Dreams With Sharp Teeth: Review (Progressive Democrat Harlan Ellison documentary trailer added)

[Omaha Steve]

Marta and I met Harlan back in 2004. Marta runs our site dedicated to the NEW Twilight Zone (80's version). Because of that and mutual friend Alan Brennert, at a convention gathering we had some great 1 on 1 time. We hope this film comes to town soon.

NTZ page: http://www.steveandmarta.com/new%20twilight%20zone/ntz1.htm

The 60's Twilight Zone Con 2004: http://www.steveandmarta.com/graveyards/tzcon2004.htm

The 60's Twilight Zone Con 2002: http://www.steveandmarta.com/graveyards/tzcon2002.htm

http://www.twilightzonemuseum.com/welcome.php

NOTICE! There will be no "Twilight Zone" Convention in 2008! Stay tuned for details about the fifth and final Convention in 2009, to be held in the Los Angeles area. You are welcome to email the website about the convention - but until the information is posted here, we obviously are not ready to go public with the information about the date and location. It will be advertised elsewhere too, of course. Thanks for your understanding and support.


Movie trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmfzKKM49uY

http://www.tvguide.com/movies/dreams-sharp-teeth/review/293015

DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH Or, Why is Harlan Ellison so gosh darned angry?

Filmmaker Erik Nelson began shooting the multi-award winning author of some 75 books, 1700 short stories and essays and a raft of classic teleplays (The Outer Limits' "Demon with a Glass Hand," Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever") -- back in 1981 for a PBS segment and continued to film the notoriously contentious Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master for the next 25 years. The result is a fascinating, if cautious, portrait of a great writer and a world-class crank who is never less than compelling and often completely justified in his rants. Nelson opens with Ellison's friend Robin Williams posing a number of outrageous questions culled from Ellison lore, only to find that much of it is true: Did you really mail a dead gopher to a publishing house? (Yes.) Did you really break the pelvis of a network exec? (Yes.) Have you really slept with over 500 women? (No. The number is closer to 700.) Did you ever throw a fan down an elevator shaft? (No. But given Ellison's hair-trigger temper, that may change.) By his own account -- and Nelson allows the brutally frank Ellison to tell his own story, often through readings from such autobiographical works as "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" and "All the Lies that Are My Life" -- Ellison grew up a bullied, smart-mouthed Jewish pipsqueak in a small, anti-Semitic Ohio town, who cut his literary teeth writing for the penny-a-word pulps in New York City in the mid-1950s. After a two-year stint in the Army, Ellison eventually landed in L.A. where he began building on a body of work that already included novels and hundreds of stories. He also became something of a counter-cultural icon, touring college campuses, penning trippy mind-bending TV scripts, editing the important sci-fi anthology Dangerous Visions and joining Martin Luther King in his march in Selma, Alabama. Ellison's first foray into screenwriting -- the notoriously putrid 1966 camp classic THE OSCAR -- would be his last, but his stories would continue serve as the inspiration for a generation of writers and filmmakers (like TERMINATOR director James Cameron, whose blatant borrowings from " Demon with a Glass Hand" and "Soldier" would lead to a successful lawsuit filed by Ellison).



With friends/fans like Neil Gaiman, Ronald Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and Williams on hand to put his achievement and his personality in perspective (Gaiman describes him as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century can also act like a furious five-year-old), Ellison emerges as the unpredictable guest who can either make or break your party, railing against the devaluation of writers and writing, American anti-intellectualism, the women who burned him, editors and directors who muck around with his stuff, and anyone who thinks they're going to get something out of him without paying for it (his righteous rant against Warner Bros., who wanted to use a interview with Ellison as a bonus feature without cutting him a check, should serve as a manifesto for young writers). But he's also a tireless, if litigious, champion of the hard work of writing and writers' rights -- he recently spent nearly all his savings on a lawsuit against AOL after a user uploaded Ellison's work to a Usenet group without permission -- and if Nelson doesn't press him on subjects that would undoubtedly lead to a temperamental explosion, the relative calm allows us to catch a glimpse of a man who, for many, is and always will be a hero. --Ken Fox

[lapfog_1]

1. Was he really present at the SciFi Writers convention

where Robert Heinlein bet L. Ron Hubbard that someone could invent a crazy religion and pass it off as real.

Heinlein had written a short story named "The 6th Column" (or "Day After Tomorrow") and contended that the main premise of the book (group of scientists with spiffy inventions form a new religion to enlist the masses to overthrow the "Pan-Asians" who had recently enslaved America) was bunk. People would, in real life, never fall for such religious bullshit. Hubbard vehemently disagreed. They were drinking at a bar near the convention (so the story goes) and decided to place a bet. Harlan Ellison was to hold the money. Scientology was the result.

I've heard that the story was "absolutely true" and "complete nonsense"... and I've always wondered.

Also, Harlan has claimed that he is not really as misogynistic as "A boy and his dog" made him out to be... and that the film makers took liberties with the ending of the film. But no matter what the final dialog should have been, the concept of the ending has to be considered misogynistic, right? How does Harlan really feel about women in general... and had someone dumped him just before he wrote the story?

[Echo In Light]

4. Have a listen: Harlan Ellison & Robin Williams discuss LRH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9AGVARpqdk&feature=related

[lapfog_1]

5. Ahh, sort of true and not true.

Lester Del Rey... not Robert Heinlein. Makes perfect sense.

[Echo In Light]

2. Thanks. I posted about this doc a few days back

...actually had just stumbled across the trailer, unaware such a film had been made. He's been one of my favorite authors for quite some time. Taken from the introduction to The Essential Ellison, "Sublime Rebel," by Terry Dowling:

"In Egyptian mythology, Iai is a fascinating character. He is the rebel, the tester, the stubborn resisting force of intellect and insight which donkey-like stands its ground, refusing to budge, and challenges what is accepted and valued and thought to be sensible and true. The same sort of honest irrepressible rebel, in fact, which surfaced in the child who pointed out that the Emperor wore no clothes and in the Fool who told King Lear that he was wrong. Those dear precious rebels(for there are, and have been, many)not only dare to question but for their pains alienate themselves from those who haven't questioned, who didn't think to question, who are now made to look stupid because they didn't."

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thanks for the head's up on Harlan doc--one of the greatest short story writers

of all time!

[Echo In Light]

6. For DUers unfamiliar with him, Ellison was on {gov} Reagan's list of "subversives."

I'd recommend starting with The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World, Deathbird Stories, and Strange Wine.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Just about ALL Democrats were on that list

:-)