Harlan Ellison's Watching

by Harlan Ellison

  But in the case of any of the above who can be termed "together," what is the impetus?

  Letting an interview, if it's done properly, can only serve to unveil the inner soul of the celebrity. (Done at the usual level of interviews it remains little more than movie fanmagazine frippery, gossip, press release PR puff bullshit.) And who, among all thinking, feeling celebrities, wishes the soul unveiled? Masochism notwithstanding, it becomes an exercise in futility for interviewer and interviewee.

  To do an interview properly, the writer must hang out with the subject for a period of time, to get the feel of lifestyle, to see the subject when he or she exists in unguarded moments, to find a thematic hook on which to hang a piece that will burn with veracity and insight. At least that is the method I've found workable; the only method.

  For in each interview I've done (and because of the time and outlays of personal energy involved I've purposely done only a few in my seventeen years as a professional) there has come a moment, an instant in time, in which I've been able to see directly to the core of the subject. At least, in my arrogance and pride in craft, I believe I've seen that burning core. It came in the high desert beyond Thousand Palms, in 120° heat with Steve McQueen; it came in a noisy nightclub in Texas watching Jackie Wilson perform as I got the key to my piece on Three Dog Night; it was in the death cell at San Quentin when I perceived the parameters of the insane equation called Ronald Fouquet.

  But short of such commitments, it seems to me virtually impossible to come back from a subject's world and ambience with anything but superficialities. All one gets is an encounter with the subject's public face. One asks questions one hopes are no more banal and familiar than those asked by a thousand other interviewers on the publicity circuit; one tries to establish a reality with the subject in hopes he or she will identify and reveal something fresh and meaningful; one prays for the moment of unconscious revelation.

  In a one-hour luncheon conversation, with a studio publicity man in attendance, nothing can be gained. There is enrichment neither for celebrity nor for interviewer, and hence, no enrichment for readers of the interview.

  So the second question is: Why did you go to interview Peter Boyle?

  The answer is twofold. First, and quite honestly foremost, I wanted to meet and possibly make friends with Boyle. There are a few people whom one sees from afar, who seem to have a reality, a substance to them that demands acquaintanceship. It's a presumption, of course, on a moral par with calling a studio casting director to introduce you to a beautiful girl you've seen in a film. It's intrusion. But acceptable, within limits, because the studio and the celebrity are seeking promotion. There is a semisquamous give-and-take, a bargaining, an exchange of services.

  I, the undersigned, wanted to meet Peter Boyle, for my own selfish needs of friendship.

  But the second reason is how I justified it. Boyle—as my review of Steelyard Blues accompanying this article reveals—is, in my estimation, one of the finest actors this country has produced in the last twenty years. And so, give-and-take again, I would trade my need to meet Boyle for a (I hoped) informative and revealing piece on a talent worthy of attention.

  That is why I went to meet Boyle and Warner Bros. press representative Vernon White for lunch at the Aware Inn, in the Valley.

  What came out of that hour is very little.

  I hasten to confess the fault was mine, neither Boyle's nor White's. Knowing what I've said above to be true about quick interviews, I should have either advised them I was not going to write a piece on Boyle, or committed the time to following along behind the actor for a day or so, circumstances permitting. But I did neither, and so herewith offer what few perceptions I did come up with, hence terming them a "sort of" an interview.

  (And being painfully conscious of how me-oriented such half-assed non writing can be, I'm reminded of the terrible and dishonest piece Rex Reed once wrote for Esquire—a terrible and dishonest magazine—on Warren Beatty. Reed could not get his interview, was put off, was shunted from PR man to PR man and finally did a hatchet-job on Beatty to the tune of how put-upon he, Reed, had been in H*O*L*L*Y*W*O*O*D. I swear to you I will try to avoid such calumny in this article, but be compassionate.)

  The studio limousine was parked at the curb on Ventura Boulevard, the chauffeur pacing up and down, all the signs that this was but one more quick-stop on the flurrying radio and TV interview circuit, to be dispensed with as quickly as possible so the star could be whisked off to his next nameless stop. I was already late for the lunch and I felt no more secure on arrival than a sinner at the Big Gate.

  Boyle and White were seated at a table near the window and the introductions were about par: White effusive out of some familiarity with my work and the needs of his job, Boyle pleasant but reserved, waiting to see what this encounter held.

  We began circling each other.

  Boyle doesn't look like a bird—he's round and balding and somatotypically Everyman-ish—but his movements are birdlike: bright-eyed, beaky, sharp and quick. That was my first impression: that he was avian, hanging miles above the world, tracking the passage of his dinner far below. Subsequent conversation proved it to be a not inaccurate observation on my part; the part of Eagle in Steelyard Blues could not have gone to a more perfect player.

  Boyle is much more Eagle than ever he was Joe.

  I handed each of them a copy of the review of the film. They read it quickly. "You're wrong about the script," Boyle said. "Ninety percent of what you saw on the screen was in that script." That stopped me. I'd gone out on a limb in the review, for the first time suggesting the actors had had more to do with a film's success than the usually unsung writer.

  "Even the changes of costume, the human fly business, that Marlon Brando takeoff? That was in the script?" I couldn't be that wrong.

  "All in the script."

  At moments like that I regretted I wasn't a drinker.

  "Even the scene where I was dressed as a carpenter, that was in the script." He needn't have rubbed it in. "The walking through the window, even the glass-chewing, that was all written." The man had no mercy. "I did the mugging behind the window and the barking like a dog, but just about everything else you saw the writer gave us." I had visions of rewriting the review to avoid looking like a schmuck, at least to myself. Then I looked up from my note pad at Boyle. He was smiling.

  Under that scruffy mustache was a gentle smile; and only for a moment did I see where the altered angle of that smile might become the expression of a psychotic racist named Joe or a noble lunatic named Eagle. Boyle meant nothing by the smile, probably didn't even know he was wearing it. He was merely passing time, talking a little small talk, fulfilling his obligation to the company store.

  We rambled on together, passing each other in conversation, touching briefly at points where informational-load was transshipped: though the cameras didn't linger on them, the posters in Eagle's room in the nuthouse were Boyle's idea, tokens of the human fly's attitude toward life . . . Meher Baba, a smiling Don't Worry face, the Amazing Spider-Man; the order in which he'd made films since Joe . . . T. R. Baskin, The Candidate, Steelyard Blues, and the unreleased Slither, Dime Box and The Friends of Eddie Coyle; one of his heroes, someone he wanted to meet . . . Myron Nelson of Boise, Idaho, a man who rescues wounded birds and befriends them, everything from blind eagles to clawless hawks. I listened hard; time was running away from our hour, and I had the feeling we might never pass this way again.

  I asked him about acting. About being Joe and what had followed. He sketched at stories of encounters, of casual horrors with those who had seen him as Joe and admired him, of those who had seen him as Joe and despised him. Of the few who had realized he was simply an actor playing a role. Of the night he had appeared on the Johnny Carson show and come to the realization that he wasn't there to be interviewed as Peter Boyle, the actor, but to perform as Joe, as some kind of primitive entertainment. "It was a shock. For a long time after Joe I couldn't play any violent role
s. I was offered scripts, some of them excellent, but I couldn't do it. That was a bad time for me. Joe was the pure pre-Fascist man, straight out of Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Did you ever read it?"

  I looked back at him, pen poised over note pad. "Is that Wilhelm or Theodor?" He made a little birdlike move with his head and looked at me differently. I think he knew.

  "No, I never read it," I said.

  For an instant we were playing with each other, the way two men who secretly fancy themselves intellectuals play with each other. One, two, riposte and retreat. Then I had his public face again.

  Thoughts on acting: "I act the way Mies van der Rohe talked about 'less is more.' An actor has to let himself be watched. I sit here and let the walls watch me, the chair watch me, the table watch me." I stared at him like a bird. I have never understood what actors were talking about when they got into all that "space" and "less is more" talk. It seems to make them feel good, though. I just report it.

  There wasn't much more. We parted, and he took a couple of my books with him. I hope they don't wind up with the Gideon Bible in a dresser drawer in some Midwestern city on his next PR stop for the film. I didn't get my hook or my burning insight. At one point I thought I did, but when I got back to the typewriter I couldn't make it hang together. It had something to do with public faces, with masks, and about how much tougher it must be for Boyle to project those masks. They keep casting him as loonies of one sort or another, but he's apparently a simple and direct man, a good actor, and neither a Joe nor an Eagle at heart. But then again, all I had lunch with was a polite public face, a gentle and intelligent mask, so I have no way of knowing.

  And lacking that knowledge, I can form no opinions.

  Perhaps that's as it should be. Perhaps Boyle is having it just the way he wants it. Lautrec once ventured, "One should never confuse the artist with the art." Perhaps Boyle understands that to remain a private person he must present the pleasant, public face and by the magician's misdirection of a talented actor force those who would go beyond the performances to the performer, to settle for the better part of Boyle: his on-screen portrayals. Perhaps interviewers ought to mind their own goddam business and leave audiences to simmer in their own morbid curiosity. Perhaps all there ever was and all there will be of Peter Boyle is what he offers us in darkened theaters.

  But never again, a fake lunch under false pretenses.

  The Staff/February 16, 1973

  3rd INSTALLMENT

  Cinematically, the most stunning thing happening currently is the cycle of New Hungarian Cinema on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Circumstances conspired to prevent an earlier broadside for this exceptional series of films, thus killing your chances to see the first three programs, but tonight (Friday 23 February) and tomorrow you can catch the fourth, fifth and sixth bills; the seventh and eighth next weekend. If you never listen to me again, do yourself a favor and cancel whatever else you have going, and don't miss this rich and bewilderingly varied testament to the health and muscularity of the Hungarian film industry.

  To whet your imagination let me tell you about the first two films in the cycle, one a fourteen-minute short of almost heartbreaking insight and Kafkaesque surrealism, the other a dream feature that reminds one of the first bold uses of color by Fellini and Ophuls.

  Student Love is the short film. The story is deceptively simple . . . one of those ideas that seems so obvious upon viewing, one wonders why it has never been done before: a rural movie house, the audience sparse, a film of saccharine, adolescent romance. Suddenly the film breaks. The lights go up. The audience waits patiently a few minutes, then begins clapping, jeering, demanding satisfaction. From the shadows emerge first a silent woman who stares back at them: the assistant manager. Then the manager. Nothing can be done. The film cannot be repaired. They will be given passes to come back the next night. We want our money. We will give you passes. But the film tomorrow night will be a different film . . . we want our money . . . or we want to see the end of the film!

  A semi-obese woman of middle years suddenly appears and says, "I will tell you how the movie ends." The audience is intrigued. They put a chair up on the stage in front of the blind screen. And the old woman begins telling how the film ends. But it is not the idyllic love story the audience wanted. It slowly turns into a nightmare of loss and shame and degradation. The woman's face is a special wonder, gentle readers. It cannot be described here with even the remotest accuracy. Pressed to explain the face and the expressions that consume it as she tells her heartbreaking story, I would use metaphor, and make references to the patina of sorrow left in the character lines of the face of one who has lost youth, lost expectations, but not lost dreams. Could the story the woman is telling not be the unseen film but a paradigm for her own life? One is not told. The audience rejects the ending, tries to retell it for itself . . . the short ends enigmatically, the old woman still sitting on the stage, the audience unsettled, having undergone a disturbing experience.

  And by extension we, the other audience, have undergone a doubly disturbing experience. In fourteen short minutes director Gyorgy Szomjas and the film's scenarist (whose name, sadly, sadly, is unknown to me) have compelled us to re-examine the act of moviegoing. We have not been permitted—as the audience in the film has not been permitted—to go merely for escapism. We have been drawn into the vortex of life and its pain, its unutterable anguish. Moviegoing is traditionally a fleeing from the real world into fantasy realms. Go to the movie and forget your cares for two hours. But not this time. In fourteen minutes the condition of sorrow and loss has been laid open and it is our own viscera we see.

  If by the above you perceive that this short film made its mark on your reviewer, more than even the longer and more technically adroit feature with which it was shown . . . you perceive correctly.

  I have no idea if this film will be released commercially in Los Angeles, but if it isn't, stalk it across the world. Find it. See it. You will not soon forget it.

  By comparison, the full-length feature Sinbad that accompanied Student Love fares well—for it is a visual and sensual cinematic revel, a celebration of diffused colors—but only because it is such an evocative piece of film art.

  A lesser effort would have been washed from the memory instantly before the potency of that little black-and-white, fourteen-minute wonder.

  But Sinbad is a stream-of-consciousness journey through the last moments of a dying roué's memories . . . a gallery of a thousand brilliantly-pigmented paintings. The women he loved, the places he moved through, the meals he ate, the emotional crises he survived, the billions of false sentiments he used to put his victims on their backs. Each one lovingly examined with an incredible visual eye that glances quickly but misses no detail, each one turned in the imagination like a faceted jewel, seen from many angles, returned to in the mind's view again and again . . . without genuine understanding but rich in the detritus of memory. Like the marrow bone Sinbad eats in one exquisite series of scenes, the memories of this Don Juan's affairs never seem to be wholly emptied of their aftertaste. There is always a bit of succulence to be savored.

  Director/writer Zoltan Husarik, forty-one years old and offering this as his first motion picture effort, reveals himself to be a man with the talent to expand the film form: his use of color is breathtaking, startling, variegated and unforgettable; his story seems jumbled, erratic, non-cohesive, but when the film ends one realizes there was coherency in totality. One leaves the theater having seen into the smoldering, remorseless core of a certain sort of human being.

  And if one accepts Faulkner's statement " . . . the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat" as the truth, then the gift of Husarik is a precious and invaluable one.

  Again, this reviewer has no idea whether after its museum tour this film (and the others) will be released commercially, but if the opportunity eve
r presents itself to see Sinbad, you miss it at your own risk of loss.

  Michael Webb and Ronald Haver of the L.A. County Museum of Art's film program department are to be commended for their courage and foresight in bringing this outstanding cultural and entertainment cycle to our city. They've already been rewarded with three weeks of sellout audiences (making your efforts to gain admittance that much more difficult), but for the film buff seeking enrichment beyond escapism, there is no reward great enough.

  Go, at once! Get tickets for the remaining programs. You will thank me for chivvying you.

  Along with our sense of societal self-loathing, concomitant with our shame at racism, inhumanity, warmongering and profligacy, we the American people have recently been lusting after films about amoral anti-heroes. As if we were seeking, in visual explications of the utterly amoral and despicable, some catharsis: a release from the awfulness of our own corrupt natures by examinations of fictional counterparts incredibly more debased than ourselves through the logistics of fantasy manipulation. Some of these films have become classics: Hud, A Clockwork Orange, Little Mother, The Godfather: because they were made with Art and Understanding. Others, as The Unholy Rollers, The Getaway and The King of Marvin Gardens, have failed—however interestingly—because they chose to deal with the superficial, sensational aspects of that exhibited amorality.