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Home , George Petros, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Web of the City

MAGAZINE SECONDS SECONDS #39, 1996 • interview by

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 , imitates life — and like art, his writing is subject to many interpretations, all of them correct! Inner Space is the domain of , 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 — , 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 . 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 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 , 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 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 “” 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 , , 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. : City On The Make was announcing the movie was going to be made 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 . 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. 170 “When I started hearing that Rock & Roll was the ‘street poetry of the masses’ or that it was going to change the culture, I said, “Here’s more bullshit.”

SECONDS: Peter Nichols wrote that you SECONDS: In 1955, you had something portray the real world through a lens of published in Infinity — fantasy. ELLISON: Right. That wasn’t the first thing ELLISON: He’s paraphrasing what I’ve said I had published but it was my first short about my own work. In story. The amusing a television interview in thing is that James England, the interview Blish, who was a great was saying my work writer and a dear didn’t seem to be friend of mine, said Science Fiction, and I that story, “Glowworm,” leapt out of my chair to is the single worst story kiss him. I said what that had ever been I write is Hyperactive published in a Science Magic Realism. I take Fiction magazine. I the received world and always laugh at that. I I reflect it back through went back a few years the lens of fantasy, ago and re-read it and turned slightly so you it’s not all that bad. It’s get a different portrait. a piece of junk but it SECONDS: What effect shows the kid had some do you wish to have real talent. upon your reader? SECONDS: What did ELLISON: Art, like you learn about writing life, has only one in the Army? overriding message, and ELLISON: I didn’t that message is “pay attention.” That is the learn anything except how to write under the summation of my feeling about the value of worst possible conditions. I wrote my first art, whether it’s ballet, painting, or Etch-A- novel in basic training, and we’re talking Sketch. Ranger basic training. I was at Fort Benning SECONDS: Is art like life, an anti-entropic in Georgia and we’d get up at four in the force? morning and do a twenty-mile forced march ELLISON: I think art is anti-entropy. That’s with a full pack and then static line jumps a very good observation. It’s a little loftier all day. Everybody would come back to the than I would come up with on my own. barracks, eat dinner, and then collapse and You’ve got to understand, you’re talking to a fall asleep. I had a board secreted in the guy who got kicked out of college. barracks and a typewriter in my locker. I’d SECONDS: For insulting your creative put the board against my la, sit on the john, writing teacher? and work on my novel, , in ELLISON: That was one of the things. I also basic training under those conditions. It got arrested for shoplifting an Oscar Peterson was just me sitting at a toilet at midnight, album. This was at The State University. knowing I’d have to be up in four hours to I was broke and working my way through go through another grueling day. I didn’t college. I didn’t have money and I had to have like the Army. I didn’t go voluntarily, I was the album. I got busted and I had a real low drafted in 1957. grade point average. Out of possible 4.0, I had SECONDS: Didn’t Web Of The City come a .086. As far as I know, I had the lowest grade out of your experience with gangs? point average in the history of Ohio State. ELLISON: That’s exactly what it came out of. In truth, everything I know I’ve learned SECONDS: Discuss hanging out with them. from doing it, observing it, or reading it. ELLISON: That’s in a book called Memos There’s very little formal training. I started From Purgatory. It’s the complete story of writing professionally in 1955 but I think how I ran with this kid gang in for only now I’m beginning to learn to write. ten weeks under an assumed name and then

171 H A R L A N E L L I S O N how I subsequently wound up going to jail mind is enough of a jumble as is. Fucking for twenty-four hours in New York at The myself with artificial stimulants is never Tombs. going to do me any good. I SECONDS: You wrote guess I learned that early Spider Kiss in 1961, before on seeing people who’d been Rock Culture really got drinking too much. In those cookin’ — days, marijuana was fairly ELLISON: Colonel Tom common. Also, peyote was Parker took an option on legal. I never got any great the book once, so everyone cosmic messages myself. seems to think it’s a novel SECONDS: Did you try this about Elvis Presley but it stuff? isn’t — it’s Jerry Lee Lewis. ELLISON: I tried peyote I wrote that when Rock once in New York and got & Roll was just getting sick to my stomach for three started. days. SECONDS: Were you a fan SECONDS: How about pot? of Rock & Roll? ELLISON: It’s possible that ELLISON: Oh yeah, I somewhere at some time could listen to Jerry Lee for somebody stuck a joint in my hours. Roy Orbison — all mouth and I may have taken the guys who did heavy a puff, but I don’t remember. R&B. I never used acid, I never SECONDS: Then the music began to change. used heroin, cocaine — none of those things. ELLISON: When I started hearing that As far liquor, the most I’ve had was years Rock & Roll was the “street poetry of the ago at a party when somebody got pissed masses” or that it was going to change the off at me for not drinking and they gave me culture, I said, “Here’s more bullshit.” Rock an inch of beer at the bottom of a glass. I & Roll is just music. That’s all it is. It’s not drank it to be a good guy and I got looped, revolution, it’s just fucking going to a club absolutely drunk out of my mind on one inch and dancing. The Moody Blues are not the of stale Budweiser. national anthem. You SECONDS: What about the don’t go to war because legal status of drugs? Smashing Pumpkins have ELLISON: I’m not in a a big hit. position to talk about it. SECONDS: How about This is probably a cynical the drug scene that was thing to say but I think attendant to Rock? people left to their own ELLISON: When I hit the devices will behave badly. road at thirteen, I rode SECONDS: As the the rails with hobos. I was counterculture developed, always hanging around your writing seemed with Jazz musicians and to adapt to it. I’m sure saw a lot of drugs and people in 1968 would have alcohol. Most of the writers described I Have No Mouth I knew in those days were And I Must Scream as alcoholics or had already psychedelic. died of a pickled liver. I ELLISON: I’m sure they never drank and I never would but I was in my used drugs. I’m not the complete right mind when person to ask about that I wrote it. When someone stuff. I don’t know and says, “That’s psychedelic,” I don’t want to sound I say, as if I know. All I know is that to produce “No, that’s just the way I think.” My mind work, I have to have my wits about me. My is constantly filled with odd images and 172 “Some of my stuff inspired other people who might not have risked it. It gave them the imprimatur to go ahead.” manifestations of “What if?” — “What if?” is a going on in the real world like labor relations game I play all the time. or race relations or sexism or any of the SECONDS: Perhaps the counterculture things that were happening at the time. A influence got into your work by osmosis. lot of us got tired and started a new kind ELLISON: We’re talking around 1965 when of writing. In fact, it was called the “New I did I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream Wave.” It was not a new wave of one school, and . We were coming out it was just a lot of individual writers, each of a period in this country of real repression of them doing their own thing their own — the 1950s. They way. Somebody else was deify it now in movies breaking through and but it was a restrictive being able to do it — era. Throughout those Samuel Delany, Norman years, there was this Spinrad, , puritanical, hypocritical and even some of my stuff sentiment, the only — inspired other people offset of which was who might not have Playboy magazine, risked it. It gave them the which was considered imprimatur to go ahead. incredibly obscene. The ••• same was true in the field of Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. The stories never talked about any of the things

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