Harlan Ellison's Watching

by Harlan Ellison

  In such a year of gasp, wheeze, pant, choke, gimme a sec to let my gorge settle, in such a year Dune is the worst film!??!

  No, gentlefolk, something went wrong. Of a nature that has to do with public and private perceptions. Of a sort that defies logic because, like politics, it is a matter of image. Codification of what happened, of the skewing of expectations, progressed so rapidly and with such economy of action, that if one were given to conspiracy theories one might well take the case of the release of Dune to one's bosom for the sheer clarity of its modus operandi. But let me, for an instant, give you a f'rinstance. Helpful digression. Explanation by example. A bit of storytelling.

  William Friedkin is, in my view, an extraordinary director. There is a subterranean river of dark passion rushing wildly in the subtext of all his films—successful and disastrous—that clearly marks him as an artist almost manic with the need to rearrange the received universe in a personal, newly-folded way. With only two films, The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973 (neither, in my view, Friedkin's most compelling work), he established himself as the box-office Colossus of Roadshows.

  Then he took four years to bring forth an astonishing film called Sorcerer. An honorable (and acknowledged) hommage intense to Clouzot's 1952 classic The Wages of Fear, Friedkin's labors and vision in the jungles of the Dominican Republic—which came close to killing him, so physically near to danger did his pathological involvement force him—produced a motion picture that laid bare the corpus of human compulsion with images that smoldered.

  The film died. It was driven into oblivion to such an extent that nowhere in Pauline Kael's five books of criticism is the movie even mentioned. And the core reasons for its universal (and, not surprisingly, Universal) dismissal can be found in Sorcerer's listing in Halliwell's Film Guide, the basic reference work on cinema (page 761, 4th edition):

  "Why anyone should have wanted to spend twenty million dollars on a remake of The Wages of Fear, do it badly, and give it a misleading title is anybody's guess. The result is dire."

  Dire? Dire!?! Halliwell does not bristle thus at the vile and venal remakes of Stagecoach, King Kong, Cat People, The Jazz Singer, The Thing, The Big Sleep or the 1981 remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man (Woman) as a vehicle for Lily Tomlin, even while acknowledging their failure. But Sorcerer produces uncommon bile in the usually mild-mannered Leslie Halliwell.

  And while my theory of movie crib-death may be all blue sky surmise as regards Dune, so close to the immolation, we can use Kael and Halliwell as indicators of why Friedkin and Sorcerer were summarily dismissed after uncommon savaging, and then extend the premise.

  It was expectation and image. The Wages of Fear was a classic. Friedkin was considered a Johnny-come-lately, a smartass who had done spectacularly well with "popular" films; but by what right did this upstart manifest the hubris to reshape a film held in worldwide esteem? That he made the movie not only with the blessing of old Clouzot, but with the onscreen dedication to what had inspired him; that he made the film at the highest level of professionalism and expertise, rather than at the level of grave-robbing commercialism that keynotes 99 percent of all remakes . . . cut no ice with the critics. They were lying in wait for Billy Friedkin. And they ambushed him. So much for expectations.

  Image. The title of the film was Sorcerer. For those who paid attention to the film, that was the name of the truck driven by Roy Scheider; and it was the recurring trope treated both visually and mythically throughout the picture. But Bill Friedkin was, unfortunately, the director of The Exorcist, and theatergoers went to the movie expecting a hair-raising occult fantasy. Instead, they got a hair-raising action-adventure of doomed men on the run, condemned to a suicidal job. Audiences felt betrayed. The image of the film that had been projected by its title and the resonance with Friedkin's most popular movie, The Exorcist, linked with the a priori animosity of the critics; and Sorcerer had about as much chance of succeeding in the marketplace as Ilse Koch designer lampshades from Buchenwald.

  Worth was evaluated not on intrinsic merit, but through skewed expectations and a misleading image.

  The studio that dumped Sorcerer was Universal. Studio of the Black Tower, where derangement is a way of life.

  In October of last year I was approached by USA Today, the national newspaper, to write a visiting critic's review of Dune. As I was already the film critic of record for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; as I received press screening notices regularly; as I was on good terms (in this symbiotic relationship) with the pr people at Universal; as I had discussed the upcoming film with Frank Herbert and he had advised the publicity people that I'd be doing a critique; as USA Today is a major market for national film publicity and attention by a wide spectrum of potential ticket-buyers; as all of us in the reviewing game had been led to believe Dune was going to get a big push from not only De Laurentiis but from Universal as its distributor, I felt sure I'd be able to take my time with the piece. If the movie was scheduled to open on December 14th, then surely I'd see it late in November.

  But strange things began happening in the Black Tower.

  It was widely rumored in the gossip underground that Frank Price, Chairman of MCA/Universal's Motion Picture Group, and one of the most powerful men in the industry, had screened the film in one or another of its final workups, and had declared—vehemently enough and publicly enough for the words quickly to have seeped under the door of the viewing room and formed a miasma over the entire Universal lot—"This film is a dog. It's gonna drop dead. We're going to take a bath on it. Nobody'll understand it!" (Now those aren't the exact words, because I wasn't there. But the sense is dead accurate. Half a dozen separate verifications from within the MCA organization.)

  Now, when this God above all other gods has a bellyache, all the cherubim start dropping Alka-Seltzer.

  The word went out fast and wide. Or fastly and widely, depending on your Yuppie level. And the panic set in. Of a sudden Dune was a film not to be seen by the laity.

  Reviewers couldn't be trusted. Keep it away from them.

  Screenings were canceled wholesale. Press releases became circumspect. The usually forthcoming pr people at MCA abruptly developed narcolepsy. Something was very wrong. Any time Dune was mentioned, eyes rolled. And the rumors built on an asymptotic curve that had everyone nervous as hell. Then:

  A major filmwriter who had been at one of the sneak screenings for exhibitors reported a conversation he had overheard between Dino De Laurentiis and the owner of an important chain of multiplex theaters, after the film had been run.

  Dino (he reported) had been effusive. It went like this:

  DINO: This is my testament! I can now retire! It is great, it is classic!

  EXHIBITOR: Can you save it?

  DINO (sadly): Maybe.

  Then we all heard that an exhibitors' screening—maybe the one above, maybe another—in New York, when the lights came up, one of the attendees leaped to his feet and screamed at Dino across the theater, "When are you going to stop making shit like this? When are you going to give us a picture we can play that will make some money? Are you trying to kill us?"

  And Dune was in the toilet. Because the priests of the Black Tower, in their panic and paranoia, did what they always do: they prejudged the film and found it dire. Dire. Absolutely. And there would be no screening, not of any kind, not for anyone.

  Somehow, I knew the film would not be the disaster Universal was compelling the rest of the world to believe it would be. I had spoken to Frank Herbert a number of times in late November. He was living in Manhattan Beach, making himself available for prerelease publicity, and he told me, when I asked him, sans bullshit, "How do you like the film, Frank? Between old friends. The real appraisal": "It begins as Dune begins, it ends as Dune ends and I hear my dialogue throughout. How much more could a writer want? Even though I have quibbles—I would've loved to have had David Lynch realize the banquet scene—do I like it? I do. I like it. Very much."

>   So I wanted to like it, too.

  There had been too many intelligent, dedicated people of good faith and enormous talent who had been ground to powder in that sandworm track to dismiss Dune merely on the basis of the industry rumor mill's fervor for movie crib-death. (Of course the rumor mill wanted Dune to founder. If the other studios could cripple one of their big competitors for the Christmas box-office attention, before it ever got out of the starting gate, it would make the chances for their holiday blockbusters all the better. Most of the rumors I got came not from Universal, but from other studios. No bad word was left unsaid; no rock was left unturned; and no creepy crawly was prevented from emerging. But why was Universal wielding the chainsaw on this unborn artifact?)

  Frank called me on the q.t. at the end of November. He told me there was to be a secret screening in projection room #1 at Universal on Friday the 30th, at 2:30 PM. The screening was for the reviewers from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. He did not suggest I sneak in; he only reported the event.

  On that Friday I visited other friends on the lot, and found my way to projection room #1 at 2:15.

  Booker McClay, a decent man, one of the publicists for Universal, was standing by the inner door. He stopped me. We had spoken over the phone, but had never met. I told him who I was, we shook hands. He looked troubled. He knew my credentials as writer, scenarist, critic. He knew of my association with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. When I told him I was doing the review for USA Today, he grew even more troubled. He said I could not go in.

  We talked for a few minutes, with me assuring him I was not there to do a hatchet job. He said it was impossible. I showed him my letter from Jerry Shriver, Assistant Entertainment Editor for USA Today, confirming my assignment. He said it was impossible that I could have known of this screening, and it was impossible . . . seeing the film, that is. I cajoled, I chatted, I reasoned. Booker McClay is a good guy, and he said he would call Frank Wright, National Publicity Director for MCA, who was at that moment only a few hundred yards away up in the Black Tower.

  Booker went into the screening room, which was empty, as Variety and The Reporter had not yet arrived. He was extremely upset. It was clear to me that he wanted to let me in to screen Dune, but the fear was palpable on the lot. And here was this wild cannon insisting on being given access to The Unviewable!

  I followed Booker inside, and stood at a distance from him as he phoned up to the Tower, to Frank Wright. When Booker got Wright, and spoke to him earnestly and softly about the situation, though I was thirty feet from the receiver I heard Frank Wright shout, "What the hell is he doing there? How did he find out about this? Get him out of there! No, absolutely not!"

  Booker spoke again, hung up the phone, and turned to me. He tried to be ameliorative. It was obvious he'd been put in a shitty position, and didn't want to alienate me. But this was a situation that was to be governed by the laws of the Stalag. I had to leave. He said that Frank Wright had set up this screening only for Variety and The Reporter, and they had promised to hold the reviews before publishing. He said Frank Wright had said I needed stronger accreditation.

  Somehow I managed to get Booker to let me call Frank Wright. Seeing his career flashing before his eyes, but too decent a guy simply to come all over authoritarian, Booker let me use the phone in the screening room. I called Wright, and spoke to him, saying USA Today was an important medium of pr for the film, and I was inclined to write well of the film as I now thought about it, and I would appreciate it if he'd make an exception in this case. He said if he'd heard from Jack Mathews, the West Coast entertainment editor of USA Today, he could have done it. But as he hadn't . . . he had to refuse. He was testy about it, but as polite as he could be, I guess, under the circumstances.

  I said, "What if Jack Mathews calls you in the next five minutes and verifies my assignment, and asks you to let me see the film?"

  He thought a moment, then said he figured that would be okay. I hung up, called Mathews at the L. A. office of the newspaper, told him what was happening, and he said he'd call Wright on the other line, that I should hold on. Then, as I waited, I heard him call Wright, heard him speak to Wright, and received Mathews's assurance that everything had been fixed.

  "Wait there for Wright's call back," he said. I thanked him, hung up, and relayed the chain of command to Booker, who seemed vastly relieved.

  Ten minutes later (Variety and The Reporter had arrived) the phone rang, Booker picked it up, listened, said okay, and hung up. He turned to me, shook his head, and said, "Frank says you can't see the picture."

  I left.

  But if that was what happened to a reviewer from something as important to Universal as USA Today, do you begin to understand how, before the film ever opened, the critical film community was made to feel nervous, negative and nasty about Dune?

  On Wednesday, December 12th, 1984—just two days before the rest of the world gained access to Dune after fifteen tortuous years—I and a carefully-filtered audience of tv pundits, film critics, magazine reviewers and hangers-on were seated in the Alfred Hitchcock Theater on the Universal City Studios lot, and I listened to all the idle chat around me. It's bad. It's dead. It's confusing. It's gonna die. Dune's in, Dune's out.

  At 8:30 PM they rolled the film.

  When it ended, I took my notes, raced back to my office and wrote the review. The next morning, the 13th, I dictated the entire review via long-distance telephony to one of USA Today's copyeditors. The review ran in conjunction with a critique by Jack Mathews on Friday the 14th, the day Dune opened.

  Here, reprinted with permission of USA Today, is—at long last—what I originally wrote, with everything that was cut for space reinstated. This is what I thought of Dune, and this is what I said for "the nation's newspaper" and an audience of 1.3 million readers who would see my words before they rushed toward or away from the nearest theater showing Dune.

  Only the demon specter of George Lucas looms between Dune and millions in box-office profits.

  After seven years of having its senses jackhammered by witless space adventures like Star Wars and its endless clones, the American filmgoing audience may have lost the ability to appreciate a movie demanding an attention-span greater than that required for a Burt Reynolds car crash. But for those whose brains have not been turned to guava jelly by special effects and cartoon plots, Dune is an epic adventure as far ahead in this cinematic genre as 2001: A Space Odyssey was in 1968.

  It is the Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation of science fiction films. Filled with ideas and art-directed with a wonderful baroque look, Dune is a complex symphony of mystic grandeur. In its way as compellingly surreal as something Buñuel or Fellini might conjure up, this faithful translation of the enormously popular Frank Herbert novel offers the wonder of secrets within secrets; a congeries of Chinese puzzle boxes opening into visual and intellectual realms the world of cinema has never before revealed.

  Simply put, Dune is filled with magic! And like an encounter with a wizard, the film stuns normal perceptions, demanding a sense of wonder and close attention.

  Scene after scene presents fresh images, cosmic concepts, plot twists and innovations for which standard filmviewing attitudes are wholly inadequate. And therein may lie the essence of the nightmare for director David Lynch, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis, and Universal Studios.

  The very strengths of Dune contain the seeds of its possible failure in 1984. And it is a casebook study of why most science fiction films of recent memory have been so sophomoric. If one goes to see a western, no explanation is needed to set up the background. See a man in a Stetson with a bandanna over his face, lying in wait with a Winchester, and you know the Wells Fargo stagecoach will be coming down that road in a moment. See a patient being wheeled into a hospital on a gurney, and you know that in mere seconds a noble physician will be performing a tracheotomy. Boy and girl meet cute, and you know love and laughs are on the way.

  But science fiction postulates
worlds that might be, but have never been. So everything has to be explained. And with a devious, imaginative story involving four planets, warring Imperial households, alien technology and deeply mystical concepts about our need for messiahs . . . even the smallest details must be explicated. Can an audience corrupted by the soundtrack of an explosion in the airless vacuum of deep space retool its viewing habits to appreciate a film of such complexity?

  There are trade-offs that may make it more difficult. In exchange for scope and grandeur, the enormity of vast forces in conflict, the color and fascination of alien places we have never seen, Dune sacrifices that which science fiction has too often jettisoned: characters whose hearts we know, humor and wit, insights into the human condition. For all its heroes who are competent and heroic beyond measure, for all its villains so malefic that they make Darth Vader no more ominous than a mugger, Dune has no Rocky or Chariots of Fire sprinters to root for. Because we did not need to have the Civil War explained to us, Gone with the Wind could concentrate on the travails of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler.