Harlan Ellison's Watching Part 13

The River is the best of the recent spate of country movies in which people lose the farm, and is the only one I've seen that made me give a d.a.m.n if they did or didn't.

The Cotton Club is Coppola, beyond which nothing need really be said; but for those of you who aren't as much in love with every foot of film Francis Ford has ever turned out, know that The Cotton Club is a wonder.

Now I know I'm not supposed to be doing this kind of business, urging you to see stuff outside the genre, but my goodness, you'll need something to wash the taste of Supergirl and Starman out of your heads.

Think of me as your mother. At least until I'm elected G.o.d, on the other hand.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / April 1985 INSTALLMENT 9:.

In Which The Fortunate Reader Gets To Peek Inside The Fabled Black Tower

If the Universal Studios Tower didn't exist, it would have to be invented. By some noted fabulist like Borges; or Satie or Arcimboldo; by Gaudi or the Brothers Grimm; more likely by Clifford Irving. (And within days Glen A. Larson-far-famed for his creation of such original television concepts as Alias Smith and Jones, BJ and the Bear and Battlestar Galactica-would have erected, out of cardboard and mucilage, an approximation of the Black Tower just a few miles farther along the Cahuenga Pa.s.s.) At no two consecutive points, one often feels, does what goes on in the Tower touch the rational universe.

The Universal Tower rises from the North Hollywood flats like a Kubrick monolith farted off the Lunar surface. There are rumors Childe Roland is still a prisoner up there on the fifteenth floor. On moonless nights, when the ghosts of Universal executives who thought A Countess from Hong Kong, The Island and Streets of Fire would be smash hits drift silently around the back lot, ectoplasmic hands clapped over ectoplasmic ears in vain endeavor to block out the heavy metal caterwauling from the Universal Amphitheater, if one whizzes past the Tower on the Hollywood Freeway, one can still hear Rapunzel shrieking her guts out for someone to climb up her hair and release her from her starlet's contract.

For five years, commencing on Thursday, September 18th, 1698, the Bertaudiere Tower in the Bastille of Paris held a nameless prisoner whose face was covered by a black velvet cloth that Dumas pere transformed into "a visor of polished steel soldered to a helmet of the same nature."

For seven weeks, commencing Monday, November 15th, 1971, the northwest corner of the 9th floor of the Universal Tower held a nameless writer whose mind was covered by a black smog ABC-TV transformed into "a lemminglike urge to hurl oneself through the ninth floor window to a messy fadeout."

For seven weeks Dopplering toward, through, and past Christmas 1971, I sold my soul to Universal Studios, then-president Lew Wa.s.serman, a producer named Stan Shpetner, a primetime tv series called The Sixth Sense, the American Broadcasting Company, and anybody else who would make a reasonable bid on damaged goods, tacky remnants, floating ethics, and seriously flawed seconds; in short, I departed in a moment of greed and weakness from eleven years as a film and television writer to join the enemy on the other side of the desk. Yes, brethren and sistren, I became a story editor. Uck yichh choke!

As the Christ child's natal day celebration neared in that watershed year of 1971, I found myself standing in the stairwell between the eighth and ninth floors of the Black Tower, rattling the walls with Primal Screams that brought secretaries running from all directions to help the poor soul who was obviously being disemboweled. Soon thereafter, mere minutes later, I leaped onto Stan Shpetner's desk, did a deranged adagio, terminated my employment, and fled television for a decade.

(That I have, of late, returned to television is an odd story for yet another day.) Nor did I, during that decade, have much to do with the Studio of the Black Tower. Once having been touched by the lunacy of that self-contained vertical universe, I tried to live by the wisdom Voltaire demonstrated when, having attended an orgy and having comported himself (we are told) with heroic verve and expertise, refused a second invitation with the cla.s.sic rejoinder, "Once: a philosopher; twice: a pervert!"

Or in the words of Oscar Wilde: "Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes."

Recently, however, as the needs of this column have demanded, I have been thrown into a.s.sorted liaisons with Universal. I as reviewer, they as hustlers of product they wish reviewed. This is a symbiotic relationship much like that melded from the a.s.sociation of the hippopotamus and the ox-p.e.c.k.e.r, or tick bird (Buphaginus Africa.n.u.s).

And I must confess I had forgotten how deranged things can get up there at the Black Tower. I select the word deranged from among the many words available to me, with great care. (There is a legend-certainly intended to be apocryphal-that in a manner similar to that of the apemen being brought to the Black Monolith in 2001 so they could touch it and have their intelligence raised, so it is that television producers are brought to the monolith of the Black Tower, they lay their hands upon it, and their intelligence is lowered.) Yes, I think deranged is the proper adjective; particularly when Universal makes a corporate decision to scramble all its eggs in one basket.

Dune.

The breath catches when the name is spoken. In the truest sense of the flack-artist's phrase, Dune has been one of the most eagerly-awaited sf films of all time. The publicity mill began its abrasive work against the public consciousness in 1969, just four years after the Chilton hardcover was published, combining the two serials John Campbell had first published as "Dune World" (196364) and "Prophet of Dune" (1965). Arthur Jacobs, who had produced for 20th Century Fox the enormously popular Planet of the Apes films and the financially-disastrous Dr. Dolittle, optioned the book for what would be considered a laughable sum in the light of today's knowledge that the Dune books have sold more than 15 million copies, not to mention that the current option prices even for trash bestsellers are now computed in numbers that could have wiped out the Holy Roman Empire's entire budget deficit. Jacobs died in 1973 and so did the first Dune film deal.

Seven years later, surrealist director Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chilean-born, underground famous for El Topo-the weirdest "western" ever filmed if you agree that the concept of Jesus as Gunslinger do tend to diddle Jung's archetypal images more than somewhat-secured backing, optioned the book, wrote a script, and began hiring as astonishing an artistic braintrust as any filmmaker had ever a.s.sembled: British paperback cover artist Chris Foss, whose s.p.a.ceships were painted as if they'd been sculpted out of Silly Putty; "Moebius," the Metal Hurlant comic artists whose distinctive style in such extended works as L'Homme Est-II Bon? (Is Man Good?), Cauchemar Blanc and Arzach had influenced an entire generation of Anglo-American ill.u.s.trators; the Swiss designer H. R. Giger, who would later provide the psycho-s.e.xually arresting look of Alien; Salvador Dali; Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Blue Thunder, Dark Star) and the nonpareil Ron Cobb. Two million dollars was spent just on salaries for the visionaries. I have seen some of Giger's bizarre, brilliant paintings for Jodorowsky's vision of Dune, and if aficionados of the novels have been less than overwhelmed by the eventually-filmed sandworms of Arrakis, I submit that their spines would have been pumped full of Freon had Giger's Arrakeen horror been realized.

But by Christmas of 1975, the volatile combination of Jodorowsky, parvenu backers, erratic artists and banks wary of putting up a completion bond for the film exploded and two years' worth of planning, writing and preproduction went into the dumper. Lights dim; and the myth dozes.

Leaves fly off the calendar. Seasons change. The Proscenium is cleared, flats are taken to storage, the cyclorama is repainted, and in 1978 a new cast of characters enters stage right as Dino De Laurentiis buys into the nightmare the Dune dream has become. And he opens the third act of the drama by commissioning Frank Herbert to write a new screenplay.

Digression: in the twenty-two years I've spent working in the visual mediums of film and television, it has been made painfully clear to me that the "rule of thumb," widespread in the industry, that most writers of books and stories simply cannot write screenplays . . . is correct. Like most old saws, it is a bit of True Writ based solidly in history and personal experience. There is a reason Scott Fitzgerald was yoked with such as Charles Marquis Warren and Budd Schulberg on studio scriptwriting a.s.signments.

When I was working on Star Trek in 1966, I went out on the limb half a dozen times by urging Gene Roddenberry and then-story editor John D. F. Black to consider signing well-known sf authors to write segments. Six or eight were, in fact, hired. Of those who had no previous credits as scenarists, only two produced material that was eventually filmed. As for the others, some of the most respected names in the print medium: they just didn't have a clue. What they brought forth-even after extensive meetings and revisions and demonstrations of how a scene could be made to work, and finally even after-hours get-togethers in which scenes were actually rewritten for them-was pathetic.

Even as there are apparatchiks of the Eastern Literary Establishment (a state of place and mind we who live here in literary Coventry t'other side of the Rockies are constantly a.s.sured by such as Barbara Epstein of The New York Review of Books and Mitchel Levitas of The New York Times Book Review is only a fevered conjuration of our California-vanilla paranoia) who believe that the presence of too much sunshine and an absence of a dozen police locks on the apartment door prevents us out here from writing Great Art, there are writers who smugly contend that writing for the screens, big and small, is merely a five-finger exercise any Real Writer can perform, a ch.o.r.e fit only for Hacks. I smile far more smugly than they, when I hear such twaddle. Let them try, I say; as you would to one of those culinary machos who announces at your favorite Thai or Tex-Mex restaurant that "there ain't a salsa living that's too hot for me!" Let them try, I say. Heh heh heh.

Because for every William Goldman, William Faulkner or Robert Bloch who can swing both ways, book to film and back, there are thousands of narrative writers who have fruitlessly thumped their noggins against the enigma of how to write cinematically. It does not detract one iota from their craftsmanship in writing for print, but it ought to humble them summat when next they run a denigration ramadoola about those who can hear the song, those who can conjure the dream, those who can write words to be spoken and action to be actualized.

Which is not to say that Frank Herbert ever manifested such sn.o.bbery. Nonetheless, his 175-page screenplay was, by all reports, utterly unworkable. Unshootable because of Frank's inability to prune it, trim it, straightline it, free it of the endless distractions of subplots and minutiae. End of digression.

So Frank Herbert was taken off the project and De Laurentiis decided to go in another direction with the project. He opted for the method of hiring a highly visual director, and letting him find the proper scenarist. In 1979 Dino signed Ridley Scott. Alien was hot, and the English director seemed right for what was now considered an impossible project that would break the hearts of men or women no matter how tough and talented they might be. Ridley Scott went looking for writers.

On Thursday, September 27th, 1979 Ridley Scott came for a breakfast meeting at my home and offered me the a.s.signment to write Dune. He was very nice about it when I told him I would sooner spend my declining years vacationing on Devil's Island. Further, with the wisdom and foresight that has made me a Delphic legend in my own time, with the kind of bold extrapolative thinking personified by Charles H. Duell (who, as Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899, implored President William McKinley to abolish his office because, "Everything that can be invented has been invented"), I a.s.sured Scott that this was a book so complex and vast in scope that it never could be made, for anything under a hundred million dollars. And yet further, I said with sagacity, "Besides, who needs to see Dune when David Lean has already made Lawrence of Arabia? It's just King of Kings with sandworms. No," I said, vibrating with a richness of perspicacity unparalleled since Custer opined that he could kick the c.r.a.p out of them redskins up there on the hill, "no, this is a fool's enterprise. There isn't a writer living or dead who could beat this project."

Digression: Scott said something remarkable that has stuck in my mind. He said, "The time is ripe for a John Ford of science fiction films. I'm going to be that director." And maybe he hasn't achieved that yet, but sooner the man who helmed Alien and Blade Runner and The Duellists than John Carpenter or George Lucas or Joe Dante. End of digression II.

Though I like to think Ridley's spirit was crushed at not being able to suffer the torments of the d.a.m.ned by having had the bad sense to hire me, he pulled himself together like the special talent he is, and he hired Rudolph Wurlitzer.

Wurlitzer's has been a strange filmwriting career.

In April of 1971-just four months before the magazine would abandon the 10? 13? bedsheet format it had held for 38 years-Esquire ran as its hot cover feature a screenplay t.i.tled Two-Lane Blacktop with the blurb READ IT FIRST! OUR NOMINATION FOR THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR! The screenplay was by Rudolph Wurlitzer and Will Corry.

Well, the film dropped into an abyss and, though it has become something of a cult cla.s.sic and is an interesting item because of a Warren Oates performance that is a killer, and some offbeat direction by Monte h.e.l.lman, not only wasn't it the movie of the year, it vanished without a plop! In the same year Wurlitzer's screenplay for a post-holocaust film called Glen and Randa was produced. Another miraculous non-event in cinema history though, again, an interesting piece of writing. Then in 1973 Sam Peckinpah directed Wurlitzer's gawdawful screenplay of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, starring James Coburn and (wait for it) Kris Kristofferson. That one created its own black hole down which it plunged.

And that was it. No other produced credits exist as of this writing for Wurlitzer. But in 1979 Ridley Scott put Rudy Wurlitzer to work. The most memorable aspect of the three drafts Wurlitzer wrote was his departure from the novel to include a relationship that poor, misguided Frank Herbert had overlooked: a s.e.xual liaison between Paul Atreides and his mother, the Lady Jessica.

Have you ever heard Frank Herbert bellow with rage?

The Sarga.s.so Sea came unblocked. Avalanches on the Siberian Peninsula. Magma solidified. The stars shook.

By 1980 the deal was dead. Scott went on to Blade Runner, Wurlitzer went underground, and De Laurentiis went looking for new foot troops to throw into what was becoming the cinematic equivalent of Hitler's Russian campaign.

Dune.

The name had become legend. The bodies that lay in its sandworm track could have populated another whole film industry.

But in 1981 De Laurentiis shocked even those of us who are beyond shock, by signing the director of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, and David Lynch stepped up bravely to inhale them bullets.

Four years later Dune was a reality, more than forty million dollars had been expended in its production, the world trembled at its imminent release, and in mere moments before it hit the screens of the world, everything hit the fans in that equally-fabled Black Tower where derangement is a way of life.

And in the next issue I'll bring you full circle, as one with the Laoc.o.o.nian serpent, to complete the bizarre story of Frank Herbert, Dune, De Laurentiis father and daughter, untold millions of dollars and lire, and the strange rituals of the priests of the Black Tower.

Don't miss this one, kids. You'll boogie till you puke.

PUBLIC NOTICE: Got a call today from my friend Bill Warren. Bill is a film critic, author of a nifty book on Fifties sf movies, and a cinema researcher who works with the Hollywood Film Archive. When it comes to movies, Bill's middle name is knowledgeable. Sometimes, amazingly, our opinions agree on a specific film. For years we have taken mutual pleasure in pa.s.sionate arguments about the nature of movies. In my installment 7, in the time-honored tradition of gigging my chums, I took Bill's (and Steve Boyett's) name in vain. I said that these "alleged movie buffs" accepted a philosophy expressed by many duplicitous filmmakers that one should not take seriously the evil and gruesome aspects of some films because they were really only live action "cartoons." The word alleged was, of course, intended as goodnatured elbow-in-the-ribs hyperbole. That Bill and Steve have expressed to me their concurrence with the "don't take it seriously, it's just a cartoon" disclaimer is true. They've said it to me on a number of occasions, about a number of films. In the case of Bill, most recently in reference to Gremlins; Steve said it a short time ago about Buckaroo Banzai. But Bill called me in a state of upset today, to say I owe him an apology in the same public forum where I defamed him, in his view. He read my remarks in that column to say that he is a liar. I did not call Bill Warren a liar, nor anything even remotely like it. As far as I know, Bill Warren is not a liar. Nor was I calling Steve Boyett a liar. What I did say, is what I said; and it was intended to make my friends smile ruefully. But Bill feels I have done him a mischief. Because he is my friend, and because I respect him, I will apologize here in print, on the off-chance that someone else may have interpreted my remarks in a way I did not intend; but I apologize mostly because Bill is upset, and he is my friend. So one does this sort of thing for friends.

But really, Bill, you shouldn't take it all so seriously: it was just a cartoon.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / June 1985 INSTALLMENT 10:.

In Which The Fabled Black Tower Meets Dune With As Much Affection As G.o.dzilla Met Ghidrah

Synopsis of Part One of this thrilling essay: The critic attempted to establish, as philosophical background for weighty matters to be discussed in Part Two, that an ambience of derangement surrounds the milieu known as Universal Studios. Then, when the reader felt secure that the critic was going to discuss lunacy at the fabled Black Tower of Universal, he jerked them around again, as is his wont, by veering away in a (seemingly) unrelated digression that detailed the fifteen-year frustration of those who have attempted to bring Frank Herbert's Dune to the big screen. The critic made much of the expectations of the filmgoing audience; their Cheyne-Stokes respiration at the merest mention of the magic name Dune; the universal (though as we will see, not Universal) belief that this was one of the most mythic, most exciting, most eagerly-antic.i.p.ated films of all time. Absolutely. Early on in Part One, the critic made this cryptic remark: "Yes, I think deranged is the proper adjective, particularly when Universal makes a corporate decision to scramble all its eggs in one basket. Dune."

What could this have meant? At what dark secrets was the critic hinting? Did he, in fact, begin to tie together the disparate elements of Part One with this pair'o'paragraphs: "Four years later Dune was a reality; more than forty million dollars had been expended in its production; the world trembled at its imminent release; and in mere moments before it hit the screens of the world, everything hit the fans in that equally fabled Black Tower where derangement is a way of life.

"And in the next issue I'll bring you full circle, as one with the Laoc.o.o.nian serpent, to complete the bizarre story of Frank Herbert, Dune, De Laurentiis father and daughter, untold millions of dollars and lire, and the strange rituals of the priests of the Black Tower."

Now go on, simply all atremble, to the thrilling Part Two!

There will be ma.s.s screenings of Dune. There will be no ma.s.s screenings of Dune. There will be several sneak previews of Dune, but only on the West Coast. There will be sneak previews of Dune, but only in suburban New York and Connecticut. We are running screenings of Dune for the press at Universal only for the first two weeks in December, prior to the December 14th nationwide release. All press screenings of Dune have been canceled. A screening has been set up, but only those press representatives with specially-accepted credentials will be invited. The special press screening for an elite group has been canceled. Yes on Dune. No on Dune. Dune's in, Dune's out, surf's up!

Those are notes from my log book of daily appointments. They begin in mid-November of last year, and they go right on through to December 12th when I actually got to see Dune.

If the word deranged echoes in that paragraph of windy contradictions, well, who're ya gonna call, Ghostbusters?

As I write this in March of 1985, Dune has come and gone, and you have very likely seen it. Some of you liked it; some of you didn't like it. Apparently, not one of you was satisfied.

In the time-honored tradition of now-crepuscular fan pundits-so c.r.a.pulously into their twilight years that their declamations no longer girn from the pages of know-it-all fanzines-every aficionado endowed with mouth has had his/her scream. It was too big. It wasn't enough. It left too much out. It included too much. It was simplistic. It was too convoluted. It was too serious. It wasn't serious enough. Dune's in, Dune's out, surf's up, shut your pie-hole!

Can't anybody see there's something wrong here?

Doesn't anybody else notice that otherwise rational critics have savaged Dune way the h.e.l.l out of proportion to its weaknesses? Even Roger Ebert, former sf fan and good film observer, picked Dune as the worst film of the year. Ain't dat the same year that gave us Children of the Corn; Porky's II; Teachers; Gremlins; Body Double; Conan the Destroyer; Buckaroo Banzai; Streets of Fire; Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo; Sheena; Where the Boys Are; Up the Creek; Sahara; Tank; Red Dawn; Rhinestone; Hot Dog . . . The Movie; Angel; Bachelor Party; Bolero; Hardbodies, and Give My Regards to Broad Street? Ain't it dat same year?

In such a year of gasp, wheeze, pant, choke, gimme a sec to let my gorge settle, in such a year Dune is the worst film!??!

No, gentlefolk, something went wrong. Of a nature that has to do with public and private perceptions. Of a sort that defies logic because, like politics, it is a matter of image. Codification of what happened, of the skewing of expectations, progressed so rapidly and with such economy of action, that if one were given to conspiracy theories one might well take the case of the release of Dune to one's bosom for the sheer clarity of its modus operandi. But let me, for an instant, give you a f'rinstance. Helpful digression. Explanation by example. A bit of storytelling.

William Friedkin is, in my view, an extraordinary director. There is a subterranean river of dark pa.s.sion rushing wildly in the subtext of all his films-successful and disastrous-that clearly marks him as an artist almost manic with the need to rearrange the received universe in a personal, newly-folded way. With only two films, The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973 (neither, in my view, Friedkin's most compelling work), he established himself as the box-office Colossus of Roadshows.

Then he took four years to bring forth an astonishing film called Sorcerer. An honorable (and acknowledged) hommage intense to Clouzot's 1952 cla.s.sic The Wages of Fear, Friedkin's labors and vision in the jungles of the Dominican Republic-which came close to killing him, so physically near to danger did his pathological involvement force him-produced a motion picture that laid bare the corpus of human compulsion with images that smoldered.

The film died. It was driven into oblivion to such an extent that nowhere in Pauline Kael's five books of criticism is the movie even mentioned. And the core reasons for its universal (and, not surprisingly, Universal) dismissal can be found in Sorcerer's listing in Halliwell's Film Guide, the basic reference work on cinema (page 761, 4th edition): "Why anyone should have wanted to spend twenty million dollars on a remake of The Wages of Fear, do it badly, and give it a misleading t.i.tle is anybody's guess. The result is dire."

Dire? Dire!?! Halliwell does not bristle thus at the vile and venal remakes of Stagecoach, King Kong, Cat People, The Jazz Singer, The Thing, The Big Sleep or the 1981 remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man (Woman) as a vehicle for Lily Tomlin, even while acknowledging their failure. But Sorcerer produces uncommon bile in the usually mild-mannered Leslie Halliwell.

And while my theory of movie crib-death may be all blue sky surmise as regards Dune, so close to the immolation, we can use Kael and Halliwell as indicators of why Friedkin and Sorcerer were summarily dismissed after uncommon savaging, and then extend the premise.

It was expectation and image. The Wages of Fear was a cla.s.sic. Friedkin was considered a Johnny-come-lately, a smarta.s.s who had done spectacularly well with "popular" films; but by what right did this upstart manifest the hubris to reshape a film held in worldwide esteem? That he made the movie not only with the blessing of old Clouzot, but with the onscreen dedication to what had inspired him; that he made the film at the highest level of professionalism and expertise, rather than at the level of grave-robbing commercialism that keynotes 99 percent of all remakes . . . cut no ice with the critics. They were lying in wait for Billy Friedkin. And they ambushed him. So much for expectations.

Image. The t.i.tle of the film was Sorcerer. For those who paid attention to the film, that was the name of the truck driven by Roy Scheider; and it was the recurring trope treated both visually and mythically throughout the picture. But Bill Friedkin was, unfortunately, the director of The Exorcist, and theatergoers went to the movie expecting a hair-raising occult fantasy. Instead, they got a hair-raising action-adventure of doomed men on the run, condemned to a suicidal job. Audiences felt betrayed. The image of the film that had been projected by its t.i.tle and the resonance with Friedkin's most popular movie, The Exorcist, linked with the a priori animosity of the critics; and Sorcerer had about as much chance of succeeding in the marketplace as Ilse Koch designer lampshades from Buchenwald.

Worth was evaluated not on intrinsic merit, but through skewed expectations and a misleading image.

The studio that dumped Sorcerer was Universal. Studio of the Black Tower, where derangement is a way of life.

In October of last year I was approached by USA Today, the national newspaper, to write a visiting critic's review of Dune. As I was already the film critic of record for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; as I received press screening notices regularly; as I was on good terms (in this symbiotic relationship) with the pr people at Universal; as I had discussed the upcoming film with Frank Herbert and he had advised the publicity people that I'd be doing a critique; as USA Today is a major market for national film publicity and attention by a wide spectrum of potential ticket-buyers; as all of us in the reviewing game had been led to believe Dune was going to get a big push from not only De Laurentiis but from Universal as its distributor, I felt sure I'd be able to take my time with the piece. If the movie was scheduled to open on December 14th, then surely I'd see it late in November.

But strange things began happening in the Black Tower.

It was widely rumored in the gossip underground that Frank Price, Chairman of MCA/Universal's Motion Picture Group, and one of the most powerful men in the industry, had screened the film in one or another of its final workups, and had declared-vehemently enough and publicly enough for the words quickly to have seeped under the door of the viewing room and formed a miasma over the entire Universal lot-"This film is a dog. It's gonna drop dead. We're going to take a bath on it. n.o.body'll understand it!" (Now those aren't the exact words, because I wasn't there. But the sense is dead accurate. Half a dozen separate verifications from within the MCA organization.) Now, when this G.o.d above all other G.o.ds has a bellyache, all the cherubim start dropping Alka-Seltzer.

The word went out fast and wide. Or fastly and widely, depending on your Yuppie level. And the panic set in. Of a sudden Dune was a film not to be seen by the laity.

Reviewers couldn't be trusted. Keep it away from them.

Screenings were canceled wholesale. Press releases became circ.u.mspect. The usually forthcoming pr people at MCA abruptly developed narcolepsy. Something was very wrong. Any time Dune was mentioned, eyes rolled. And the rumors built on an asymptotic curve that had everyone nervous as h.e.l.l. Then: A major filmwriter who had been at one of the sneak screenings for exhibitors reported a conversation he had overheard between Dino De Laurentiis and the owner of an important chain of multiplex theaters, after the film had been run.

Dino (he reported) had been effusive. It went like this: DINO: This is my testament! I can now retire! It is great, it is cla.s.sic!

EXHIBITOR: Can you save it?

DINO (sadly): Maybe.

Then we all heard that an exhibitors' screening-maybe the one above, maybe another-in New York, when the lights came up, one of the attendees leaped to his feet and screamed at Dino across the theater, "When are you going to stop making s.h.i.t like this? When are you going to give us a picture we can play that will make some money? Are you trying to kill us?"

And Dune was in the toilet. Because the priests of the Black Tower, in their panic and paranoia, did what they always do: they prejudged the film and found it dire. Dire. Absolutely. And there would be no screening, not of any kind, not for anyone.

Somehow, I knew the film would not be the disaster Universal was compelling the rest of the world to believe it would be. I had spoken to Frank Herbert a number of times in late November. He was living in Manhattan Beach, making himself available for prerelease publicity, and he told me, when I asked him, sans bulls.h.i.t, "How do you like the film, Frank? Between old friends. The real appraisal": "It begins as Dune begins, it ends as Dune ends and I hear my dialogue throughout. How much more could a writer want? Even though I have quibbles-I would've loved to have had David Lynch realize the banquet scene-do I like it? I do. I like it. Very much."

So I wanted to like it, too.

There had been too many intelligent, dedicated people of good faith and enormous talent who had been ground to powder in that sandworm track to dismiss Dune merely on the basis of the industry rumor mill's fervor for movie crib-death. (Of course the rumor mill wanted Dune to founder. If the other studios could cripple one of their big compet.i.tors for the Christmas box-office attention, before it ever got out of the starting gate, it would make the chances for their holiday blockbusters all the better. Most of the rumors I got came not from Universal, but from other studios. No bad word was left unsaid; no rock was left unturned; and no creepy crawly was prevented from emerging. But why was Universal wielding the chainsaw on this unborn artifact?) Frank called me on the q.t. at the end of November. He told me there was to be a secret screening in projection room #1 at Universal on Friday the 30th, at 2:30 PM. The screening was for the reviewers from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. He did not suggest I sneak in; he only reported the event.

On that Friday I visited other friends on the lot, and found my way to projection room #1 at 2:15.

Booker McClay, a decent man, one of the publicists for Universal, was standing by the inner door. He stopped me. We had spoken over the phone, but had never met. I told him who I was, we shook hands. He looked troubled. He knew my credentials as writer, scenarist, critic. He knew of my a.s.sociation with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. When I told him I was doing the review for USA Today, he grew even more troubled. He said I could not go in.

We talked for a few minutes, with me a.s.suring him I was not there to do a hatchet job. He said it was impossible. I showed him my letter from Jerry Shriver, a.s.sistant Entertainment Editor for USA Today, confirming my a.s.signment. He said it was impossible that I could have known of this screening, and it was impossible . . . seeing the film, that is. I cajoled, I chatted, I reasoned. Booker McClay is a good guy, and he said he would call Frank Wright, National Publicity Director for MCA, who was at that moment only a few hundred yards away up in the Black Tower.

Booker went into the screening room, which was empty, as Variety and The Reporter had not yet arrived. He was extremely upset. It was clear to me that he wanted to let me in to screen Dune, but the fear was palpable on the lot. And here was this wild cannon insisting on being given access to The Unviewable!

I followed Booker inside, and stood at a distance from him as he phoned up to the Tower, to Frank Wright. When Booker got Wright, and spoke to him earnestly and softly about the situation, though I was thirty feet from the receiver I heard Frank Wright shout, "What the h.e.l.l is he doing there? How did he find out about this? Get him out of there! No, absolutely not!"

Booker spoke again, hung up the phone, and turned to me. He tried to be ameliorative. It was obvious he'd been put in a s.h.i.tty position, and didn't want to alienate me. But this was a situation that was to be governed by the laws of the Stalag. I had to leave. He said that Frank Wright had set up this screening only for Variety and The Reporter, and they had promised to hold the reviews before publishing. He said Frank Wright had said I needed stronger accreditation.

Somehow I managed to get Booker to let me call Frank Wright. Seeing his career flashing before his eyes, but too decent a guy simply to come all over authoritarian, Booker let me use the phone in the screening room. I called Wright, and spoke to him, saying USA Today was an important medium of pr for the film, and I was inclined to write well of the film as I now thought about it, and I would appreciate it if he'd make an exception in this case. He said if he'd heard from Jack Mathews, the West Coast entertainment editor of USA Today, he could have done it. But as he hadn't . . . he had to refuse. He was testy about it, but as polite as he could be, I guess, under the circ.u.mstances.

I said, "What if Jack Mathews calls you in the next five minutes and verifies my a.s.signment, and asks you to let me see the film?"

He thought a moment, then said he figured that would be okay. I hung up, called Mathews at the L. A. office of the newspaper, told him what was happening, and he said he'd call Wright on the other line, that I should hold on. Then, as I waited, I heard him call Wright, heard him speak to Wright, and received Mathews's a.s.surance that everything had been fixed.