Harlan Ellison's Watching

Written by Harlan Ellison

Narrated by Luis Moreno

Ostensibly, this is a collection of Harlan Ellison's twenty-five years of essays and film criticism for various publications. What it is in reality is pure, raw, unapologetic opinion. Star Wars? "Luke Skywalker is a nerd and Darth Vader sucks runny eggs" Big Trouble in Little China? "A cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives" Despite working within the industry himself, Ellison never learned how to lie. So punches go un-pulled, the impersonal becomes personal, and the reader is left feeling like they have read something someone actually meant. It is a gauntlet, for sure, but it is also an exhilarating release.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books Audio
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781980041320

Reviews for Harlan Ellison's Watching

[louis.arata · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ellison is primarily known as a writer of speculative fiction as well as TV shows, including the original Star Trek and The Outer Limits. His name comes up often as the inspiration for other writers. He’s the writer that other writers respect for his intellect and craft. So, I wanted to try out some of his work.

Reading this book was like being cornered at a cocktail party by an opinionated blowhard who has to tell me in a loud voice everything he thinks is wrong with the current state of cinema. It doesn’t matter what I think because he has no interest in any other person’s opinion. If I disagree with him, I am moronically wrong. If I do agree with him, it doesn’t matter, because I will never, never, never comprehend the true artistic depth of pure cinema.

I really debated whether to keep pushing my way through this book. Well, stubbornness prevailed.

And along the way, the book got better. In the second half of the collection, his tone lightened up and he poked more evident fun at his own curmudgeonly demeanor. He also better articulated his reasons for criticizing the inadequate state of cinema and how it was pandering to the lowest denominator. He executed lengthy critiques about why Spielberg’s thumbprint on movies like Gremlins and Young Sherlock Holmes was a bad thing, in the larger scope of things.

Did he educate me on what he perceived as the evident problems of Hollywood? Yes. Did I agree with his views? Sometimes. Was he full of himself? Definitely.

Still, the book was like being cornered by a blowhard, but as with many encounters in life, I did come away a bit wiser. The essays probably were more engaging in their original format – published monthly. Reading them back to back only emphasized the long-windedness and redundancy.

In the end, was it worth it slogging through?

Meh.

[librarianbryan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Disclaimer: I only read his essays about Lynch's Dune.Written during the period Ellison was the in house reviewer for Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, his deity like status within SF gave him free reign. Much like the D.F.Wallace essays about a Lynch film I reviewed recently, the author's killer wit and occasional genius are on display, but he also was in desperate need of an editor. Through self-aggrandizing diarrhea we can extract that Ellison thought highly of Dune, forgiving its operatic bulging due to the nature of the subject matter (writing the screenplay for which Ellison turned down years earlier). Only he and Newsweek's David Ansen gave the film anything close to positive marks. Ellison's out: it's long and complicated and subtle so naturally everyone who loved Star Wars would hate Dune.He also gives a great conspiracy theory as to why the film failed, and hilarious anecdotes about the studio buffoonery that took place just before the film's release. I don't want to ruin the fun, so you'll have to investigate for yourself.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ostensibly, this is a book of film reviews. And it starts out that way. But even in those more straightforward reviews, you see something more going on. Not just a description of movies, but a description of what movies are about. And more and more you learn how movies are actually made – and destroyed. The book starts well. Sure, there are some older movies discussed that almost no one remembers (and by this, I don’t mean the newer generation losing the classics – I mean movies that showed up for a brief time, then burned out, that few, if any, of us recall), but that is not important to the message. And the book really hits it stride when the essays reprinted from Fantasy & Science Fiction appear. This is when Ellison truly begins to rip away the façade of movie-making, movie-watching, and the fans. As usual, this gets him in trouble (as indicated in some of the later essays where he quotes some of the letters he’s received) but then, the truth shall set them free or tick them off. Of particular interest is one of the later essays that looks to be a forerunner of his famous “Xenogenesis” essay – a description of just how bad fans can be.This book is fascinating. Ellison’s writing is at its strongest, using all the tricks he has honed over the years to reach sometimes startlingly (to those of us not in the business) conclusions. I can’t agree with every review, but that isn’t the point. The learning, the insight, the discovery, the joy of reading – those are the points.