INSTALLMENT 20:
In Which Manifestations Of Arrested Adolescence Are Shown To Be Symptoms Of A Noncommunicable Dopiness, Thank Goodness

No, no, no, and no! Absolutely not. The threat doesn't exist that could get me to do it. Beg and plead and try to bribe me, it'll never happen: this time I'll get right to it, without one of those convoluted, rambling digressions. Right into it, that's how it's gonna go. Pick up exactly where I left off last time, and complete the thought without maundering on into some cobwebby corner of esoteric philosophy.

Not going to diverge from the main thrust by mentioning that readers familiar with my previous involvement with a writer-director name of James Cameron (The Terminator, Rambo) will recall that I am not exactly moved to feelings of kiss-kiss cuddle-cuddle when dealing with films he has had hands and feet in, and thus find it painful but evenhanded to note that his new epic, Aliens (20th Century Fox), is a rather good action-adventure with a script by Mr. Cameron that provides the best role for Sigourney Weaver since last she played Warrant Officer Ripley, lone survivor (if you exclude the cat Shithead) of the doomed starship Nostromo's original encounter with the horrendous Alien (1979). Not going to be swayed into sidetracks by observing that though Mr. Cameron seems to have only one story to tell—a story that involves one or more Rambo-like protagonists blowing away as many of the opposition as they can manage with exotic armaments that clearly fascinate Mr. Cameron the way lepers are fascinated by their own sores—it is a story that works like crazy in this sequel to what was arguably the most terrifying film made in the last thirty years. Not going to be diverted into gritting my teeth at having to commend Cameron for a job well done, at having to recommend you plonk down your cash for a nifty little film that I'd sorta secretly hoped would bomb out. Not going to do it.

No sidebars, no offshoots, no deviations from completing the arguments begun last time.

Absolutely not going to babble about how much fun Big Trouble in Little China (20th Century Fox) turned out to be. Won't register surprise that after the infamous writing-credit imbroglio attendant on the filming of this send-up of the cinematic genre known as "looneytune-fu" (or "kung-kookoo"), that it came up so sweetly nincompoopish that only someone who takes George Bush seriously could find it less than charming. Not going to get into that, because if I did, I'd have to swerve into a discussion of the cupidity and disingenuous obfuscation of director John Carpenter when he blamed the on screen credit hassle on the Writers Guild of America, west and its punctiliously fair adjudication of just who would get awarded final and sole screenplay credit. To be lured away from the spine of this column's matters-at-hand to explain the fascinating way in which the WGAw sorts out credit controversies, would be to wander even farther from a simple statement that Big Trouble is (in the words of gin rummy players) a real no-brainer, intended for one of those nights when you feel lower than Edwin Meese's respect for the First Amendment; a film in which Kurt Russell does an even better imitation of John Wayne than he did of Elvis Presley; a film that combines Indiana Jones-swashbuckle, Oriental goofery, special effects magic, contemporary hoodlum-kitsch, pell-mell action to the exclusion of logic but who gives a damn, good old down home Yankee racism, parody, satire, the art of the Jongleur, and some of the funniest lines spoken by any actor this year to produce a cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives. To deal so would be to forget myself and commit another of those long, drawn-out wanderings in the desert of my brain. No way. No way, I say!

Sure, certainly, yes of course, I could get involved with one of those "ancillary matters" I tack onto the end of these essays, in which I scream, "Awright awreddy, get off my case, I admit I was wrong about the Thames not having frozen over in recorded history!" But that would entail me having to credit the dozen or so readers of this column who took gleeful opportunity to let me know, in the words of Cooper McLaughlin of Fresno, that "Ellison has made an a-hole of himself." It would necessitate my acknowledging Arthur Ellis of Parsippany, New Jersey and his documentation that the Thames froze so solid in 1684 that a Frost Fair was set up on the ice, with bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet shows and fast-food stands; that it froze again in 1739 and again in 1814. (McLaughlin even sent Xerox copies of etchings, fer crissakes!) I'd love to do one of my famous tap dances about how it was all the fault of my POSSLQ Susan, who assured me such a miracle had never happened, but she's from Manchester, so what the hell does she know? But if I were going to roam instead of bearing down on the real topic here, I'd get into all that and admit I was utterly wrong in that one complaint against the interior logic of Young Sherlock Holmes but remain unswerving in my belief that it defaces the Holmes canon, and then I'd get into a shouting match with the lot of you, who would start giving me opinions, when you know damned well I'm receptive to no voice but mine own. That's what would happen, so I will avoid the tussle. I will, I swear I will.

So okay, no fooling around here with random diversions, such as pointing out to those of you who know the classic film Lost Horizon (the 1937 original, not the musical abomination of 1973, which—even if you are dyslexic and reverse the numbers—could not be mistaken one for the other), and those of you who don't but ought to, that one of the finest fantasies ever dreamed on celluloid has been restored as a result of thirteen years of intensive research and reconstruction by Robert Gitt (now with the UCLA Film Archives) to its original roadshow release running time of 132 minutes, and is coming to major cities throughout America, and you miss it at your peril. If I had the time here, which I don't, because I have serious matters with which I must deal, I'd tell you that Susan and I went to see it a few weeks ago and it was as breathtaking as ever. I'd tell you that Ronald Colman was never better, that Sam Jaffe as the High Lama remains mystical and touching as ever, that Jane Wyatt and Edward Everett Horton and dear Tommy Mitchell and H. B. Warner and all the rest of the cast capture the heart no less fully than when the film was first released. I'd tell you that next to Lost Horizon and its perfectly conjured sense of wonder, the dreck we have on view in Cineplex coffins these days pales into utter disposability.

I'd tell you that, and beg you to go see this labor of love as reconstructed by men and women who cannot be turned from their love of the medium by the trash wallows that dominate the screen scene in this age of cinematic adolescence.

But I am sworn to a policy of no digressions this time, and you can count on me. Foursquare. As good as my word. You could beat me with I-beams and I wouldn't even mention The Great Mouse Detective (Walt Disney Productions), the first new Disney animated to recapture the incomparable wonders of Fantasia, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros. For almost forty years we who experienced terror and amazement when taken to our first movie—and it was always a Disney by way of introduction to the aphrodisiacal dark-dwelling that affected our lives so profoundly—we who laughed and cried and shivered through that rite of passage, secure in the hands of Walt and his staff of artists, we have observed with dismay the long, embarrassing slide into mediocrity of the genre known as "the Disney animated feature!" And were I not committed to sticking to the main topic, I would trumpet long and loud that Walt's ghost has had enough of the okeydoke, and his ectoplasmic hand guided the brushes on this delicious, imaginative interpretation of the Eve Titus Basil of Baker Street books about the mouse detective who lives underneath 221B Baker Street. Here is all the old Disney hoopla: the character movements so verisimilitudinously human yet always slightly in defiance of the laws of physics; the precisely selected human voices (with special kudos to Vincent Price's Prof. Ratigan, Candy Candido's Fidget the pegleg bat, and Susanne Pollatschek's winsome Olivia Flaversham); the genuinely fright-producing moments of menace, that fools like the saintly Rev. Wildmon and other "protectors of young minds" have managed to leach out of tv cartoons, on the censorial ground that the kiddies should never be scared (perhaps because they're afraid the kids will turn into foolish adults like themselves . . . but I doubt it . . . that much insight is clearly beyond them); the fun and wit and humor that functions as well on the level of adult enrichment as it does on the level of children's enjoyment. If I had the space and inclination to ramble, I would, yes I would, tell you to take the nearest child and go watch Basil and Dr. Dawson save The Mouse Queen of England from the dastardly designs of Ratigan. I would, yes, I would.

But, of course, I can't; so I won't.

I can't even indulge myself by thanking readers like Erick Wujcik of Detroit or Dennis Pupello II of Tampa, or the half dozen others, who sent me their attempts at savagery where Enemy Mine is concerned. I asked for amateur efforts at scathing film criticism, but I'd be forced to tell all you folks (if I were digressing, which clearly I am not) (and doing it rather rigorously, if I say so myself) that your barbs were velvet-tipped and your brickbats as damaging as cotton candy. Obviously, you need me on a regular basis to show you how to vent your animosity at the low state of American cinema. (And if you need verification from a nobler source, of the things I've been saying here for the last year or so, I would recommend in the strongest possible terms that you obtain a copy of the 21 July issue of New York magazine, in which the excellent critic David Denby goes point for point with your humble columnist, and arrives at the same conclusions [albeit with fewer digressions] in a long article titled CAN THE MOVIES BE SAVED?)

And it's a good thing I'm pledged to begin this installment right on the money, without hugger-mugger or higgledy-piggledy, because if this were one of the essays in which I start off from left-field and circle around till the seemingly-irrelevant metaphor begins to glow and suddenly shines light on the greater terrain of the real subject—a technique used in Forensic Debating that is known as arguing from the lesser to the greater—I would indulge myself with self-flagellation for having spent two hours, as so many of you did, watching a bit of flim-flam called The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults on television back in April. Were I not dedicated this time to plunging straight into it, I'd suggest that the producer of that two-hour con job, Doug Llewellyn (the guy who interviews the plaintiffs and defendants on The People's Court), and the host, the increasingly lacertilian Geraldo Rivera, be forced to defend their hoodwinking of the American tv-viewing audience not before Judge Wapner, but before Judge Roy Bean. With the hemp already knotted.

But because I started some serious discussion of films made by adults with the sensibilities of adolescents; of films that are childish but not childlike; of films that pander to an erroneous conception of what even kids want to see; of films that are so commercially slanted for the MTV mentality that they disenfranchise most of the rest of us to the extent that a recent study commissioned by Columbia Pictures tells us that in a nation where for half a century going out to the movies was as formalized a part of the week's activities as saying grace at the dinner table, three out of four Americans now never go to a movie; of films that have so cheapened and trivialized what was well on its way to becoming a genuine art-form that the Hollywood movie has become irrelevant, not to mention laughable, in the eyes of the rest of the filmgoing world; because I started that train of thought on its journey last time, I must deny myself the luxury of divertissements. So no time wasted, I will get into a resumption of last time's discussion.

And I trust in the future you'll grant me my little auctorial ways. I really do pay attention to your carping, as you can see from how assiduously I bowed to your wishes this time.

Let us look at two recent films whose similarities of plot and theme and production are far greater than their differences in these areas; whose similarities of quality and intelligence and purpose are almost minuscule and whose end-results up there on the screen could not be more glaringly opposed. The beautiful failure is Legend (Universal). The charming success is Labyrinth (Tri-Star Pictures).

Ridley Scott is, in my estimation, one of the most exciting talents ever to turn his hand to the genres of film fantasy and science fiction. I'm sure that somewhere back in the early days of this column I related the incident in which Mr. Scott came to my home and sounded me out on my interest in doing the screenplay for Dune, which at that time he was contracted to direct. It was a marvelous afternoon of conversation, in which his grace and intelligence proclaimed themselves sans the affectations I've come to associate with directors of germinal films . . . men and women who, for all their pretenses to literacy and omniscience, are buffoons not fit to be mentioned in the same occupation as Fellini or Hawks or Kurosawa. As the afternoon wore on toward dusk, Mr. Scott said something to me that I took to be anything but self-serving. He said: "The time is ripe for a John Ford of science fiction films to emerge. And I'm determined to be that director."

When he said it—and this was after Alien—it struck me with the force of unadulterated True Writ. Yes, of course, I thought. Who else fits the bill? Kubrick had had his shot and had made his mark with 2001 and A Clockwork Orange (and thereafter with the quirky but laudable The Shining), but there was something, for all his undeniable genius, that was distancing, cool and too contemplative; something so individual that the films remain almost like views of the human race as seen through the eyes of an alien. No, I thought, as devoutly as I worship the work of Kubrick, he isn't The One. Spielberg, perhaps? E.T. remains a great film, as important in its way as The Wizard Of Oz or Lost Horizon, and whatever his part in the making of Poltergeist, his hand can be seen in the final production. But (as I sensed then, and have gone on at length about in these pages for more than a year) there is something sadly hollow at the core in Spielberg's oeuvre. Something otiose and ultimately trivial. No, not Spielberg. Then how about George Lucas? Had I been ravished by the wonders others had found in Star Wars, I might have considered the man who was, at that moment, the biggest moneymaker in the history of cinema, The One. But even then, as now, I thought American Graffiti a far superior film, and more likely to stand the test of time than the space operas. And nothing much since that time has happened to alter my opinion. Perhaps one day soon, but not then, and not now. Beyond those three prominent directors, who was there: Nicholas Roeg? Louis Malle? Brian De Palma? John Boorman? I think not. The concerns are too great for the long haul with each of them.

Yes, I thought at that moment, Ridley Scott is The One. If anyone can bring to the sf/fantasy film the same level of High Art and High Craft that Ford brought to the Western, it is this man. I dreamed of the elegance and respect for original source that Scott had shown with The Duellists in 1978. I extrapolated from the sheer virtuosity and Cedric Gibbons-like love of setting and background that had gone so far to making Alien a masterpiece of clutching terror. (And if I were not committed to eschewing digressions, I'd suggest a linked viewing of Scott's film and the James Cameron sequel which, as decent a piece of work as it is, cannot even hope to rival the original foray for transcendence of trivial subject matter.)

Since that afternoon that wore on toward evening, I have come to believe that Scott is, indeed, The One. Even Blade Runner, which did not collapse me as it did so many of you, has come to look to me, after repeated re-viewings, as a significant achievement, deeper in human values than I'd supposed, far more than a glitzy melodrama of sci-fi machinery and thespic posturing. Over time, my respect and admiration for Scott's vision has grown substantially.

But Legend, years in the making and the sort of production nightmare that all but the Michael Ciminos of the world would shun like putting on the feed-bag with Falwell, is a tragic enterprise. It is a long, self-conscious Jungian dream filled with awkward symbolism and an adolescent sensibility that I find bewildering in the light of Scott's frequently-manifested maturity and insight. What we received here in America was a chopped-up 89-minute version of the full 129-minute film released in the U.K., so there is no telling if the tale told at greater length worked better.

Legend has a surreal quality, almost Dali-esque; or perhaps reminiscent of the paintings of that school known as the Orientalists—Gerome and Regnault and Debat-Ponsan. If wonder is the creation of a world in which one would love to live—Oz, Lawrence's Arabia, the streets of Blade Runner—then this film conveys wonder. The things that come before one's eyes in this motion picture are quite remarkable. Things we have never before seen. The camera roams as wide-eyed and innocent as Charlie Chaplin through Modern Times, and I defy anyone to name another director whose eye for the outré is keener.

But after eighty-nine minutes of rushing and flinging and breakneck visuals that leave one gasping, begging, desperate for a moment of peace and leisure—the stillness of the lake, the smooth swell of the lea—all is emptiness. This elaborate fairy tale of Good and Evil, of barechested Tom Cruise playing Bomba the Jungle Boy as if he were Mother Teresa, of unicorns and demons and dryads, is ridiculous. Like Boorman's Zardoz and Dante's Explorers and Boorman's Excalibur, it is the attempt to lift to adult level what is essentially the plaything of children.

As children we found in such fables—Aesop, Howard Pyle, Uncle Wiggily, Grimm and Andersen—touchstones for ethical behavior in the real world. They were tropes, intended to impart broad and simplistic versions of charity and honor, loyalty and gumption. But as adults we learned to our shock and often dismay that the real world was more complex than the fairy tales led us to believe. And we always felt cheated; we always found ourselves thinking, "They lied to us. They didn't tell us life would be this big a pain in the ass!"

Legend is a film made by an astute adult who, when turned loose, when given the power to create any film he desired, fled into a throwaway universe of childish irrelevance. Legend is, at final resolve, a husk. A lovely, eye-popping vacuum from which a sad breeze blows. Because it finally gives nothing. It steals our breath, captures our eyes, dazzles and sparkles and, like a 4th of July sparkler, comes to nothing but gray ash at the end.

Unlike Labyrinth, which is a film made by adults that renews and revitalizes the perception of the world we held as children, yet operates on many other levels—as does all High Art—and invigorates the adult in us. Labyrinth, were it the first film to which you'd ever been taken, would be as memorable to you as Snow White or The Wizard of Oz. And it is as important a film as those; and it is as original as those; and it is as rich in multiple meanings as those.

And I will conclude these thoughts about films made by adults that are childish, and those that are childlike, next time. Because I seem to have run out of space.

I don't know why that might be.

God knows I've hewn to my stated purpose. I mean, I might have rambled on about all the other films I've seen of late, films I think you might want to know something about, but I didn't. I just hung right in there.

Hoping you are the same . . .

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / December 1986