PREFACE

by Leonard Maltin

As the late, great Jimmy Durante used to say in mock disgust during his rambunctious act, "Everyone's a critic!"

Where films are concerned, the immortal Schnozzola was right: movies are a democratic art form, and every person who watches a picture, from the President of the United States to the guy who hauls away your garbage, has an opinion about them. As someone who makes his living voicing his feelings on the subject, I know that people cling vigorously to their opinions. They're all too willing to share them and they aren't receptive to anyone who tries to change their minds. I long ago stopped trying, though when I teach I try to get my students to expand their opinions beyond the summarizing statements "I loved it" or "It sucked."

Often I'm asked how I go about reviewing a film. The questioner assumes that I have a strict procedure, but in truth I don't. I try to be, as much as possible, a member of the audience. How I feel as I walk out of the theater or screening room determines the tone of my review, and over many years' time I've learned to trust my gut feelings.

Harlan Ellison apparently works the same way, but he has a great advantage over me, having spent much of his life accessing his stream of consciousness and channeling it through his fingers to a typewriter. (Yes, a typewriter . . . not a computer.) This enables us to know exactly how he felt while watching a film; there is immediacy and an almost tactile connection to the experience as he describes it.

Like any artist, he makes this seem perfectly natural, almost easy. I can assure you that it is not. I spent many years trying to find my critical "voice." Years ago, one of my bosses prodded and hectored me to give him exactly what Ellison does: a raw, unvarnished opinion, without that reserve that many reviewers cultivate. Another question that often comes up is what requirements are necessary to become a film critic.

Years ago, the feisty dramatist-turned-critic Harold Clurman answered this query by stating simply, "To be a critic you must have . . . a job." In other words, if someone will give you a gig writing reviews, then POOF! You're a critic. As unlikely as it may sound, this was true for many decades in the newspaper and magazine world—where, it was once said, the local ballet performance was often covered by the person who happened to be in the office when the free passes arrived—and definitely the case in radio and television. Since "everybody" goes to the movies, editors and publishers assume that "anybody" who could write could write movie reviews.

This has always upset me. Do you think an editor or television news producer would assign someone inexperienced to cover sports? ("Hey, I've watched baseball my whole life—I can write about that!") Not bloody likely. Yet in years past, publications as august as The New York Times and The New Yorker have pulled people off their regular beat—or out of the blue—to work as reviewers. Fortunately, they haven't lasted long.

Ellison himself has the last word on this topic, from a 1977 column (reprinted on page 118 of this collection): "You must understand: any schmuck who goes to a movie and whose ego gets in the way of good sense, who runs one of those 'cinematic insight' type raps—as shown in example in Woody Allen's new one, Annie Hall—and then has the good fortune to con some editor into accepting such drivel, can be a film critic or reviewer. They do it not out of any deep and abiding love for motion pictures, or even because of an understanding of what it takes to create a film . . . they do it because they can get free screening passes to the studio press showings. They are scavengers. Cinematic illiterates who pontificate without a scintilla of talent for moviemaking of their own. I put them in the same social phylum with kiddie-porn producers, horse-dopers, and assholes who use the phrase 'sci-fi.'"

[Sidebar: note the word "rap." One of the pleasures of delving into this collection is that the essays mirror the times in which they were written. It's amazing how much our world has changed over the last forty years, especially in terms of slang and pop culture.]

As far as I'm concerned, a good film critic should have two qualities in equal measure: love and knowledge of movies. If he or she is deficient in either area it isn't going to work.

In the opening chapters of this book, Harlan Ellison establishes his bona fides, and traces his passion for movies to his childhood. There may be some individuals who discovered the medium later in life, but most people I know who are movie crazy have been so since they were kids. What's more, the films they saw in their youth, the places they saw them, and the actors who cast a spell over them at that impressionable time of their lives stay with them forever.

(This doesn't mean that the details are always accurate, as Harlan indicates in an extensive footnote about the facts contradicting his memory of when he saw the Max and Dave Fleischer cartoon feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town. But rose-colored memories of boyhood moviegoing are what matter in this context, not the mundane specifics.)

Saying that Ellison is passionate is like calling Cameron Diaz sexy. If he likes a movie, or an individual, he calls forth a string of the most astonishing superlatives. If he is put off—or to be more accurate, pissed off—then the unfortunate subject is in for a chain of invective that would send the strongest man reeling and the rest of us reaching for our Webster's Unabridged.

As for knowledge, I can't think of anyone else offhand who, in the course of reviewing The Witches of Eastwick, would not only discuss novelist John Updike, in the context of noted authors whose works have been adapted for the screen, but also make a point of mentioning René Clair's 1942 comedy I Married a Witch, citing not only its stars, Fredric March and Veronica Lake, but costars Cecil Kellaway and Robert Benchley, and of course screenwriters Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly. He isn't showing off; he's calling upon his encyclopedic knowledge of literature and movies. Why shouldn't such knowledge be put to good use?

Given all of this, calling Harlan a "film critic" seems too limiting. I prefer to think of him as an essayist, one of a special breed worth cherishing at a time when good writing is scarce, and fewer people are reading newspapers and magazines than ever before.

Not bound by the conventions of reviewing, he expresses his feelings in ways most critics wouldn't—or couldn't. (He may be able to write that "Ali MacGraw can't act for shit," in a review of The Getaway, but I'd be hesitant to use that particular form of expression.)

Ellison brings something else to his pieces, aside from his dizzying command of the language: he has actually been engaged in the movie and television business. I don't think this is a necessity, any more than a restaurant critic has to have the ability to cook a sumptuous meal, but there's no denying that Ellison's experiences in The Business color his writing. He has no compunction about dropping names, but then they're names of people he's actually known, worked alongside, insulted, been insulted by, or dealt with in some manner.

These references and anecdotes would be considered inappropriate in an ordinary review, but they're part of that unique Ellison stream-of-consciousness I referred to earlier. If you're curious to know what Harlan thinks about a movie or a movie trend, you're going to get more than you may have bargained for. . . but in for a penny, in for a pound. He's going to take you on a ride, and that means he isn't putting his thoughts about a film into capsule form.

One final question people always ask folks like me: "Do you read other critics' work?" Yes, I do, but not to find out what the writer thought about a film. I've already made up my mind, so if I decide to read a review it's not to discern the critic's opinion, but rather to see what I can learn . . . or simply to enjoy a well-written article.

I don't know how valuable it is to learn Harlan Ellison's opinion of this film or that, but I do know that reading an Ellison essay is going to be provocative, infuriating, hilarious, or often a combination of the above. It is never time wasted.

Certainly he is dogmatic. What's more, he doesn't care if you agree with him or not . . . because of his absolute certainty that he's right.

Normally, I wouldn't read a review by someone so hidebound in his opinions, but Ellison approaches the subject of movies with such fervor—and a deep well of knowledge—that one has to give him his due even if one has the temerity to disagree with his conclusions.

In my lexicon, the ultimate sin in moviemaking is being dull. For this occasion I will expand that definition to include writing about movies. Let me assure you, Harlan Ellison is never dull.

Leonard Maltin
July 2007