Harlan Ellison's Watching Read Free Page A

agents, the cinematographers, the studios, the best boy, the gaffer or the gofer. Every film is the writer's responsibility, his blame—and his triumph.
     
    The likes of Harlan Ellison rarely pass this way. Sometimes it is with great relief that I contemplate that fact. Yet, finally I understand that I, like all writers, must respond to his challenge, which is to do the best work we can. That is what these reviews are all about: people doing their best, trying to do their best, not doing their best. You're a hard man, Ellison. Don't ever change.
     
     
     
George Kirgo (March 26, 1926–August 22, 2004), President, Writers Guild of America, west (1987–1991) CBS-TV film critic

Scenarist of Redline 7000, Spinout, Don't Make Waves, Voices and television scripts ranging from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Kraft Suspense Theater
     
     
     

INTRODUCTION
Crying "Water!" In A Crowded Theater
     
     
PART ONE:
In Which The Critic Blames It All On A Warped Childhood
    Of me, the question is often asked.
     
    Humphrey Bogart to John Derek in 1949's Knock on Any Door : "Where did you go wrong, kid?"
     
    Pat O'Brien to Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Gabe Dell, Bernard Punsley and Huntz Hall in 1938's Angels with Dirty Faces : "Where did you kids go wrong?"
     
    Patricia Neal to Paul Newman in 1963's Hud : "Where did you go wrong?"
     
    Gazing on the imperfect handiwork, gibbering assistant Dwight Frye to Herr Doktor Victor F. in 1931's Frankenstein : "I don't want to second-guess you, Doc, but do you think it was smart to sew the left hand onto his forehead?"
     
    Having reached middle age and having made the journey having accrued a modest degree of fame, some might say celebrity, others might say noteworthiness or renown (not to mention the guy over there with the placard that says infamy), of me, the question is often asked: "Where did you go wrong, kid?"
     
    I take this opportunity to put the matter to rest. It cannot be blamed on my late mom and dad, Serita and Louis Laverne Ellison. As nice a pair of midwestern parents as one could hope to have had cleaning up after one's adolescence; they did the best they could, having birthed something that might better have starred in a Larry Cohen film. Opprobrium should not be visited on the many bigots, anti-Semites, dunderheads and random whelps who made my youth in Painesville, Ohio seem like the lost chapters of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling or The Sickness Unto Death . I survived their tender mercies with nothing more debilitating to show for it than a lifelong blood-drenched obsession for revenge. Responsibility should not be laid at the door of evil companions, drug addiction, rampant alcoholism or tertiary syphilis; nor that of mind-polluting pornography, prolonged exposure to strict religious training, the evils of the Big City or snug Jockey shorts. Where I went wrong, how I first flouted the rules, when I turned from the path of righteousness and became the case study before you today, redounds solely to the legendary animators Dave and Max Fleischer, and an obscure feature-length cartoon they made in 1941 titled Mr. Bug Goes to Town .
     
    Oh, yes, to be sure, there will be those among you on the jury who will scoff, sneer, and flick fish scales in demonstration of your rejection of this plea. Walk a mile in my snowshoes, I say, before you deal thus harshly with a poor, unfortunate symphoric nyctalopian, come at the dwindling twilight of his life to a state of repentance and hiatus hernia. Ah, you nullifidians, you!
     
    I tell you truly: it was Mr. Bug Goes to Town (seen once in a while in the Sunday morning kiddie TV ghetto as Hoppity Goes to Town , the British title), an animated entomological extravaganza recounting the angst-ridden travels and travails of a grasshopper and other anthropomorphized insects, that first warped a sweet, theretofore-angelic child. It happened, exactly and precisely, as burned forever in memory, on Tuesday, May 27th, 1941. My