Harlan Ellison Rude (and Lewd) to Fan, Film at 7:30
by Amelia G : August 10th, 2007
Harlan Ellison was going to be doing some sort of screening and question and answer session tonight. I realized that it had been about a decade since I read anything by Ellison, meaning I pretty much stopped reading his work when I came out to the West Coast. Although books are a serious vice of mine, Angelenos do not tend to be big readers and this makes it easy to just sort of not think of some writers I once would have been hyper-aware of.
At any rate, some friends and I went to see a sort of documentary/promo piece for Harlan Ellison tonight. It was a potentially not quite final cut and of course it was a book event in Los Angeles. I was all fretting, when we arrived with only three minutes to spare, that it might be sold out. Oh yeah, book event in sunny Southern Cali. It was only about a quarter full, but the audience struck me as quite devout, despite Ellison heckling us all during the Q&A portion, comparing our relative silence to a boring Jackson Pollack painting or something. I don’t recall the exact analogy, but, even though it did not quite work for the situation, it still sounded fairly entertaining the way Ellison said it.
The movie had a lot of delightfully well-delivered lines and a few bright spots. Writer Neil Gaiman describes a telephone answering machine message where Ellison told Gaiman he was a dead man, that his house would be burned down, salt would be poured on the radioactive remains, etc. and finishes saying “call me” and Gaiman tells the story with surprisingly humorous delivery. Actor Robin Williams wanders in and out of the flick and of course it …
I think it’s unfortunate that one of the down sides of living in pretty much any interesting area or city is that, if you are there long enough, the notion that it just isn’t as cool and fun as it used to be is nearly inescapable. It’s really difficult not to fall into a bit of a rut when you see stores you used to enjoy close down, clubs you used to have a great time at are gone, friends that used to be the life of the party have settled down or just become such monumental losers that you don’t want to see them anyway. It’s hard not to feel like you should just uproot yourself and move to greener pastures sometimes. I know I’ve felt like that in a number of areas I’ve lived. Lately, a lot of my Los Angeles friends have been sharing their general ennui on this subject as well. So, I thought I might share one technique that I’ve found that can kind of help shake things up a little. Just pretend you are visiting. Give yourself a week to do all those things you’d only do if you were actually from out of town. Read the local weekly paper and actually go to everything that piques your interest. You’ll be surprised at just how much fun is actually going on right around you.