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 interio
rs 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.
The subject next time will be wit. Not a sense of humor, but wit.
And just so you don't feel cheated because I didn't "review" anything else, here's another: Harry and the Hendersons (Universal/Amblin Entertainment) is a delight. It's manipulative as a Rocky flick, but the manipulation is in service of making us feel good, and hey, I'll invest in that any day.
See how good I am to you? Now stop crying, and go downstairs and apologize to your mother, and wash up for dinner while I put my belt back on and burn these imbecile letters George and the others sent.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / January 1988
INSTALLMENT 28:
In Which, With Wiles And Winces, We Waft Words Warranting, To Wit, Wonderful Wit
"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words"
—Dorothy Parker
In the words of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, placed by that superlative scenarist in the mouth of Bette Davis, in the 1950 film All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
But first, as is my wont, anecdotes (one short, one medium long, both absolutely true) in aid of setting the tone and laying the groundwork. With assistance from the editors of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged Edition.
Anecdote the first.
A friend of mine, a woman who heads up "development" of projects in the area of television specials for one of the three major networks, called me from her office, oh, roughly, about a year ago, and she said, "Sit down. You're going to love this one. Are you sitting?" I told her I was, and she proceeded to tell me that thirty seconds earlier a man had left her office. This man—who, like my confidante, shall remain nameless for obvious reasons—is a major supplier of endless hundreds of hours of primetime product. He is a Big Name in the world of films and teevee; we're talking on a level with Chuck Fries or Aaron Spelling; a man whose assorted production companies have multimillion-dollar contracts with the networks. And he said to my friend, a woman empowered to say yes or no for the go-ahead or turn-down of his big-ticket projects, "I've got the most sensational idea for a Special that you've ever heard! This is fantastic, it'll get you the numbers like nothing else you've ever done!" And my friend, blown back against her chair by the intensity and passion of this man's enthusiasm, replied, "Well, tell me! What is this incredible concept for a Special that will blow America out of the water?"
And the man said: "Let's do The Wiz . . .
" . . . white!"
As she paused for my reaction that day, oh, roughly, about a year ago, so I now pause for your reaction.
Depending on whether your stomach aches from laughing as you now read this sentence, or you have a blank look on your face and the phrase Why is that funny? in your head, you will find yourself in one of two categories: those who need this essay desperately but won't perceive themselves as being the subject of the discussion . . . or those who already understand what I'm going to be getting at here, and know themselves not to be lacking. For those with the blank look, those in the first category, relate that anecdote to a friend you consider to possess a finely-tuned sense of humor, and check his/her response. Though like seeks like, you may have lucked out and your friend can help you along with the rest of this confabulation. Not to mention the rest of your life.
(This has been, as stated, an absolutely true story. The man was dead serious. If this gives you pause as to the level of acuity demonstrated by those who cobble up what you watch on the tube, well, what took you so long to get The Word?)
Anecdote the second.
A number of years ago, while under the spell of Providence, Rhode Island, once the haunt of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, I began writing a short story titled "On the Slab" as an hommage to HPL. While only passingly echoic of the great fantasist's style, it was my admiring nod to the best of what he had written that had impressed me as a tyro.
One thing and another, I set the first few pages of the story aside after Providence, and was unable to return to the piece for several years. But when I did, I completed the yarn and sold it to Omni. "On the Slab" was a contemporary retelling of the Prometheus legend, told a bit more in the dark fantasy mode than is my usual approach with such efforts. I liked that story a lot.
And so it chanced that after the sale to Omni, but before it was published, I was engaged to deliver a lecture at New York University and, as is my wont, I read my latest (usually unpublished) story as part of the presentation. On that night in April of 1981, the story was "On the Slab."
When I finished the reading, I was rewarded with considerable applause from the large audience, thanked them prettily, and asked if there were any questions.
Rising from the shoals of attendees was a young man in his middle twenties, a largish young man whose somatotype and manner stirred instant recognition in me: This is a stone science fiction fan, I thought.
(Pause. The more contumelious among you, of whom I wrote at length last time, will no doubt snarl that I had no way of affirming such a snap judgment. That 1 was pre-judging the largish young man and saw him as stereotype. Maybe. But if you think those of us who deal with fans and readers constantly can't spot the fans in a crowd often thousand ordinary humans, I suggest you ask your nearest sf writer. It is an amalgam of clues informed by an understanding of body language, cultural taxonomy, deductive logic, the eye of the artist and the sad-but-true repetition of fan behavior as witnessed firsthand for more than three decades. Anyone who has ever read the Sherlock Holmes canon can do the same. And as we shall see in a moment, as the anecdote proceeds, whether an actual card-carrying, registered with N3F or FAPA fan, or merely one who is obsessed by the genre in the fannish manner, though unallied . . . this was a stone fan.)
So he stood, and I asked, "Do you have a question about the story?"
He said, "Have you ever heard of the Prometheus legend?"
The snickering in the audience kept me from answering for a moment. He looked around in confusion. My instant reaction was to be gentle. "Yes, I have," I replied.
"Well, your story is a ripoff of that, it seems to me," Now the audience was chuckling at him. And though I wasn't exactly toe-tappingly delighted at being accused of plagiarism by a total stranger, I tried to maintain a humane demeanor.
"You mean the way Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination was a ripoff of Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo?" He just looked at me; hadn't the scarcest what I was talking about.
"But you made a lot of mistakes," he said, oblivious to the whispering of the audience throughout Eisner and Lubin Auditorium as those who knew what was happening explained to those who did not. He was determined to press on, and there wasn't a lot I could do to keep him from making a fool of himself.
Had I tried to cut him off, I'd have been pilloried for savaging this naîf.
"Oh?" I said, as pockets of laughter around the hall gave him a warning he refused to hear.
"Yes, you made a lot of mistakes. You see, in the Prometheus legend it was his liver that was eaten out every day, not his heart, the way you wrote it. And it was an eagle that ate his liver every day, not a vulture like you wrote in your story."
"Carrion crow," I said.
"What?"
"I called it a vulture, and also a carrion crow."
"Yes. You got it all wrong. Why did you do that?"
; The laughter was now ubiquitous. The largish young man kept turning and looking. He was beginning to understand that whatever it was he'd said wrong, it was apparent to everyone else in the audience . . . but him. In anger, he turned back to me and demanded, "So why did you do that?!"
At which point I'd had about enough, and I said, as flatly and George S Pattorily as I could, "Because I damn well felt like it."
My tone made it quite clear to those ridiculing the young man, that the game was over. Now came the lesson. "Sir," I said, "everyone is laughing at you because it is obvious from the story that I am familiar with the Prometheus legend and have, in fact, written a pastiche on that myth, a retelling, an updating, a variant version, if you wish. When one writes a variant on a well-established legend, one reinterprets it to contemporize it, or to focus on aspects the original either saw one way or ignored entirely. I used the heart, rather than the liver, because in the days when the Prometheus legend was new, it was commonly thought that the liver was the residence of the soul . . . which is why the victors often ate the livers of those they'd vanquished, to absorb the fallen enemy's bravery and wisdom. Did you ever hear this expression, 'Bring me his liver and lights'? That meant his soul and his eyes. But today we think of the heart as the organ of choice. As for the crow, or vulture, rather than the eagle . . . well, I wanted a darker image. We think of the eagle as our national symbol, as a creature of honor and fortitude, soaring and pure. I wanted a bird that feasted on carrion. So I changed it. He isn't chained to a rock, either. These are what we call 'artistic license' and if used within the consistent framework of logic in a story, they are considered quite artful and legitimate."
Harlan Ellison's Watching Page 47