Harlan Ellison's Watching (71 page)

With
I, Robot
a possibility for inclusion on the Nebula final ballot, the time is right to raise the question again:
Why is screen writing not treated with equal dignity by SFWA?

Chances of its winning are infinitesimal, but I am, at this moment, inordinately proud to have a work in the scenario form even vying for a slot as Best Novel. It heartens my brother and sister writers in this genre who move between the two mediums. It seems there will always be those so limited in their perception of what is "appropriate" that the screenplay will be pooh-pooh'd—of the many letters received by the sf magazine that published
I, Robot
recently, there were the expected few that came from readers who said, "What
is
this? I don't know how to read it," or "Why did you waste space on a script . . . it was good, but it just ain't like what you usually publish," and one can feel little more than sadness at readers who wear blinders—but movies are
the
popular medium in which outstanding work can be done (don't get me onto tv, please!), and it's twenty-five years past time that SFWA should be rewarding that excellence of craft seen by many more millions all over the world than ever read one of our short stories.

Which is not to say that working in Hollywood is free of angst or heartbreak or time-waste or horror. Probably no less of any of that than one finds in any industry. And heaven knows I've written about those horrors and inequities at tedious length in a hundred different forums. And may again, here in these pages. But I am not suggesting that every good writer of a page of prose chuck it all in New Jersey and rush to knock on doors at Universal. I
am
suggesting that careful, imaginative, worthy work is being done by many of SFWA's writer-members in this dazzlingly inventive form, and it's time those who sneer at film writing because of their own fears and limited abilities be countered by an equally vocal segment of the writing community raised in a later time that acknowledges the importance and seriousness of motion pictures as Art.

So, because I'm nuts about these snippets intended for "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs," a film that was never made, and to get the dialogue going, I offer examples of
script
.

I talk a great deal about the script in these columns. I quote from Ring Lardner, Jr., who said: "No good film was ever made from a poor script." And I try to convince those of you who "can't read this script stuff" and those of you who, like me, love movies, that without first the
word
, the directors and actors would stand there with their fingers up their noses. This, as palliative to the endless interviews with arrogant thespians who tell the Rex Reeds and Mary Harts of the world how they "rewrote the dialogue" right there on the set, the day they began to roll the cameras.

I have digressed wildly, for purpose, but at last, in three quick scenes, I offer you some direct evidence of where the vision comes from that results finally in a motion picture. It comes from the writer. And the better the writers available to know-nothing producers, the better will be the films we see, the movies I review here. In these three snippets the eye of the writer becomes the vision of the scenarist. They're easy to read. Just let the inner eye
see
what the words tell you to see. Read and close your eyes and roll the cameras in your head. This isn't work, it's a paid vacation.

And no matter what those men and women who yell
Action!
try to con you into believing, they are afoot in the desert without the art and craft of the writer.

THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS:
Variation 1

FADE IN: 1 NEW YORK STREET—NIGHT

Chill and damp. The pavements look as though they're coated with fever-sweat. Fog and mist silently swirl and hang like torn lace in the air. An upper West Side sort of street with ancient light stanchions that cast dull illumination, fog-shrouded light, just enough to see vaguely, with halations around them.

CAMERA MOVES STEADILY down the street at waist height. Past withering brown-stones, battered garbage cans that are chained by their lids to iron fences, flaking stone stoops, steps leading down to basement apartments, huge plastic bags of refuse at the curbs, cars parked almost one atop another. And all of it swathed in obscuring fog. CAMERA PANS LEFT as it CONTINUES MOVE IN and we see down a short throw of steps into a sub-street cul-de-sac entrance to an apartment. A man in shapeless clothes lies unmoving with his feet and legs aimed toward us. His head and shoulders below. Upside-down. One arm outflung. Head twisted at an unnatural angle. As though he fell backward down the stairs. Clearly dead, though we cannot see his face.

CAMERA SWINGS BACK and CONTINUES MOVING down the street with a smooth, casual movement. A woman lies dead in the gutter, face toward the curb so we cannot see her features, one arm bent up and lying on the sidewalk above her. CAMERA does not linger.

As CAMERA MOVES DOWN STREET toward the park and the river, seen vaguely through the trembling mist, we find ourselves looking for more bodies, but we cannot be certain if those two huddled shapes in the VW at the curb are dead; they are slumped forward on the dash but they might be just sleeping; that pile of rags at the mouth of the alley might be an old man with a battered hat jammed down on his dead face, but it could be just trash; and as we enter the small park abutting the drop to the Hudson River we see what could be a woman's naked arm protruding from under a bush, but it might be only a dead branch. It might be.

But we know for certain that the man sitting on the bench is dead. His head hangs back as only a head with its throat cut can hang. At that awkward angle, arms out to the sides, legs spread, body braced against the bench. CAMERA SWINGS PAST and PASSES ON to HOLD the silent river, fog rising and tumbling. Then, out on the River, lonely and desperate, we HEAR the SOUND of a tug heading for the Narrows. Once, twice, distantly. Then silence again. The city is silent.

FADE TO BLACK And FADE OUT.

THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS:
Variation 2

FADE IN:

1 RED FRAME—IN MAGMA POOL

Around the CAMERA molten lava bubbles and seethes. No sound. High contrast. CAMERA BEGINS TO RISE up through the maelstrom. It does not tilt, but RISES VERTICALLY. It reaches the surface of the magma pool, breaks the tension and we see across the leaping, spitting surface. CAMERA CONTINUES RISING through steam in the chamber above the lava. To the dendritic stone of the cavern ceiling. CAMERA PASSES THROUGH, STILL RISING

DISSOLVE THRU: 2 CAMERA RISING THRU ROCK—EFFECT

Varying levels of light and dark, indicating stratification of rock. Through iron, mica schist, diatomaceous earth, layers of roiling oil, feldspar, marble, sparkling levels of gold, diamonds, phosphates, solid granite, up and up.

DISSOLVE THRU TO: 3 CAMERA IN SOIL—EFFECT

RISING SMOOTHLY as we view it in the manner of someone in an elevator sees floor after floor dropping past. Up through rock and soil to empty spaces, through and up to hard-packed sub-soil, concrete slabbing, coils and snakes of cable, electrical conduit, pipes. Up past them through metal sheathing, into flowing water—a sewer system. CAMERA RISES to feature a metal ladder used by maintenance crews. Up to the ladder to a grating above as we

DISSOLVE THRU: 4 STREET—NIGHT

CAMERA RISES up out of the sewer grating to HOLD for a beat the silent night street of New York. SHOOT THE LENGTH of the street in fog and rain. CAMERA CONTINUES to RISE after beat; TILT CAMERA UP to feature the huge and silent monoliths of incredibly tall buildings that close in overhead.

HOLD the ominous leaning structures as the clouds tear apart for a moment and the single white eye of the Moon is seen. In the b.g. DISTANCE we HEAR the SOUND of dogs crying, as though they are being beaten. Not loud. We may not hear it at all. Then the clouds close over again, the Moon is gone, and the fog swirls in to FILL FRAME.

FRAME TO BLACK.

THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS:
Variation 3

FADE IN:

1 SHOT ACROSS WATER—NIGHT

Dark, slick water. Oily. CAMERA MOVES IN just above the softly undulating surface. An occasional silvered flash across a gentle swell, as of moonlight skimming into darkness. Fog rolls across the lens. CAMERA IN STEADILY toward a massive throw of land that rises up in b.g. We can make out nothing but the gray shape moving towards us.

SLOW STEADY MOVE IN across the water till we perceive we are beaching on an island. Fog rolls up the naked beach. CAMERA IN to climb the beach and MOVES IN through darkness across low dunes. Now something rises up through the darkness. Tall. CAMERA KEEPS MOVING in on the shape. It is an Easter Island menhir. One of the great stone faces of antiquity. Silence.

CAMERA ANGLES SMOOTHLY AROUND the statue and goes past. Across the dead island to another head. And past to another. And another. To the largest of them. CAMERA TILTS DOWN and MOVES IN for EXTREME CLOSEUP through the roiling fog of the ashy ground.

HOLD EXTREME CLOSEUP of a bright, clean very modern knife lying in the sandy ash at the foot of the menhir. Again, a brief flash of silver light, this time across the blade—as if the moon had hurled one single beam through the clouds and the fog.

Then a drop of water strikes the knife blade. Then a drop of water dimples the sand beside it. Then another. Then it begins to rain steadily. The knife sinks slowly into the rain-soaked absorbent ash and sand, and as its haft goes under, the fog closes down, swirls, and FILLS FRAME.

CAMERA HOLDS on fog was we HEAR in the b.g. DISTANCE the SOUND of a ululating siren: an ambulance, a police car perhaps, a truck carrying people to ovens; we cannot quite place it. It recedes and SILENCE resumes.

FADE TO BLACK.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
/ June 1988

We were talking about being lied
to
, and how it unhinges us. How it makes us feel used and foolish, that we were so damned
anxious
to believe the hype. How irrationally
angry
it makes us to know that no matter how wise and experienced we have become as we grew older, that adroit liars can still manipulate us by plumbing our ever-regenerating gullibility, our
need
to believe. (In this way, I suspect, no amount of revelation of corruption on the part of televangelists will ever free their supporters. They discover one awfulness after another about the Falwells, Swaggarts, Popoffs, Robertsons and Bakkers, and yet they fling themselves again and again into the wash of hossanahs that keeps them asea in ignorance.)

As Michel de Montaigne, the French moralist, wrote: "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know."

We were talking about the false lures thrown out by the makers of movies to convince us that trash has sidebar merit, value apart from the work itself. And I mentioned that we had been lied to as regards, among other films, the 1985 fantasy
Ladyhawke
. And one of you wrote insisting that I was wrong, that the film
was
based on some obscure medieval legends. And Faithful Reader upbraided me for mischievously shattering beliefs.

Well, I never went into detail on that matter, because I'm trying (in what now appears to be a series of three columns) to codify a thesis of gullibility and duplicity that
seems
to have some credibility; and I simply didn't have the time to linger. But perhaps you do need a bit more convincing.

In the September/October 1987 issue of
Scannings
, an information search and retrieval newsletter for librarians, we find the following Q&A exchange:

Q: On what legends was the movie "Ladyhawke" based? The story concerns lovers who are cursed. He is a wolf at night, she a hawk during the day. They assume their human forms only at opposite times.

A: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library had a press release from Warner Bros, stating, "legend dates back to the 13th century from paintings on the walls of the Mauseturm Castle in the Rhine Valley to the Loup Garou legend of France's Auvergne Forest to Rodriguez de la Fuente in Spain."

When we went to gather these legends . . . we found the Mauseturm story did not match, the loup-garou, or werewolf, story was too vague, and the only Rodriguez de la Fuente we found was a 20th century Spanish naturalist.

We wrote to scriptwriter Edward Khmara for an explanation. Here is his reply:

The story of two lovers kept apart by taking human form only at opposite times of the day was an inspiration that occurred to me while jogging on the roof of the Hollywood YMCA
.

The studio contention that "Ladyhawke" is based on an old legend is, in fact, a violation of Writers Guild rules, since it denies me full rights of authorship. The Guild undertook an action against Warner Bros, on this account . . . and a small amount of money was paid as compensation . . . Warner Bros., or its publicity department, continues to circulate material restating the old legend story
.