Harlan Ellison's Watching (41 page)

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.