Harlan Ellison's Watching (78 page)

Pushkin said: "Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths."

The great liars of narrative literature remain, from century to century, some of our most treasured teachers. The truly great ones come along all too infrequently, and if we manage to get one every other generation we feel that our lot is salutary. Mary Shelley, Poe, Borges, Kafka, Bierce, James Branch Cabell, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, John Collier, Roald Dahl, Fritz Leiber . . . these are the transcendentally untruthful, the paid liars who, like Mark Twain and Jules Verne, shine a revelatory light—through the power-source of invention—on our woebegone and duplicitous world. Through noble mendacity, enlightenment!

As Isaac Bashevis Singer has said, "When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm grown up, they call me a writer."

In the late 1700s, the hands-down titleholder of the belt for prevarication, flyweight, middle-and welterweight, cruiser-, bruiser- and heavyweight, was Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, the Baron von Munchausen. Recounting his no-less-than-eyeopening exploits as a cavalry officer in the service of Frederick the Great against the ravaging, pillaging, bestial Ottoman Empire, Munchausen (1720–1797) erected towers of tales so tall they dwarfed Babel or Trump. Behind his back, his drinking companions rolled their eyes and called him
Luegenbaron
, the lying Baron; but one of them, Rudolf Erich Raspe, hied himself to England where, in 1785, he wrote and caused to have published
Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia
, a book instantly a bestseller.

The tales contained in that volume can be counted among the biggest lies ever wafted on hot air across our planet. Or so we must believe. Who would impart even a scintilla of truth to the anecdotes of a man who swore he had been blown by hurricane to the Moon, had enjoyed carnal knowledge of the goddess Venus while visiting in the bowels of Mt. Etna, had been swallowed by a Monstro-the-whale—like sea beast and had escaped by dint of Balkan snuff, and asserted, "On another occasion I wished to jump across a lake. When I was in the middle of the jump, I found it was much larger than I had imagined at first. So I at once turned back in the middle of my leap, and returned to the bank I had just left, to take a stronger spring." Add a large question mark to the end of that last sentence.

Filmmakers took the Baron to their bosom from the start. His adventures have been chronicled on celluloid more than a dozen times, from 1909 (as far as we know) to the classic Méliès version in 1911 to the legendary two-reelers of the 1930s, to the charming and sweethearted 1961 Czech fantasy filled with loopy special effects, as conceived, co-scripted and directed by Karel Zeman.

But only Méliès, one of the great Paid Liars of all time, could claim a breadth of imagination capable of lying up to the level of the Baron. The others were mere fibbers. Talented, but hardly in that ballpark of audacity. Dilettantes. Pishers.

It is our happy lot to be blessed in these days of inept lying (as exemplified by the recently ended Presidential campaign) with one of the great, consummately eloquent diegesists, a falsifier of such singular abilities that he rivals the Baron in ability to make the jaw drop; and like Méliès, his medium is movies. He is, of course, ex-Python Terry Gilliam. And just around Eastertime, Columbia Pictures will release his most magnificent lie to date,
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
.

And if ever there was one destined to assume the mantle of the Baron, it is Gilliam. He has become a shoo-in for the Whopper Teller's Hall of Fame. He is a world-class liar whose potential value to us as a teller of truth through tommyrot ranks with that credited to Scheherazade, Don Marquis, and the nameless whiffle-merchants who cobbled up Paul Bunyan, the Loch Ness Monster and the Bible.

Gilliam's new film, the final third of the trilogy begun with
Time Bandits
(1981) and
Brazil
(1985), is a two hour and seven minute string of shameless lies—edited by Gilliam from its initial 2:41 length—that will make you roar with laughter, disbelieve what you're seeing, and have you clapping your hands in childlike delight. It is:

A carnival! A wonderland! A weekend with nine Friday nights! Terry Gilliam's lavish dreams are beyond those of mere mortals.
Munchausen
is everything you secretly hope a movie will be. What most movies turn out not to be: adequate or exceeding your expectations.

In this column, three years ago, I urged you not to miss
Brazil
, one of the exceptional fantasies of all time. Compound that enthusiasm by an order of ten and you may begin to approach my delight in alerting you to
Munchausen
. Every frame is filled to trembling surface tension with visual astonishments so rich, so lush, so audacious, that you will beg for mercy. As with
Brazil
, a film that despised moderation and was thus mildly disparaged by stiffnecked critics incapable of the proper sybaritic gluttony for sensory overload,
Munchausen
simply will not quit. Like Cool Hand Luke or Joe Namath at the end of the '76 season, it won't stay down for the count. It keeps coming at you, image after image, ferocious in its fecundity of imagination, wonder after wonder, relentless in its desire to knock your block off!

It is a great and original artist's latest masterwork of joy, and despite reports that it has opened in Europe to tepid box-office, it is a film that lives up to everything the Baron tried to put over on us. It is—without tipping one delight you deserve to savor fresh and on your own—one of the most wonderful films I've ever seen. And I ain't lying.

ANCILLARY MATTERS: (The following taken
in toto
from an item by Steven Smith in the
Los Angeles Times
of 8 January.)

Remember back in 1985, when director Terry Gilliam battled MCA-Universal prez Sid Sheinberg over the final cut of Gilliam's Orwellian comedy,
Brazil . . .
and won? Well, maybe he didn't.

Universal released Gilliam's 131-minute version to numberous raves and a best picture award from the L.A. Film Critics Assn., albeit to lackluster box-office.

But last week, a 93-minute version of
Brazil
aired on KTLA Channel 5 as part of a Universal syndicated tv package—promoting it with raves actually written about the original.

But scenes have been recut and rescored, using new takes and dialogue dubbed by sound-alike actors. The story—about a clerk who escapes a repressive society through fantasy, but is finally lobotomized—was changed and simplified, with a new, happy ending assembled from unused footage. Elaborate dream sequences now total 47 seconds.

Who's responsible?

Sheinberg hadn't returned calls by press time. But the new
Brazil
closely follows the "radical rethink" devised three years ago by Sheinberg, as described since by two film editors hired to make the changes.

Gilliam, reached in London and apprised of the altered state of his movie, told us: "It's wonderful, because it gives Sid a chance to break into tv. The only sad thing is, the world doesn't get to appreciate that Sid made this film."

Late last year, Gilliam said, Universal asked for his "input" on the latest edit (he declined)—and that the studio wouldn't let him remove his name.

Now, he added, "They're selling it as
Brazil
, the film that won best picture, and that's nonsense."

There is a special sea of boiling hyena vomit in the deepest and darkest level of Hell, tenanted thus far only by those who burned the Great Library of Alexandria, by the dolt who bowdlerized
Lady Chatterly's Lover
, and by those who have torn down elegant art deco buildings to erect mini-malls. It is my certain belief that Sid Sheinberg will sizzle there throughout eternity. Standing on Ted Turner's shoulders.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
/ May 1989

Hollywood, awakening to the fact that the public is tired of trite westerns and mysteries, has tried something new.

Fantasies and science fiction films, until now, have been attempted with a "tongue-in-cheek" attitude.

But Twentieth Century Fox has now taken the lead in presenting a truly adult science fiction thriller. At a preview in the Hippodrome Theatre, Tuesday, September 11,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, starring Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe and a promising newcomer, Michael Rennie, was unveiled.

Taken from a story by Harry Bates, the plot concerns the repercussions resulting from the landing of a flying saucer on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Moving rapidly from scene to scene, the film boasts such unusual occurrences as the melting of a General Sherman tank by a robot, the stopping of all electricity in the world and the restoration to life of a man who was dead.

Besides having a fascinating plot, the acting in the picture was excellent. Mr. Rennie, as the man from space, is so convincingly real, that one immediately believes he is an actual alien.

Patricia Neal, as a widowed mother, gives a lifelike and convincing portrayal.

But, undoubtedly, the real star of the picture is a large fellow named Gort. Gort is a metal robot with the ability to fire a beam of energy from his eyes which are really photoelectric cells.

Unlike other fantastic movies,
The Day . . .
has no fake props but portrays the futuristic "saucer" in an adult manner.

In the picture there are no bug-eyed monsters killing innocent people or Buck Rogers heroics, but there is a story that is fast-paced, different and thoroughly enjoyable.

For an entertaining evening, and for one that will keep you continually in a state of wonder, don't miss
The Day the Earth Stood Still
.

Blue and Gold
/ September 26, 1951

In the hell-images of Hieronymus Bosch, one sees the tormented, writhing in anguishes of their own making: a garden of earthly delights predicated on the suffering of themselves and others, a playpen of sado-masochism. Beheaded corpses lying chill and white in shrouds of their own wound hair; serpentlike creatures with knives thrust through their throats, breathing fire on pickled humans peering beatifically from barrels of toad-ridden brine; sex-circuses in which the participants are so intertwined that none know which are their own extremities or those of another; bare men strung like crucified offerings on the wires of giant harps while oily, ebony salamanders slither over their naked flesh; burning buildings casting a fire of the pit against the sky; carnivorous fish and stalking plants; half-humans composed of all arms and legs; the stench of sensory pleasure carried to a visual level that can only be described in terms of the sense of smell:

The scent of rotting gardenias, vomitously sweet and cloying.

Bosch would have loved to spend an evening on the town in Los Angeles. He would have felt at home in The Daisy. The scene just described, adding the names of television producers, hungry starlets, clean-shaven hero actors, the children of Beverly Hills merchants, expensively coiffed hookers, lean-hipped models, fading sports stars and assorted kept types, would be a 20th century
doppelganger
of Bosch's 15th century madhouse.

Once again the scent of the rotting gardenias fills the night. Cloying and sweet, and called by its contemporary appellation, it is the stench of paranoia. On far Rodeo Drive has Jack Hanson a stately pleasure dome decreed, and it is called The Daisy.

Were it not a reality, composed half of myth and half of urgency, necessity would compel its invention. Did it not in fact exist, hysteria would conjure it up from the dark ingredients specified in the Hollywood grimoire:

Eye of a lecher, toe of a Terpsichore, sweat of a hustler, blood of starlet, the faded memories of a slipping star, glory dreams of a social-climbing toy manufacturer, intimations of class by a street urchin newly
nouveau-riche
, insults, gossip, infidelities, violence, and moneymoneymoney.

Bosch would have capered and gibbered with joy. He would have identified with them instantly. The lineal descendants of his Bedlam dwellers, cloaked in silks and essences, cavorting and swilling in an upholstered, red velvet ghetto of their own fears and insecurities, clinging to one another with bonds of venality and hatred and common use.

Hi-ho and away we go! For an evening at The Daisy. Be sure to bring your switchblade and your smile.

You come by car. If you are Sal Mineo you come in a Rolls. If you are Peter Bren you come in a Ferrari. If you are Phyllis Diller you come in an Excalibur S•S with your boyfriend, dressed like an Eskimo. If you are Herbert Hutner your Rolls has a right-hand drive. If you are Eddie Fisher you come in a Bentley convertible. If you are me, you come in a 1953 Healey and park it yourself.

If you don't know where to look for it, you can pass The Daisy a hundred times a day and be blinded by the sterling silver in the windows of David Orgell, or by the jewelry, furs and Tiffany lamps in the shop windows on the other side, and never notice the unobtrusive brick-front building with its huge wooden daisy high up in the darkness of the unlighted façade. For those who need specifics, modern America's number one pleasure dome is located at 326 North Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, on the east side of the street, between Little Santa Monica and Wilshire.