Harlan Ellison
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MAGAZINE SECONDS SECONDS #39, 1996 • interview by George Petros HARLAN ELLISON HARLAN ELLISON is the supreme lord of Inner Space, where the universe of the mind collides with physical reality. Harlan is an anti- entropic force that, like art, imitates life — and like art, his writing is subject to many interpretations, all of them correct! Inner Space is the domain of Science Fiction, which was once an exploitative genre in which worn-out themes played out against improbable backgrounds representing the dreams of a nascent scientific culture. A few Sci Fi writers — Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke — struggled to inject plausibility into their work, but most were unable to transcend the parameters established by the hacks of Sci Fi’s golden age. The good guys rode rockets and battled aliens and won, assuring the reader that humans and not bug-like creatures would rule the galaxy. By the 1960s, Science Fiction had become Cold War jingoism and sensationalism. Harlan Ellison changed all that. 168 “Art, like life, has only one overriding message, and that message is ‘pay attention.’” SECONDS: Tell us about your typewriter. telling me how bad it is. Friedkin is a very ELLISON: I use Olympias exclusively. opinionating, hard-nosed kind of guy and the Olympias were the best typewriter made in two of us sat there arguing nose-to-nose. I the last forty years. In fact, when Robert Bloch didn’t think we were very loud but after this died he willed me two of his. had been going on for awhile, I looked up SECONDS: You have a good typewriter and we cleared the goddamned restaurant! It repairman? kind of soured our relationship and he never ELLISON: Yes I do. He can still repair made the movie. I like Billy Friedkin a lot; them but they stopped making good cotton he’s an enormously talented director. When typewriter ribbons he’s on his game — and not years ago and they were being a prima donna — he’s producing these nylon ones one of the best producers that wouldn’t put up a dark this country’s ever produced. image. I like a dark-looking SECONDS: What manuscript, so I found a distinguishing characteristic guy in Long Island who makes a film good? would make the ribbons. ELLISON: Innovation. He said, “But I haven’t got Anything that takes me the metal spools. If you find someplace I’ve never been me the spools, I’d be glad before or shows me a new to make them for you.” So way of thinking. High-order I spent six months going to talent is in very rare supply. antique stores and garage When they’re allowed to do sales and managed to what they do, you wind up amass a hundred of these with something like Citizen spools and sent them to Kane. But anybody can do him. I got fifty typewriter Pauly Shore in Jury Duty. ribbons and anytime I need This is stuff you see and say. them, I send more spools to “You have to be moronic to this guy.” laugh at this stuff.” SECONDS: You’re a SECONDS: Maybe the William Friedkin fan — entire form is corrupt. ELLISON: I worked with Billy and we had ELLISON: I don’t think any art form can be a very strange experience. At one time, he inherently bad. took an option on one of my best stories, SECONDS: What was your involvement with “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” I went Valley Of The Dolls? to Paris when he was married to Jeanne ELLISON: My involvement with it was very Moreau and he intended to do the film with strange. I’d just won the Writers Guild award her. The first night I was in Paris, I got for Most Outstanding Teleplay for “Demon arrested by the French secret police for the With A Glass Hand” on The Outer Limits. attempted assassination of the president I got offered a job by this producer David of Poland. The next night, Friedkin and Weisbert, and it gave me my big break into Jeanne Moreau were invited to launch this features. We had a meeting at Twentieth elegant restaurant in Versailles. So I’m Century Fox and he gave me this huge sitting at a table with Jeanne and Billy and typewritten manuscript called Valley Of The we start talking. So I say to him, “I think Dolls by Jacqueline Susan. He said, “Take it Sorcerer is the best film you’ve ever made. home and read it and if you think you could It’s better than The Exorcist and The French do the screenplay, we’ll talk.” Because it was Connection.” Billy said, “Ah, it was a piece of my first feature film offer, it would’ve been shit! Didn’t make a dime.” I was appalled and awful for me to say no. I took it home and it said, “What do you mean it’s a piece of shit?” was that awful! It was semi-literate in my He told me it bankrupted him and I got very estimation. My youthful hubris dictated I upset. Here I am arguing with the director take the job anyway because I could turn telling him how good his film is, and he’s this sow’s ear into a silk purse. I signed up 169 H A R L A N E L L I S O N to do it but what I didn’t know was that thirty-five years. Jacqueline Susan’s husband was a New York SECONDS: He could call you a Science entrepreneur who figured out a way to turn Fiction writer — the book into a best-seller. Their contract ELLISON: He could, but he never did. Isaac with Twentieth was based on the number knew the difference between being a Science of books sold, If it got to the best-seller list, Fiction writer and a writer who happened they were to get another $200,000. If it to write some Science Fiction. I reject the became #1, another $500,000. For every week phrase because it’s not accurate. I’ve won a it stayed on, they were lot of awards in that getting more and more field but I’ve also won money. While I was busy awards in the Horror writing, Twentieth was and Fantasy fields. spending more and more “Science Fiction writer” money. They got antsy and is an anomative falsie, took me off the project and a thoughtless way of put on two women who describing somebody. were known for writing I may have used the what they called “women’s phrase in my earlier pictures.” They got knocked days but in the last off the product an another twenty-five years I have woman was brought in. tried to get the words I never got further than taken off my work. I’ll writing the treatment. do a book like Spider SECONDS: Were you Kiss, which is a Rock involved with Heavy Metal? novel, and I find it in ELLISON: Not really. the Science Fiction shelf. When they were in SECONDS: Would the earliest stages, the “Speculative Fiction” publisher wanted to use a describe a fusion of your story of mine called “How’s interests? The Nightlife On Cissaleda?” He wanted it ELLISON: That was Robert Heinlein’s to be one of the sections of the movie. He phrase. All fiction is speculative. I reject all entered into early negotiations with me to genre labels because if you try to identify purchase the rights, and at that point they things, you begin to exclude a lot. The people brought in Ivan Reitman. Apparently, when whose work is borderline get thrown into the he comes in on a project, anything done wrong place. My idols as a writer were never previously goes right out the window. He Asimov or Heinlein or Arthur C. Clarke, they wants to have his own way, which is one of were Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Allan Poe, the wonderful things directors do. He just and Franz Kafka. rejected my story out of hand, I was paid SECONDS: How about Nelson Algren? a small kill fee of a couple grand and that ELLISON: Algren was an early admiration was that. But by that time, they’d been of mine. Chicago: City On The Make was announcing the movie was going to be made always my favorite. In fact, I was told he and would have adaptations of works by praised me in an interview The Paris Review Mobius, Corben, and Harlan Ellison. That’s did with him. I hear these things belatedly how my name came to be associated with it. when it’s too late to thank the person. A SECONDS: What became of the I, Robot few years ago, a disciple of Ayn Rand came project? up to me and said, “You know, Ayn was a ELLISON: The introduction to that book is very big fan of your work.” This just blew a historical record of why the project never me away. I ca never get so jaded that I’m got made. It’s an illustrated screenplay with not amazed when someone who excels in some marvelous paintings by Mark Zug. their field validates my existence by saying, Isaac Asimov loved that screenplay. “Yes, I like what you do.” When I discovered SECONDS: Did you guys get along? Robin Williams was a big fan of mine, it just ELLISON: We were the closest of friends for knocked me out.