The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

by Harlan Ellison

  In case you haven’t heard about the American Film Theatre and what it has laid on for this year, I’ll summarize very briefly, because if there’s one thing I don’t want to do it’s shill for them.

  Mr. Landau—a man whose rep till now has been unbesmirched—came up with the idea of subscription cinema, in much the same fashion as subscription or “hard ticket” theatre. He put together eight films that, in the pre-release publicity touted through American Express (which is where I first heard of it), promised eight evenings of superlative entertainment. Participating movie houses, on their traditionally slow nights, Monday and Tuesday, once a month from October to May, would show the specially-created films to pre-sold audiences. Three seventy-five a seat. Twenty-eight bucks for the series. And what films they are to be! Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh with Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Fredric March; Zero Mostel in Rhinoceros by Ionesco; Alan Bates in Butley…Hepburn, Albee, Scofield, Olivier, Keach, O’Horgan, Frankenheimer…the list of authors, stars and directors is staggering. How could one not love such a golden idea.

  Not I, shouted the Papa Bear, rushing in his check for fifty-six dollars so he could take Lynda to the Encino Theater on Tuesday nights once a month to get dosed up with culture and M*A*G*I*C!! This was a series I didn’t want to have to be waiting for a screening invitation to see. No hoping to be on the reviewers’ “A” list from the Motion Picture Producers Association. Hard cash on the barrelhead. This was a series I wanted to tout to the skies in these columns, without any worry about missing a single presentation. That’ll teach me to be honest. A loathing of payola, and an equally fervent loathing of most of the deadbeats who pretend to be film critics so they can mooch freebie screening passes, motivated the act of support for what I took to be the hottest, most idealistic cinematic project since Welles announced he would make Kafka’s The Trial. And I do not make comparisons with that turkey coincidentally.

  Now, for those of you who may only know your faithful columnist from these pages, or from the books I write, or from the movies and tv I write, let me advise you that I have been a film critic for some many years, with Cinema magazine, with The Staff, and on a free-lance basis for over a dozen rather prestigious publications. I am, as they put it in Jan Dingilian’s office, “accredited.”

  So. You can imagine my horror when I discovered that on Tuesday, October 30th, just two days ago, I was to be not in good old Sherman Oaks, spiffing myself to see The Iceman Cometh at the Encino Theater, but would be starting ten days as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

  Ohmigod, I thought, my flesh crawling, I’ve got to DO SOMETHING. So I checked out the list of member theaters and, yes, there was one in Lawrence. But how to get them to change my tickets? Mariana, my indefatigable assistant, did some phoning around and managed to get in touch with the Ely Landau Organization in New York. Check with Joyce Ingram in L.A., she was told by a nameless individual in New York.

  So I called Joyce Ingram. “Oh God, not another one!” she said, a trifle hysterically, “not another critic who wants to go to a screening!”

  “No, no,” I hastened to advise her, “I’m a critic—I’m an accredited critic—but I’ve bought my own tickets, and all I want is to get them switched to Lawrence, Kansas.”

  Ms. Ingram, who turned out to be a dynamite lady who knows her PR as well as her Ps and Qs, said she had nothing to do with that end of the situation, but if I was a critic, an accredited critic, why then I should be going to a screening. Terrific, I said, is there a screening before I leave town?

  There was an embarrassed silence as deep as the hush at Ultima Thule. “Ms. Ingram?” I said. I thought perhaps she had had a seizure. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here. I wish I weren’t.”

  “You mean they’ve already had the critics’ screening.”

  “No. I don’t mean that at all.”

  “There hasn’t been a critics’ screening.”

  “There hasn’t been any screening.”

  “Oh. Well, when will there be a screening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Now the hush was at my end.

  I tried again. “But there will be a screening, won’t there? I mean, the film goes next Tuesday. This is Wednesday. That’s less than a week. There will be a screening, yes?”

  “There will be a screening, no. I think. I mean, I don’t think. I mean…I simply don’t know.”

  I have never heard such frantic in someone’s voice.

  What that unfortunate human being, saddled with the West Coast publicity job, was trying to say, without once badrapping her employers, was that the Ely Landau Organization was playing the same game as those two nerds who ran the disco I was telling you about. They had scheduled no press or critics’ screening. Not even the PR staff out here had seen the film. Nor was there any evidence forthcoming from New York that they would see the film. Now I don’t know how that hits you, friends, but it seems to me mighty specious reasoning on the part of big-time entrepreneurs to expect their PR people to sell a highly rarefied product like the American Film Theatre’s tony and intellectual product without having glommed the merchandise.

  “But, listen,” I said, hoping I’d misinterpreted the whole thing, “I don’t need a screening, all I need is a change of venue. A screening would be nice, but I’m willing to pay my own way. Who do I contact to get them to shift me from L.A. to Lawrence, Kansas?”

  She suggested I try the New York office again, because all decisions were coming from that sector. She suggested I try Ely Landau himself, and failing that route, I should try Joe Friedman, who was making all the important decisions about publicity from the New York office. I muttered something about the non-existence of Mr. Friedman’s decision-making abilities, and thanked her.

  I hung up, dialed New York, and asked to speak to Mr. Landau. I did not call collect. I was told Mr. Landau was in conference. Okay, then, Mr. Friedman. Mr. Friedman was in conference. Then who’s in charge of Subscriber Relations, I asked. Mr. Walter Reilly, I was told. Okay, then, Mr. Walter Reilly, I said. I’m so easy to get along with I even disgust myself.

  “Mr. Reilly’s office,” a dulcet voice said, finally. But he wasn’t there, either. Nor was his assistant. But the young lady would be glad to help me, seeing as how my Charter Subscription Account number was 5738. (You’ll never know how slavishly grateful I was that I’d gotten a lucky number.)

  I told the operator I’d talk to the young lady, and when we were connected, I poured my heart out. “Accredited!” I kept stressing. She said there was nothing she could do, but if I was a critic, why didn’t I just call Ms. Joyce Ingram in Los Angeles and have her add my name to the critics’ screening list. I tried to tell her that list was on a reality par with Abominable Snowmen, UFOs, The Great Pumpkin and Spiro’s innocence, but she pooh-poohed my protestations and said she was sorry. We were abruptly cut off.

  I called Joyce Ingram back. Her position had grown more untenable since last we’d talked, but by this time we were like old friends. “What’s the matter, Joyce?” I asked. If I couldn’t see my movie, at least I could get in a little practice as a lay therapist.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “I’m being deluged with calls from the press, and I don’t know what to tell them. New York won’t say whether there’ll be a press screening or not.”

  “What’s the matter, are they afraid someone’ll pan the film?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorrier for someone. They were clearly driving that poor woman bananas, and she was trying to do a job for which they’d erected roadblocks of incredible stupidity and ineptitude. I felt I should do something. For her and for me. “Look,” I said, “I’ll try Friedman again. It’s too late today, but I’ll call first thing tomorrow. Maybe if I get him personally, I can let him know how this situation is bumming out the L.A. press.”

  She didn’t urge me to do it, but I could detect
in her politeness a hope that something would pry Mr. Friedman’s decision-maker loose from its freeze-up.

  I tried for three hours to reach Friedman. Mr. Friedman is in conference. Mr. Friedman is in a screening. Mr. Friedman just had a coronary. Mr. Friedman is out having lunch with the Easter Bunny at The Four Seasons.

  Finally, when I’d had enough bullshit from Mr. Friedman’s obviously high-born secretary, a young woman who could give ugly lessons to a diseased moray eel, I told the operator I’d speak to anythehellbody, and I was connected once again with Priscilla Personality, Friedman’s Cerberus, the only living creature who breathed ice crystals. “Mr. Friedman is in a screening,” she said, apparently affronted that I was disturbing the peace and calm of her publicityless world.

  “That’s terrific,” I said, unleashing my scathing wit, “I’m glad somebody gets to go to screenings.” That one sailed past her at 30,000 feet, heading out to sea. “But if you’re trying to alienate a columnist who only wants to praise your damned series, you’re doing a helluva job, Princess.”

  That gave her pause. Maybe she thought I was Rona Barrett. On smoggy days our voices are similar.

  So she asked what she could do to help me, and I ran through my by-now-shopworn compendium of woes. She listened, and when I was done whimpering, she advised me that she had nothing to do with rearranging tickets, that was Mr. Walter Reilly’s area of concern. I said I knew that, but at this point I figured my best bet to see the film and review it here in this column was to be put on a list for a screening, if such a list and such a screening existed, or was in the process of coming into existence. I added that I wrote for Esquire, Playboy and other sterling publications, as well as the newspaper you hold in your hands now. She said she’d have Mr. Friedman call me right back.

  Suffused with my own self-importance, that I, miserable lowly Harlan Ellison, listed in WHO’S WHO and considered by no less an authority than Time magazine as an important writer, Force for Good in Our Times, snappy dresser, terrific dancer and credit to my race…was actually going to receive a call from Joe Friedman, a personage I’d begun to suspect was a fever-dream creation of the Ely Landau Storm Window and Movie Production Company.

  “Call me right back” turned out to be a euphemism. Mr. Friedman not only didn’t call me back, but it wasn’t till the next day, when I called Joyce Ingram to tell her how successful I’d been, and that I’d straighten things out with her boss pronto, that she conveyed a message from the New York office.

  “There will be a critics’ screening, but they advised me that the reviewers for Esquire, Playboy and all the other magazines were, at the moment you called, seeing the film; and there is no room for you at the critics’ screening.”

  I think I started screaming. I’m not sure. I blacked out and only came to minutes later with the mouse sounds of Joyce Ingram peeping on the other end of the line. She was concerned about my health. I was concerned about my health.

  “All I want is to move my goddam tickets to bloody Kansas!” I shouted. She said she understood, but what could she do? “I’ll write a column that’ll make them look like the rude bastards they are,” I promised. She said she understood, but what could she do? Are they trying to turn the press against the series? I asked. She said she didn’t know what to tell me, I wasn’t the only one, there were others, influential others, who were in the same boat, and they were screaming bloody murder. She said it was Friedman’s decision.

  I thanked her and hung up. Then I started thinking: perhaps Friedman’s secretary, the Daughter of Lucrezia Borgia, had gotten it wrong. Maybe she thought I was a ripoff artist masquerading as an Esquire film critic. Not an unreasonable assumption. Bogdanovich has been doing it for some time.

  So I call Friedman’s office again. Person-to-person. He was on the phone. When would he be off? Five minutes. I’ll call back. Five minutes later I tried again. Sorry, said Lizzie Borden, he just stepped into a meeting. Bullshit, I said. Give me Walter Reilly’s office. So I got Reilly’s office again, and got a different woman than the first time. This one said she was Reilly’s assistant, so I told the operator I’d talk to her.

  You must pause to perceive, at this point, that I’d totally forgotten why I was so crazy to see their fucking movie, but like a man who spends his entire life tracking the renegades who slew his mother and baby sister, I was obsessed.

  I told this new voice my problem, including and adding to the barely veiled threats of rampant bad publicity. She checked the theater in Lawrence and found they were not even showing The Iceman Cometh first. They were showing Pinter’s The Homecoming, which I would see when I returned to L.A. where it’s the series selection for November. No help. She suggested I talk to their Mr. Joe Friedman, a paragon of assistance in PR matters, the Young High Mogul of splendid press relations. I thanked her and slashed my wrists.

  So, the point is, I missed The Iceman Cometh. And unless either a miracle is passed or I fall into a time-warp, he ain’t gonna cometh for me noway nohow.

  All of which brings me back to those two nerds who ran the disco with arrogance and lousy public relations, until the moment came when they needed some good karma, and found all they’d stored up was dried fruit and three-dollar bills.

  There is an attitude on the part of those who have a hot thing going, that they can treat you and me and anybody they choose, like a pound and a half of dogmeat.

  So I bring to your attention the American Film Theatre, and the Ely Landau Organization. I have a pretty good idea who reads this column, after all this time writing it for you, and I have a hunch many of you are the ones who’ll be on Mr. Landau’s subscription list, or reviewing his product. I don’t ask that you indiscriminately run him off the road, but suggest merely that if you love me even a little bit, that you take a somewhat more critical look at what the AFT puts before you. And if it doesn’t pleasure you with the proper degree of wonder to repay the adoration this golden idea drew unto itself, that you drop Mr. Landau a note.

  Maybe he doesn’t know what Mr. Friedman and his cannibal herd of toadies are doing. Maybe, if he ever gets out of that screening to which accredited critics aren’t invited, he might like to know. I’ve done my part.

  Or maybe I’ll have more to say about it next month. And the month after that…and the month after that…and…

  INSTALLMENT 39 | 8 NOVEMBER 73

  COLLEGE DAYS, PART TWO

  Two weeks ago I talked about going back to Ohio State to purge my feelings of hatred and revenge against the academic Establishment that had so crippled my spirit as a young man. Another part of that experience, twenty years ago, was my brief and hardly salutary encounter with fraternity life.

  As I said earlier, we are like the chambered nautilus: a snail that has a shell made up of small vaults. It moves from chamber to chamber as it matures, until finally it leaves its shell and dies. But throughout its life it literally carries its past on its back. Each of us is a nautilus: we never really rid ourselves of the adolescent spurs that drove us to become the people, the “adults” we are today. Whether it was living up to your parents’ hopes or fears about your final fate, or getting over a crushing defeat in a love affair, or recouping from a cataclysmic financial setback…whatever it is, long long after the validity or the need of the original situation has been dissipated…still we play to that vanished audience. We carry our past on our backs.

  But occasionally, as it was with my return to OSU to speak before the very Establishment that had valued me as less than rubbish, the Wheel turns and we find ourselves in one of those pivot-points of our existence, a point in space and time where things become very clear, where the trembling moment becomes a scenario, and we realize just how far we’ve come, how divorced in fact we’ve become from the vestigial fears and motivations that still haunt us.

  One such was in relation to my fraternity days, even as brief, even as traumatic as they were.

  I was hardly the fraternity boy type. I was out of a small Ohio town, I was poor,
I was unmannered and awkward and covered these flaws with an arrogance and berserkness that, finally, came off as rank obnoxiousness. But my Mother subscribed to most of the myths and forms of what she thought it took to be a social animal, and she wanted very much that I join a frat. “To make good connections for the future.” I won’t even dwell on the foolishness and speciousness of that proposition.

  Nonetheless, at that stage of life where many paths are tried in hopes of finding the main route, I was rushed by three or four fraternities at State, and finally pledged Zeta Beta Tau.

  ZBT is a national fraternity, with strong chapters at the Big Ten universities. It is a Jewish fraternity, and at Ohio State it was reflective of what I find to be most offensive in the moneyed Jewish community. It was a Shaker Heights mentality fraternity, with the emphases on social position, material manifestations of position—most prominently the fire-engine-red Cadillac convertible—on a Sunday morning you could see all the scungy pledges out Turtle-waxing the actives’ trashwagons—and the membership demonstrated acute attitudes of anti-gentile feeling, outrageous sexism (with special attention given to goyishe sorority girls, especially the stunning ladies of Delta Delta Delta, who were the most amazing gathering of incredible beauties on the campus), and the no-neck disrespect for intellectualism I’ve found rampant among Hollywood producers, many of whom are ex-frat men.

  It was not, to be precise, the most enriching setting in which to place the rough jewel of my personality.

  But I pledged. My reasons were a need to belong to something, to anything at that point, to bulwark my fears against being adrift on a monster campus with a population of over 38,000 students…and to satisfy my Mother. You all know what that’s about. I had been on my own since I’d been thirteen, and I was in no respect a momma’s boy or even notably strong on family relationships. But I felt a need to do something for her, to say thank you and pay some dues. In an inarticulate way, joining ZBT assuaged that need.