and my life, save to assure you that I would not present myself as spokesman for a product in which I did not believe. The cars are excellent, I drive them myself, they are remarkably responsible environmentally-speaking at 53 mph in the city and 58 in the country, and I add this aside
only
to avoid the gibes of those who would purposely misinterpret the term
Paid Liar
in conjunction with the commercials.)