INSTALLMENT 29 |
Interim Memo
Reference is made in this piece to a ten-thousand-word essay I did on the films of Val Lewton, and the uses of fear in films of terror. If you have a copy of my collection OVER THE EDGE (published in EDGEWORKS, VOL. 1, last year), you’ll find it reprinted from its original publication in Cinema magazine, 1966. I also pirated from myself a slight, abbreviated snippet from the longer essay in AN EDGE IN MY VOICE (the other book contained in the lovely White Wolf EDGEWORKS, VOL. 1). So if this “teaser” intrigues you, you’ve got a far easier row to hoe than all the readers who confronted it seven years ago, and had to haunt the used bookstores to read the full, ten-thousand-word essay. White Wolf lives to serve your every whim and need. Tra-la.
The Swigart bibliography noted herein…well, it’s long out of print. But rumor has it that a 1000-page updated edition is working its way toward publication sometime soon after the advent of the Millennium. Yeah, sure, and it’ll happen right after the time the Pope beatifies me.
INSTALLMENT 29 | 19 JULY 73
3 SMALL PLEASURES FOR A MORE ENDURABLE EXISTENCE [THE SECOND OF 3 CULINARY COMMENTS]
From time to time, I like to share with you some special things that make life a little more pleasant to endure. Books, films, places to eat, people you ought to know, a strange thought or two. This week, I’ll go for your senses of sight, taste and imagination with a new movie, a sensational Castilian restaurant, and a new publishing venture that came to me as a birthday present.
First, the movie.
Elsewhere in print, I’ve raved about the films of terror produced by the legendary Val Lewton at RKO between 1942 and 1946. (And for those who know little more than that about Lewton, I recommend VAL LEWTON: THE REALITY OF TERROR, by Joel E. Siegel, Viking Press, 1973, $6.95.) I once did a long critical essay in Cinema magazine about Lewton and how his films captured the essence of terror, an emotion quite different and infinitely nobler than that snared by horror films or monster epics. Terror is a difficult feeling to evoke on film—usually it turns laughable—and only Lewton (regularly) and a few others (occasionally) have managed it. For every sillyass Night of the Lepus or Frogs, there have been a dozen Creature That Gnawed on Pittsburgh abominations, and neither group shows much imagination or intelligence.
And “intelligence” is the operative word for classics in the genre of terror, because the evocation of terror entails the implementation of those subliminal and ancient fears that lie bubbling deep in the audience’s psyche. Universal symbology, universal fears, Jungian memory, disquieting imagery, these are all passports to the land of terror for the scenarist concerned with doing more than jumping out of a secret panel and shrieking “Boo!” at Mantan Moreland.
The horror and monster flicks go for the cheap shot; they are on the Erich Segal level of competence and they leave no residue of fear. They are the sort of nonsense used by boys with terminal horniness to get equally as simple-minded girls to cuddle close in Chevys at drive-ins. For the cognoscenti they are a bore, if not an affront. But a well-wrought and intelligent film of terror is a delight to behold, a shiverful experience that never quite leaves you. Repulsion, Psycho, The Haunting, the original Dracula, Pinter’s The Servant, Séance on a Wet Afternoon and Lewton’s Cat People, The Leopard Man and Isle of the Dead are all classic examples of what I mean. They tread the thin line of tolerable terror and touch common tones in the psyche that cannot fail to immobilize even the most jaded horror moviegoer. Their ilk is rare. Not since Lewton has any single creator been able to bring it off regularly. Polanski comes closest, but even there I find a soul-sickness that repels as much as attracts.
Yet one man has been working in this idiom for years and is only now coming to be recognized as a master of the form. The reason is a fairly simple one. For many years he wrote films of “horror” for American-International and was hamstrung with wretched casting, inept production, low-budget and wholly unimaginative budgets and the interference of exploitation moneymen. Even so, several of his early films remain highwater marks of the genre, and at a recent L.A. County Museum retrospective in conjunction with the Writers Guild and the American Film Institute, there was sufficient material to put on a three and a half hour show that brought a standing ovation from the audience. Just this year, for the first time in all the years he has worked in film and television, this splendid writer received a Writers Guild award for Most Outstanding Teleplay. And long overdue, I might add.
This is beginning to sound like one of those banquet introductions where you try painfully to conceal the name of the guest speaker whom everyone knows, till the last two words. I will end your suspense. He is the man who wrote Duel and The Night Stalker for television, the man who wrote The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors for AIP, the man who wrote the novels THE SHRINKING MAN and I AM LEGEND, and the man who has written the most truly terrifying film of the past ten years, and his name is Richard Matheson.
His latest film, which you must not miss, is The Legend of Hell House. It will scare you as nothing since Repulsion, Psycho and The Haunting scared you. In a season when Scream, Blacula, Scream! and SSSSSSS and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf are released to no notice whatsoever, The Legend of Hell House emerges as one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed films of menace ever put on celluloid. Matheson wrote the script from his novel, HELL HOUSE, and under the direction of John Hough it becomes such a potential winner for the ailing 20th Century-Fox Studios that one hopes they will not cast it out merely as another exploitation sleeper.
With absolutely stunning performances by Pamela Franklin (whom you may remember as one of the children in the film version of Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” The Innocents), Clive Revill, Roddy McDowall and even Ms. Gayle Hunnicutt—who, previous to this, demonstrated roughly as much thespic ability as a rutabaga—a gorgeous rutabaga, granted, but a vegetable nonetheless—the film trembles from moment to moment with an unbearable tension that cannot possibly leave you unmoved.
Every sneaky and scream-inducing craft trick of the terrorist has been used by Matheson, and unless you have been lobotomized you will not be able to escape the fright and helplessness of immobility brought on by scenes such as the poltergeist dinner party, the attack of the cat, the ghostly rape, the discovery of Belasco, the sexual sleepwalk of Ms. Hunnicutt, the shadow in the shower sequence, the discovery of Dr. Barrett by his wife…oh, it is to go on detailing every incident. This is, in short, a film of superlative measure. One of those twitchers that will live in the dark spaces of your imagination for years to come.
And what a delight to see Matheson turned loose after all the years of his work coming forth at only half-speed because of circumstances over which he had no control; to see him on tv and in film, finally unleashed. I predict that if the Powers That Purchase hire Matheson and let him do what he does best, unfettered, in the next decade we will see a body of works of terror that will ultimately rival the best of Lewton.
Second, the restaurant.
Juan Jose’s La Masía (9077 Santa Monica Boulevard, 273–7066) is a treasure. It is easily on a par with the last smash dining spot I recommended, El Palenque, the Argentinian restaurant on Melrose. This time, I offer you the exquisite wonders of Continental Castilian cuisine, and if you’ve come to trust my palate from your encounter with El Palenque, you will perceive I mean no hype when I say this boîte can’t possibly stay uncrowded for long. So go there, and tell them I sent you, but keep it to yourselves otherwise. Because if the Scandia crowd hears about the quality and the prices, we’ll never find seats.
La Masía looks like a garden doorway between Dan Tana’s Restaurant and The Troubadour, but once you enter you are pulled gently into an ambience of dark woods, low beamed ceilings, hanging plants of almost rain forest lushness, graceful, felicitous, and facilitated table service; not to mention food that is brought to your table so hot that it steams. This last may not seem like such a telling point in the restaurant’s favor, if you are
one of the debased creatures raised on McDonald’s slopburgers that come to you tepid from under the infra-red heating lamps, but for those of us who savor cuisine prepared with love and craft, the concept of a cheese sauce still bubbling when it reaches the table is enough to cause almost orgasmic tremors. All this, however, is serendipity.
For it is the brilliance of the menu itself that will draw you again and again to La Masía. Dishes prepared with those minute extra touches of culinary imagination, variants on staple and familiar dishes that have paled in lesser dining spots, creativity in areas where only the chefs and the owners could know that care and lagniappe have been considered.
Let me tell you of a typical meal I had there last week. It was shortly before Lynda and I were to go see a screening of The Legend of Hell House at the Academy Theater (which is just across Santa Monica Boulevard from La Masía) and I’d decided I would eat lightly. So I ordered a bowl of gazpacho, the Andalusian cold salad soup, and a glass of iced tea. I thought I’d get away cheap and calorie-free that way. Lynda loathes shrimp, so, in my never-ending campaign to introduce her to the exotic foods of the universe, I cajoled her into ordering an appetizer of Scampi a la ajillo, figuring if she turned green (as she is wont to do), I would polish off the little dears myself. I ordered no main course, Lynda requested the Besugo al Horno, baked red snapper, seasoned, and topped with cheese. I loathe red snapper. The only thing we agreed on was the two glasses of iced tea.
My gazpacho came to the table quickly, and it was nicely chilled…none of this semi-cool nonsense that meant it had been left standing on the serving sideboard for an order to come in. Topped with several twists of ground pepper, it had the coral color of diced pimientos and tomatoes mixed in just the right proportions. Not too cucumbery, not too eggy, not too tomatoey, it was semi-thick and utterly memorable. I dipped my face into the bowl and actually licked off the residue. Lynda turned the other way. It was one of the two best bowls of gazpacho I’ve ever encountered.
Lynda went at the Scampi with caution, prying the tender flesh out of the shells with a look on her face that surely duplicated that worn by Saint Joan at the stake. Not even the bubbling sauce of butter, wine, tomatoes, garlic and herbs in which the shellfish languished served to allay her fears. But one bite later, when the scent of that miracle hit me, and I leaned over to taste and convince her she was correct in her hatred of shrimp, she bared her fangs and struck out at me with the shrimp fork, threatening me a grievous mischief if I put my pudding-trough near her beloved Scampi.
From the Tugboat Annie of the dinner table, no greater recommendation can be obtained. I rest my case.
Suffice it to say, I was not able to avoid the pleasures of the variegated menu. At a nearby table I saw diners having at a dish that looked splendiferous, so I asked our waiter to do the same to us, and he brought me a dish of stuffed mushrooms, each one the size of a hockey puck with a thyroid condition, absolutely surface-tensioned with crabmeat. They were so rich I could only eat three of the five monsters.
Lynda’s red snapper came in a wok dish and was covered with a topping of cheese that was crispy at the edges, still malleable in the center. I arm-wrestled her for several bites. I will never again badmouth red snapper. It was an epiphany.
For dessert, the flan was out of this world.
And all of it came to under ten dollars. In a similar Castilian restaurant in New York, such a meal would have been over thirty dollars, and we’d have been insulted into the bargain. I was able to tip handsomely and still get away cheap, a delight to cheapskates like me.
In case you can’t tell, I recommend La Masía without reservation. Which is what you should have if you plan to eat there on a busy night of the week.
Third, the publishing event of the century.
Before I get into it, let me assure cynics in the crowd that I am involved in this affair merely as subject (which is the rationale for mentioning such a self-serving ego trip in my own column), not as recipient of financial benefits.
Ms. Leslie Kay Swigart, a librarian and bibliophile, has compiled a 124-page book titled HARLAN ELLISON: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CHECKLIST. It is the end-result of three years’ work by Ms. Swigart, and has been published by Joe Bob Williams of Dallas. They are charging three bucks for it, and it is sorta kinda my thirty-ninth birthday present. It includes a listing of every single story, article, movie, television script, column, book review, movie criticism, book, interview, published letter and assorted miscellanea I’ve ever had in print. And all of them illustrated with photographs of the book covers or artwork, including foreign editions and paintings by the Dillons that have graced my meager efforts.
There are over 870 entries, seventeen years’ work as a professional.
In addition, the book has a cover by the Dillons, a great gaggle of photos of your humble columnist from his youth to the present (a span of six weeks), specially-written appreciations by such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Ben Bova, Joanna Russ, Edward Bryant and James Sutherland. I wrote a new Afterword for the volume.
There were only 1000 copies printed, each one is numbered, and they are available for $3.50 (the 50¢ covers postage and mailing envelope, etc.) from: Ms. Leslie Kay Swigart, P.O. Box 8570, Long Beach, California 90808.
I would not lie to any of you. This is the biggest headsweller I’ve ever had, and if you give even the tiniest shit about what I’ve written or where it was published, this is a massive and exhaustive work. I would be flattered if you wanted one for your library. But beyond that, if Joe Bob and Leslie don’t sell that thousand white elephant run of this monster, they’ll be thrown in the poorhouse.
And on that note of reticence, I leave you till next week, at which time I’ll be writing from Seattle.
And by the way, make sure Ms. Swigart sends you the version of the bibliography with the photo of me exposing myself in front of Kate Smith and Art Linkletter on You Bet Your Life.
INSTALLMENT 30 |
Interim Memo
This was sixteen years ago.
We still have friends in and out, the door as close to revolving as sanity permits. But we discourage it now. I’m a happily married man, I have a full-time staff that comes in five days a week in hopes of assisting me toward clearing the long-standing obligations (such as the Hornbook), and Susan and I give a heavy sigh of relief when the last voyager goes out the door.
Even so, in the past couple of months (as I write this in July of 1989) we’ve had the following sharing Ellison Wonderland:
Leo & Diane Dillon, the longtime friends who taught me most of what I know about integrity and personal courage; the same Dillons who have won the Caldecott Award for their book covers; same Dillons who’ve done the covers for so many of my books. For the first time ever, they came to my home—though I had lived with, and off, them in New York years ago—and got to see all their wonderful art framed on my walls.
Ken Steacy, whose artwork was turned to my Kyben war stories in the wonderful graphic novel NIGHT AND THE ENEMY. He came to visit, and gave me a swell gift: a model he’d constructed, from scratch, of Blackhawk and his plane.
Gil Lamont. David Morrell. Dan Simmons. The memory blurs. It just keeps on keeping on. Good friends. Estimable talents. Ah, hell, maybe life ain’t such a bowl’a mush, after all.
Notice: do not call us from East Weewah, asking if you can live here for a while. I will just insult you.
INSTALLMENT 30 | 9 AUGUST 73
VARIETIES OF VENUE
I’ve always said being Jewish doesn’t necessarily make a person eligible for 2000 years’ retroactive persecution, but recent events are just too come on, world, gimme a break!
No sooner do I cease writing The Glass Teat for the Los Angeles Free Press and get set to start writing The Harlan Ellison Hornbook for that outlet, when Brian Kirby and all the people I knew split, and started The Staff. So I held off with this column’s inception and did some writing for The Staff. For which I never got paid. When it became apparent to me that my lo
ve of the “Movement” is only twice as strong as my love of being paid for what I write—even if it is only a token sum—when it became clear to me that in the name of “love” I (like many others) was being ripped-off by the Movement—I stopped writing for The Staff. Then Judy Sims of Rolling Stone was assigned to put together the L.A. Flyer insert section for Stone, and she asked me if I’d revive The Glass Teat. I was less interested in going back to a column that I’d mined for 2½ years than in starting a fresh one, but Judy is a friend and the pay was nice, and I’d always wanted to be in Rolling Stone, so I did it. After three issues under Judy’s superlative editorship, the farseeing Stone entrepreneurs in San Francisco killed what had become a fascinating section, Judy became L.A. Bureau Chief, and The Glass Teat was dead again after a two-installment revival. Peace and quiet and an absence of deadline-scurrying reigned in Ellison Wonderland till October of 1972 when Art Kunkin and I agreed that I’d return to the Freep, this time with The Hornbook. Through trial and tribulation and the ineptitude of various production personnel, the column went 29 installments over nine-plus months of Freep. I missed a lot of deadlines because of lecture tours, the serious illness of my Mother in Florida, and the horrors of getting my NBC series The Starlost ready for airing next month, but I returned to L.A. at the end of July and was getting settled down to a regular schedule again…when Kunkin was fired.