An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  Gee, I don’t know why the Committee looked on that suggestion with horror and revulsion. Can’t understand, simply cannot understand why Ray Bradbury and gentle Arnold Peyser looked sick. Don’t know no way to figure why Arthur Knight and Bill Froug got green. Why Rivkin withdrew a dinner invitation.

  What the hell’s the matter with them?

  Are they censors?

  See you next week.

  —————LETTERS—————

  Dear Editor:

  Please edge Mr. Ellison’s voice out.

  —Ginny Bugay,

  Santa Barbara

  Dear Editor:

  Harlan Ellison reminds me of a reformed alcoholic. The self righteous, cutesy, “dramatic” (his words, not mine) little estuaries he drivels on about the brutalization of women got the depth of a dry lake bed.

  Wasn’t it he who once wrote a story (a great story) about man’s best friend getting eaten by man’s best friend? (Or was it the other way around?)

  Brutalization of women. What is that? Is that what my ex-old lady meant last Tuesday when she told me she was leavin’ me for a better piece of mind? Leavin’ me ’cause I was too hard to deal with? Don’t you see, man, they need to be brutalized! Otherwise they don’t have anything to fight for.

  Remember Ann Lombardo (back in the days when Harlan was really writin’ some fuckin’ inventive, out there, dynamite shit)? That woman could sing, huh? All those notes she hit from her toes, did she get that depth ’cause some writer with a guilty conscience pulled a grandstand play in a box filled with human pencils and pens and blank sheets of paper? No, man, she got that way by being brutalized (and reading original stuff, and maybe some drugs).

  So Harlan should take it easy, use his imagination…know what I mean? Like how about a sequel to A Boy and His Dog? How about something with some juice to it. I mean what happened? Cut the bullshit and give us the real thing. The girls are doin’ all right, they’ll get along without him. OOOOPsssss…the phone’s ringing. Gotta go. Maybe it’s my ex-old lady wanting to go a few more rounds. Meanwhile…see ya…I got to feed my dog.

  —Randy Holland,

  Malibu

  Dear Editor:

  Harlan Ellison is a whiner disguising himself as a morally outraged citizen. I hadn’t realized until three weeks ago that Alan Alda was so superbly rivaled. Fuck, if he doesn’t like knife-kill flicks (I don’t), then don’t go (I don’t). It’s the best protest he can register. Of course, it won’t get him much attention. And what, pray tell, is the point of his articles? He is getting to it, one hopes. I hate to think of seeing his “ever so suave” photo weekly. (Looking forward to some Ginger Varney pix, though. Oh…I’m sorry. Was that sexist?)

  If you could turn all that anger of his on to some relevant topic of the real world, like police killings or poverty, you’d have something going. Too much to hope for, I guess. So, since I’m not likely to ever see it, tell me, Harlan, how many times did Death Valley make you puke?

  —John Blackman,

  Los Angeles

  Interim memo

  What follows is a selection of published letters from the reprint (October 1982) of the knife-kill columns; and a rather spirited response by your faithful columnist to said letters. They are offered in the spirit of further proving the correctness, in another context, of former British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s observation: “I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.”

  LETTERS

  Not A Speck of Taste

  Though flawed and derivative, Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is a fascinating and ultimately moving film. The climax, which evokes the profound sadness Poe discussed in his essay on The Raven, reaffirms De Palma as one of the greatest and most deeply human figures in popular cinema.

  It’s not surprising that Harlan Ellison hates the film, since it is well-documented that he has not a speck of taste. But for him to attack it so stridently for its violence, one would at least expect that Ellison’s own work is untainted by exploitative bloodletting. But this is not so. Here’s a typical example, from “The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World”: “He found a woman bathing, and tied her up with strips of her own garments, and cut off her legs at the knees and left her still sitting up in the swirling crimson bath, screaming as she bled away her life. The legs he took with him.” Talk about your concerted attacks on females!

  Am I taking this out of context? Of course I am. Was Ellison judging Blow Out out of context when he walked out on the film? Of course he was. Fair is fair.

  By quoting the above passage, my intention is not to discredit Ellison as an author. I just read “Shatterday,” and I absolutely loved it. But as a critic, face it, Ellison is the pits.

  —Joe Zabel,

  Youngstown, Ohio

  Anti-Horror Film Rantings

  While I agree that many of the spate of horror films released lately have been abominable, I cannot let Harlan Ellison’s anti-horror film rantings go unanswered.

  Let me make my objections point by point:

  (1) Ellison, the self-appointed personification of humanism, describes the audience with whom he shared a viewing of The Omen as “creeps, meatheads, clods, fruitcakes, nincompoops, amoeba brains, yoyos, yipyops, kadodies, and clodhoppers” and then goes on to make snide comments as to their personal hygiene because he doesn’t share their appreciation of the film. I personally dislike The Omen, but do not feel compelled to viciously attack those who do. I guess that I am not as good a humanist as Ellison.

  (2) Ellison, the champion of feminism, attacks a young woman in the audience solely on the grounds that he doesn’t like the young man she was with. The young man, in turn, provokes Ellison’s contempt because he reminds him of the “sort” he has had unpleasant run-ins with in the past.

  (3) Ellison describes the audience laughter at the ludicrous decapitation scene in The Omen as “the lowest point I’ve ever reached in loathing of my species.” Worse than Auschwitz, Harlan? Worse than My Lai or Beirut? You’ve been out of touch with the real world too long, Ellison. The fact is that The Omen is a ridiculous movie that elicits laughter by its ineptitude. The decapitation scene is so poorly done that all but the most self-righteous viewers find it silly.

  (4) As for Ellison’s snide attack on what he likes to call “knife-kill movies” (an inherently prejudicial term), he is guilty of tarring with the same brush both worthwhile and worthless films. If Dressed to Kill belongs in the “knife-kill” category, doesn’t Taxi Driver as well? Or Apocalypse Now? Chinatown? Of course, it is not fashionable to attack Scorsese, Coppola, or Polanski, while it is open season on De Palma.

  (5) The charge that appreciation of gory special effects calls one’s sanity into question is so outlandish that it needs no rebuttal.

  (6) Ellison’s blind hatred of Brian De Palma leads him to abandon any semblance of journalistic responsibility. His claim that Dressed to Kill and Blow Out contain scenes of “Females burned alive, hacked to ribbons, staked out and suffocated slowly, their limbs taken off with axes, chainsaws, guillotines, threshing machines, the parts nailed up for display” is simply false.

  (7) Ellison is like a reformed alcoholic who cannot abide the thought of someone else taking a drink. His paranoia of misogyny is so intense that it leads him to abandon any attempt to view the subject of horror films objectively.

  (8) Ellison states, deprecatingly, of horror films, “They are the twisted dreams from the darkest pit in each of us.” Of course they are, isn’t that the point? Doesn’t that quote apply to Dracula, The Wolfman, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

  (9) Ellison’s claim that Halloween II contains scenes “in which kids bit into apples filled with razor blades” is not true. It is not known to me whether Ellison is lying, or if he is criticizing films he has not seen. Neither is considered worthy of a writer of Ellison’s stature.

  (10) As I am not a member of the Writer’s Guild Film Society it would not be proper for
me to comment on its internal affairs. I do feel however, that Ellison’s self-righteous views on censorship are open to criticism. Why is it wrong for Jerry Falwell to attack the morality of those who wish to see films he disapproves of, but it is all right for Ellison to call into question the sanity of those who do not share his aesthetic viewpoint?

  By making these attacks on horror films during a period when demands for censorship are mounting, Ellison puts himself in the position of a man pouring gasoline on a fire. While bemoaning the spread of the flames.

  —Neal Harkness

  Roseville, Michigan

  Harlan’s Courage

  I want to congratulate [the “magazine”] on its 50th Anniversary, and for its decision to run Harlan Ellison’s “An Edge In My Voice.” I’ve missed his thought provoking column since the demise of Future Life. His say-it-like-it-is journalism fits nicely into your monthly package and I hope the column has found a new home.

  Since the Ellison interview I have collected a number of his books and have done a lot of reading on the man himself. I only wish I had the inner courage Harlan possesses to speak my mind and demand notice. I am not so outgoing, so it is nice he is so willing to share his personal adventures and crusades. Perhaps he can inspire us all to demand a better tomorrow.

  My first exposure to his work was, coincidentally, in the first issue of Playboy I bought in March of 1979. As he states in the introduction to “All the Birds Come Home to Roost,” it is one of his finest and most dramatic stories to date. The pain and fear presented affected me deeply at the time I read the story, and still do when I think about his tortured soul.

  If his column is here to stay, I would suggest alternating his essays with short stories every few months for variety. I really want to read some of his older works that are now out of print. We need a publication to revive that material.

  I am eagerly working to expose uninformed people about Mr. Ellison’s writings and have recruited at least one new fan to his legion.

  Before I close, may I make a suggestion? I live a long way from a comics shop, so I have to purchase direct sales from my cousin 125 miles away in Denver. It would be very helpful if you could list prices of special items on your checklists, as it is very hard to guess amounts which depend so much on which stock paper the individual publishers decide to print on.

  I would be interested in reading a review of the “How-To-Draw Tips from the Top Cartoonists” being advertised in this month’s comics. I am a hopeful cartoonist for the future, who is greatly aided by books on comic book art, but my $11 comes hard. Perhaps one of your resident reviewers could shed some light on the book.

  Also, how does the advertised “Official 1983 Price Guide to Comic Books” compare with Overstreet’s? The price is right if the quality is up to par.

  —Dean A. Boeff

  Sterling, Colorado

  You Are Not Alone

  Amid your usual selection of multi-syllabic elitism and breast beating came an eloquent, touching and enervating text, that being Harlan Ellison’s “Face-to-Face With the Beast in a Place With No Windows.” His point has been made before, most notably by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert; yet, in no way has the point of overstatement and wretched excess been reached, and I applaud his reiteration of the problem and his fresh insights on its growth.

  I, too, lament the turn a once responsible genre has taken. It is painful to watch directors like Carpenter and De Palma make promising starts and then descend to pits of filth because it’s an easier row to hoe. Suspense equals blood and gore is not a correct equation. Suspense is Jaws, or Psycho, not Blow Out or Tattoo.

  I saw Tattoo. I thought it might be a suspenseful battle of wits and of wills between captive and captor. Silly boy! It was just torture, for both the victim and the audience. The film, in a way, was even worse than the slasher films, because the victim would be put through some gruesome torture and then would be deprived of the merciful release of death; they’d just run another torture on her.

  And I stayed! I stayed through that whole picture, praying that the director would pull a double-reverse and put something interesting up there. I kept thinking no one could let something this bad go out. As many hands as it had to go through, surely someone should have said no. Even bad films have something going for them, even if it’s just their own unique badness. This film had nothing, no reason to live, no excuse to be shown. When the credits finally came, I found myself beat down into my seat, breathing a sigh of relief that I was still reasonably whole.

  Do not still your voice, Mr. Ellison. Though this, too, is a cycle in cinema that will one day be consigned to the ghetto of drive-ins where it won’t hurt anyone, the day must be hurried in getting here. Just when I think that blessed day has arrived, another works its way out of the woodwork. Just last Thursday I was feeling that confidence. Then Friday came, and with it, The Sender and Halloween III. Keep plugging, Mr. Ellison. It may seem one against the many, but you are not alone.

  —Bill C. Kropfhauser

  Columbus, Ohio

  Harlan Ellison replies

  Harkness should be held aloft in one of those Stri-Dex pimple pad commercials as a classic example of what results from prolonged intellectual self-abuse. Hair is obviously growing all over his brain. (1) I am merely a Humanist, not the personification of same. A subtle difference that escapes Harkness, a sophomoric refutationist who clearly cannot distinguish between the message and the manner of presentation of the message. Whatever self-assertive aspects of my personality he finds threatening—possibly because he envies those qualities—they blind him to the cogency of what is being said. It’s a flaw in himself that Harkness should try to deal with, for his own good. He’s correct, however, in his assertion that he isn’t as good a Humanist as I. (2) Likewise, I am a Feminist, not a champion of Feminism. Feminism (which lad Harkness apparently finds a threatening concept) doesn’t need me to champion it. But advocacy of Feminism does not mean blind adulation of all females, even as one’s publication in something like [the “magazine”] need not necessarily signify toleration of muddleheads like Harkness who read it. Observations on the behavior of the young man and woman in question were made solely on their behavior. This is accepted procedure in judging lower forms of animal life. (3) One shouldn’t have to honor the devalued coin of such non sequitur silliness as this by trashing its proponent, but simply in the spirit of attempting to make Harkness’s intolerance a tot more pervious, the following common sense: I was not personally in attendance at Auschwitz, at My Lai, or even Beirut. I was in attendance at that screening of The Omen. And while no doubt the depth of my feeling was subliminally informed by such atrocities—as well as those we know as Babi Yar, Kent State, the Russian Great Purge of 1936–38 and Wounded Knee—surely even someone as disingenuous as Harkness will grant that one doesn’t preplan which moment of anguish at man’s inhumanity to man will be the one that triggers the heartfelt wail. (4) Only someone groping desperately to discredit another’s emotional / intellectual position drags in irrelevant considerations. Scorsese’s films are about something, most particularly Taxi Driver. The film in no whichway can be called a knife-kill film. It is deeply, intelligently concerned with a close and uncompromising analysis of a social ill, which is why Hinckley is foreshadowed in the film and becomes its self-fulfilling prophecy. De Palma’s oeuvre, (as completely as I can recall all entries) from the first (and excepting Phantom of the Paradise, Get to Know Your Rabbit, and Carrie) has, in grotesquely large measure, been a vehicle to show the brutalization of women for no nobler purpose than the titillation of ghouls masquerading as innocent filmgoers. Get the difference? Kopeesh? Scorsese’s King of Comedy further develops his scrutiny of the Taxi Driver social phenomenon, and like the former film is Art of a high order. It’s a shame that, again, Harkness cannot make the imperative distinction. Dragging in Coppola is simply flummery. And I’d happily have included Polanski in the piece, I just didn’t think of him. But in any case, what has my not addressing the
se directors’ work got to do with those I selected at random to deal with? This is skip-logic at its worst. (5) No comment beyond this: you set your rules, Harkness; and for the sake of discussion I’ll set mine. (6) Harkness knows full well I didn’t say that De Palma’s films contain scenes of “Females burned alive…etc., etc., etc.” He knows full well I was asseverating a general comment about the genre. (Do not presume to fuck wit’ a guy whats got a big vocab’lary.) Even so, his attempt to discredit falls apart because De Palma’s films do contain repeated and intense scenes of graphic violence against women using knives, straight razors, ice picks, thuggee-style wire loops and other implements whose introduction in the films is solely for the purpose of showing women being hacked to ribbons. (7) Damn straight, Harkness. My abhorrence is exactly that strong. And I’m not that crazy about you, either. (8) No. (9) You lose again, Harkness. I’m neither lying nor reporting second hand. The razor-blades-in-the-apples scene occurs early in the film and is reprised when the mother brings the boy with the bloody mouth to the hospital. Either you’re so desperate to make a case for sick movies or your memory is deteriorating from too much exposure to vileness. It is also possible that the print I saw, in prerelease, was edited by the time it reached your theater. It was a vile and gratuitous bit of evil and the releasing entity may have had a momentary spasm of good taste and excised it; thereby denying you a moment of pleasure. (10) It was made clear that the action of the Writers Guild Film Society had nothing to do with censorship. Since the films were available in hundreds of theaters throughout the LA area, we were simply making an artistic judgment as to which films we would show to fill the limited slots available for Society screenings. No one told anyone not to see the films, or threatened them with any form of retribution or boycott if they did, as Falwell does. Harkness understands the difference, as does anyone who read my essay; and no amount of cupidic rhetoric can fog the issue.