The Glass Teat - essays of opinion on the subject of television

by Harlan Ellison

Barbour pressed him, in the coarsest possible way. It was expected momentarily that he would dig an elbow in Killy’s ribs and leer, and ask him if they were good lays. Killy finally admitted that he was not making it with a pair of them lewd and lascivious frog flick stars, and was keeping fairly steady company with one young woman whose name Barbour would not recognize. Barbour broke up cackling, jibing at Killy with, “Ahhh, all you Frenchmen are alike!”

  It went on in that vein for what seemed an eternity. Viewers encountering this horror show cringed in their seats. Only the most insensitive asshole, whose total conception of Europe is of a wasteland wherein one must not touch the water, could have conceived of this as anything but in calamitous, poisonous bad taste.

  My Secretary, Crazy June, remarked on it with absolute chagrin the next day. She could only think what effect this kind of treatment of an outstanding emissary from overseas would have on his opinion of America, and by extension, what others overseas would make of us.

  It was another example of the rampant bad manners of the so-called hosts of these talk marathons. There are far too many Joe Pyne and Alan Burke models on television. There are too few Les Cranes. In Chicago, a creep named Jack Eigen has been doing this number for years. In New York there are a host of them, led by Burke. I’ve appeared on this sort of show in almost every city in the States, and their model is Pyne. They use the word “controversy,” but what they employ is the same sort of rough-trade cheap jack yellow animosity that Mike Wallace pioneered in 1956. It is deplorable, and one can only assume that its sole reason for being are the hordes of debased scuttlefish out there in the Great Unwashed who don’t get their fill of personal vilification and hostility from the news reports. Obviously, until this kind of show, with its garbage can odor, no longer appeals to the atrophied tastes of the millions, it will continue.

  And we will continue to be treated to such adagios of decorum as Barbour’s parting shots to Killy:

  After a film of Killy running the slalom, in which Killy pointed out that he was concentrating so hard missing the pitons that his tongue was protruding from his mouth, Barbour became positively raucous, repeating the word “tongue” and leering, till his implied references to soixante-neuf were teeth-grittingly obvious.

  And when Killy said he had to leave—probably having taken more than enough abuse from this pygmy— Barbour’s farewell was a charming, “Yeah, well, I know ya gotta go. So goodbye...and good riddance.”

  And they killed Martin Luther King.

  * * * *

  17: 31 JANUARY 69

  As some of you who read this column may know, among the many types of writing that flow off this typewriter there are occasional television scripts. I’ve written for shows as diverse as Star Trek, Man From U.N.C.L.E., Flying Nun, Cimarron Strip and Outer Limits. A couple of times my fellow videowriters have advised me that I may consider myself one of the more talented in their ranks, through the joys of twice awarding me the Writers Guild Award. Once for best anthology script of the 64-65 season, and last year for best dramatic-episodic script of the 66-67 season. I mention this in front, not only to puff my own shaky ego, but to prepare you for a sort of running diary I intend to introduce into this column.

  From time to time I’m asked by friends, fans of this column, and aspiring TV writers, what the System is like. What it takes to sell a TV script. What the working conditions are like. How heavy the censorship gets to be. A myriad of questions it would take a week to answer. Or the contents of a running diary.

  This week I got a job. I’ll be scripting a ninety-minute segment of The Name Of The Game, the big Universal/NBC showcase starring Robert Stack, Anthony Franciosa and Gene Barry in alternating roles. The series hooks itself on a publishing empire, ran by Barry, with Franciosa the hotshot reporter for Fame Magazine and Stack the ex-FBI man who runs the empire’s crime magazine. The series is based on the Universal film-for-TV Fame Is The Name Of The Game.

  Last year, I was called in by David Victor, Executive Producer of the series, before its debut. We discussed my doing a script for the series. When I found I would be working with Doug Benton, a Producer for whom I’d done a Cimarron Strip, I agreed. Victor and Benton are two of the most honest, reliable gentlemen I’ve met in this game, and their type is so hard to come by that I will work for them anywhere, anytime, for any amount of money they offer. But, as things turned out, we never did the segment, for reasons that had nothing to do with them, me, or the series. (I got a job writing a movie; more money ... immediate deadline.)

  On Friday, January 17th, my agent, Marty Shapiro of the Shapiro-Lichtman Agency, called to tell me George Eckstein wanted to see me. I remembered Eckstein as having been on The Untouchables as Producer, but had no idea what he was doing currently. Marty said he was going to produce the eight Robert Stack segments of The Name Of The Game for the 1968-69 season. A meeting had been set up for me at Universal City Studios for Wednesday the 22nd.

  On Wednesday, I drove out to the black tower in the Valley, and went up to the ninth floor to see Eckstein.

  A pleasant man with a direct manner, Eckstein told me that while the series had been popular, it had lacked some dimensions in its first season that he was going to try and correct. (I smiled. He was being charitable. Most of the segments of Name had been surfeited with the inane gloss Universal and NBC usually feel is necessary to impress the scuttlefish out in The Great American Heartland. It is the disease of creativity known as Overcompensation: everyone in the show has to be Beautiful, don’t shoot any scene in Bringdown Locations such as slums, let the Stars carry the show.)

  We discussed the Stack segments in particular, and while Eckstein never bum-rapped anyone, I got the distinct impression that he felt most of the shows had been strained, that Stack’s (admittedly) proscribed range of abilities had segmented the shows so they lacked pace and clout.

  Neither of us felt that Stack had been used as well as he could be. Eckstein then informed me that Stack had final say over the scripts. I was momentarily alarmed. Bob Stack is a pleasant man, a wealthy man, and a face known to millions of Americans. He has an image to protect. I knew personally that his politics placed him slightly to the right of Mr. Reagan, another actor who made good, and I had the distinct impression I was going to suggest some topics for scripts that would get me politely ushered from Mr. Eckstein’s office.

  I was to be crossed-up. My first suggestion was a show that might strike somewhere closer to the nitty-gritty on the subject of college student dissent than what we had been seeing of late.

  The postulated story went like this: A San Francisco State-type campus. An acting president a la Hayakawa. A state government pressing for “law and order” of the mace and truncheon variety. The Acting President, in an effort to stave off more confrontations, has called a series of seminars. At these seminars speakers of all political persuasions will participate. Cleavers, Karengas, Chavezes, Reddens, and because he represents the Establishment view of these goings-on via the mass media, Robert Stack. So Stack speaks. During the seminar, at which he espouses the time-honored philosophies of abiding by the law, using due process to achieve one’s end, the evil of violence, the value of working for what one gets, etc., he is challenged from the floor by a young white boy who is the editor of the underground campus newspaper, The Pig.

  That night, the Acting President is murdered. All the clues point to the editor of the paper, a militant of the most persuasive sort. He is arrested and the gears of the law begin to grind. From his cell he writes one after another pronunciamento, a la the Ramparts series by Cleaver. He is rallying a strong coterie around his cause, accusing the Establishment of railroading him to keep him quiet.

  Stack gets into it. The clues are too pat, the case too sturdily-constructed. He goes to the boy. The boys says fuck off, I don’t need any help. But Stack gets deeper into it. He is suddenly questioning some of the dead-certain beliefs he’s had about anarchy on campus. If this boy is willing to die for his Movement, then there is so
mething here to be more seriously considered.

  Stack’s two young aides are on the side of the militants. They nudge and chivvy their boss, trying to get him to open his mind to what the kids are about.

  In the denouement, we find out that not only is the boy not guilty, he has had his girl out planting clues so he will be prosecuted for the crime. But he’s a shuck. He knows he’ll never go to the gas chamber. What with appeals and all the time-dragging mechanism of prosecution in America today, he can be of value to the Movement with copy-from-prison for some time. And if worse comes to worse, if the killer isn’t found, his girl can always cop to having dummied up the evidence. But if the killer is found, he has tremendous clout against the Establishment for their harassment. It is a power play. The unfortunate element of the situation is that while this phony bastard won’t really lay it on the line, he is surrounded by other kids who will, and are.

  Thus, Stack comes to a more rational and reasoned view of the evils on campuses today. He knows all the things he believed in as gospel are not so, but neither is the random violence of the Movement right. He intends to work for reform.

  I laid all of this on Eckstein. It was not as strong as I might have liked to make it, but it was considerably stronger than anything I’d yet seen. No cop-out on my part: I’m a militant, granted, and what I’d proposed as plot was exceedingly ameliorative . . . from where my head is at. But by doing it softer, I had a chance to get it on the air. Taking the hard line never would.

  Even at that, I thought Eckstein would shake his head and say Stack would never go for it, or Universal would never go for it, or NBC would never go for it. But he didn’t. He said it was a very exciting idea, with plenty of room to stretch out.

  So he called the Universal negotiators, and they called my agent, and they made a deal for $7500 for me to script the show, tentatively titled Corridor Without Mirrors.

  (One catch. There is what is called a “cut-off” after the treatment portion of the deal. A script is written in three stages: the story, or “treatment,” a present-tense straight-line of the plot, in about fifteen pages, to let the network continuity people and sponsors and Stack know what I’m going to do with the script; then a first draft; then a final draft. If they don’t like what has been done in the “treatment,” the writer gets cut off, and paid about a grand for what he’s already done. If they dig it, the deal progresses, and there are no further blocks to finishing the script.)

  That is where the history of this project rests right now. Today, the 24th, as I write this, I am about to go out to Universal to sit in on a screening of several segments of the Name series, to get the characterizations of the principals down pat. I will start writing on Monday.

  While this column will not concern itself with the “Corridor Project” every week, from time to time I will bring you up to date, and we can follow, together, the progress of the dream. Will the starry-eyed Ellison get to write an honest script? Will the true word be given? Will the Blue Meanies at the network chop him off at the scruples? Will George Eckstein turn into a ghoul and gut the script? Will Robert Stack have Ellison investigated by Hoover’s Lads?

  Stay tuned to this column for the thrilling next installment.

  And keep your fingers crossed, troops. Here we go again.

  * * * *

  18: 14 FEBRUARY 69

  Hey, Ken, I know I promised to do this week’s installment of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and I know you’re worried about them getting canceled because of bum-rap letters from the scuttlefish out there in the Heartland who are uptighted by denigrations of God, Motherhood and the American Way, and I promise honest to Ba’al that the column I started at your party will appear next week...but this week has been some other kinda crazy, man, and I have got to talk about it now; I think you’ll agree this is of more immediate and dangerous importance. Okay, baby?

  First Tuesday is NBC’s entry in the big anthology documentary sweepstakes; their answer to CBS’s 60 Minutes. (And wouldn’t you know the sonsofbitches would put it on directly opposite 60 Minutes so you have to get cheated whichever one you watch. Would kill the mothers to put it on opposite something like Green Acres so we could have two nights of worthwhile viewing, wouldn’t it!)

  NBC calls the show “a monthly, two-hour journal of news, public affairs and today’s living—leavened with occasional whimsy” and it airs the first Tuesday of the month, at 9:00, on Channel 4. A week ago Tuesday (as you read this) was the second edition, and what I choose to talk about this week does not, I think, fall under the heading of whimsy ... unless the humor be as black as the heart of a torso killer. Is it news? Perhaps. But if it is, it is news that has been withheld from the American viewing public for many years. It is certainly a public affair—and one about which we must instantly take action! For it speaks directly to “today’s living” and the sudden, gruesome cessation of same.

  First Tuesday did a documentary segment on chemical-biological warfare in experimental stages, being conducted all across the United States ...

  ... and a more horrifying, cold-bloodedly insane declaration of disrespect for the basics of life and decency I have never encountered. It was more terrifying than all the Hammer Films horror shows ever conceived. In its pedestrian preparation for the eradication of sentient life on this planet through the use of botulism, anthrax and tularemia, it shrieked of the last extreme of human derangement. Its viciousness makes Jack the Ripper, Richard Speck, Charles Starkweather, Burke & Hare, Bluebeard and Madame Defarge shine as models of rational behavior. Beside the emotionless, rationalizing madmen who are preparing the aerosol sprays of nerve gas and plague, the Boston Strangler becomes a minor character disorder.

  But... I gibber.

  Let me try and relate it rationally, though the mind reels and the teeth chatter and the senses go numb at the consequences of what NBC presented calmly, quietly, seemingly without canard, certainly without editorialization.

  CBW means Chemical-Biological Warfare. It means the use of “vectors”—animals bearing disease germs. It means seeding the atmosphere with anthrax the way US bombers seed the jungles of Viet Nam with defoliating weed-killers. It means spreading plague by aerosol spray. It means winds and air currents carrying the most virulent diseases known to man, killing guilty and innocent alike, indiscriminately. It means, dear God, the sheerest lunacy the concept of overkill has yet produced. It means that by its existence it can be utilized. It means there are actually men on this green good earth—and we saw them on that show—who can gather in conclave and discuss like ribbon clerks pricing bolts of cloth, how many megadeaths one seeding of turaremia equals. It means we have certainly come as far as we can rightfully hope to come without the wrath of all the Gods, dead and alive, the universe has ever known, descending on us.

  I cannot bear to think that I live in a country where this kind of serious experimentation goes on, all in the name of defense against an enemy who is merely human. What a pallid justification for mass murder: the Commies are doing similar research. What do we become if we unleash this most hideous of the Four Horsemen? Do we ennoble ourselves by working our hands in the black death, all to preserve ourselves from the specter of another social system? How can we realistically lay claim to any decency in our “democracy” if we adopt methods of destruction that would make a Genghis Khan blanch?

  Again ... I tremble and shudder and digress.

  Fear does that to me.

  Would that the crew-cut, lupine-faced architects of that damnable nightmare felt a like fear. But apparently they do not.

  As we saw on that documentary, they do not shudder at cramming kangaroo mice in metal containers, spraying them with nerve gas, and watching them die 44 seconds later. They do not cry at the piteous squeals of their lab animals as they jam needles into their underbellies, injecting death into their bloodstreams. They do not pause and consider their humanity as they urge human volunteers to breathe deeply of the disease germs sprayed through the mouthpieces.
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  First Tuesday’s CBW segment was a seemingly-endless compendium of nightmare images. We saw a film made some years ago—and only now released—of school children who had been given over with their parents’ consent (!) for experimentation with germ warfare. Tiny figures, gas-masked and overcoated, hustled into a contamination chamber. We saw a lecturer describing the life-masks we would have to wear ... masks that come in enough sizes to fit persons from the ages of four to eighty. And a basket-carrier affair for tykes under the age of four. All done with aplomb and stately sincerity, as though the lunacy of what they were talking about did not exist.

  And about that word “vector”...

  One CBW experimenter, who had worked on a pilot project for disseminating disease germs via animal carriers, talked quietly and sensibly about having gone to . an island in the Hawaiian chain, an uninhabited island, and turning loose a “vector” studded with diseased ticks. He talked of the “vector” doing this, and the “vector” doing that. And it became the key to understanding the level of debasement to which these “scientists” had descended. Not once did he say “dog” or “rabbit” or “hamster.” He called the creature a “vector.”

  They have encapsulated themselves, denied their gut feelings, for whatever motives they consider good and sufficient. And by dehumanizing the experiments, by using “vectors” instead of “rabbits” or “mice,” they can sleep nights.