Harlan Ellison's Watching Part 9

Los Angeles / August 1977; Gallery / March 1978 STAR TREK-THE MOTIONLESS PICTURE And Television begat Roddenberry, and Roddenberry begat Star Trek, and Star Trek begat Trekkies, and Trekkies begat Clamor, and Clamor begat a Star Trek animated cartoon, and the Cartoon begat More Clamor, and More Clamor begat Trek Conventions, and Trek Conventions begat Even More Clamor, and Even More Clamor begat T*H*E M*Y*T*H, and T*H*E M*Y*T*H begat Star Trek-The Motion Picture, and the behemoth labored mightily and begat . . . a mouse.

Fired by a decade of devoted, dedicated, often fanatical hue and cry, Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry have given fans of the long-syndicated series precisely and exactly what they have been asking for.

And therein lies an awesome tragedy.

It is not that Star Trek-The Motion Picture is a bad film; it isn't. Clearly, it is also not a good film. The saddening reality is simply that it is a dull film: an often boring film, a stultifyingly predictable film, a tragically average film. With a two-million-dollar production pricetag one could do no other than applaud it. Bearing a freightload cost of something in excess of forty-four million dollars (not counting how many millions will be spent on prints and sweep advertising) and the unbounded expectations held for it, the timid creation that crawled across premiere movie screens on December 7th, 1979-somehow appropriately on the thirty-eighth anniversary of another great tragedy-deserves little more than regrets and a weary shake of the head.

Nothing more need be said to b.u.t.tress that view than to point out that Star Trek-TMP bears a MPAA censorship code rating of G. General audiences, all ages admitted. The same code can be found on Mary Poppins, Bambi and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Our motto: We Take No Chances.

Why should this have come to pa.s.s? Certainly no other film in the history of cinema has been looked forward to with such willing suspension of critical reservations. Few films receive the joyous elevation, prerelease, to the status of event. No, strike that: to the status of Second Coming. Even those of us who had their reservations about the series were predisposed to like this film, to greet it with positive att.i.tude, to review it evenhandedly, faithfully, as allies. So: take risks, be bold!

Yet after the Hollywood press screening I attended last night at the Motion Picture Academy's theater, I saw disappointment that slopped well over into animosity on the part of those who could only benefit from the film doing well. One young person was heard to say, "I waited ten years for this?" And on the late newscasts, when those who had seen the film were interviewed coming out of the theaters around Los Angeles, a most woebegone ambience could be perceived. These same sorts of filmgoers who had jumped up and down after Star Wars, who were confronted by a television camera on the sidewalk and who raved about Lucas's movie, who bounced off the walls exalting the first major sf flick of the decade, these same sorts of people stood quietly and said, "It's a swell film, very good." They were obviously rationalizing their disappointment. No insane delirium, no wild enthusiasm, just a subdued kind of polite, quiet, let's-not-do-the-movie-any-harm comment. It was obvious this was not the dream they'd expected.

But that's just the point, and cuts directly to the heart of the tragedy. It is what they expected! They got no better and no worse than what they deserved. For years the Trekkies have exerted an almost vampiric control over Roddenberry and the spirit of Star Trek. The benefits devolved from their support, that kept the idea alive; but the drawbacks now reveal themselves in all their invidious potency; because in Paramount's and Roddenberry's fealty to "maintaining the essence of the television series that fans adored," they have played it too safe.

Star Trek-TMP is nothing more than a gussied-up two-hour television segment.

It thereby retains most of the crippling flaws attendant on all television episodic series: the shallow, unchanging characterizations; the need to hammer home points already made; the ba.n.a.l dialogue; the illogical and soph.o.m.oric "messages"; the posturing of second-rate actors; the slavish subjugation of plot and humanity to special effects.

They were afraid of losing that quality of familiarity generated by the TV series . . . and the tragedy is that they retained in fullest measure that which they should have dispensed with. A major film should be more than a predictable television episode; and no amount of special effects can dim that failure. There is simply no growth between the final segment of Star Trek and this hyperthyroid motion picture.

The fans have had their way and Paramount may have to pay the terrible price. But one cannot really pillory the fans. It is no crime, however destructive, to care deeply. The blame for this film's mediocrity must be heavily laid on the shoulders of Gene Roddenberry and the imitative tiny minds of the Paramount hierarchy. The latter probably more than the former: one cannot condemn Roddenberry too much because this was his chance to revive the dream. But the studio heads, confronted with the opportunity to capitalize-without substantial risk-on the goodwill and affection of a ready audience, to bring forth a production that would have expanded and enriched the original Star Trek concept, to go where no studio has gone before, chose to play the game of close-to-the-vest, to mimic Star Wars and all its subsequent clone-children.

But audiences have now seen Close Encounters and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Ponderosa and Alien and Starcrash and even lesser efforts. They are reaching their surface tension with films that offer nothing more than cunningly-cobbled starship models zooming through s.p.a.ce. That cheap thrill is already a dead issue; and no matter how much they delude themselves that "latest state of the art" will bring in repeat business, audiences have come more and more to hunger for human emotion, involvement and identification with the problems of interesting people, not square-jawed cowboys in stretch pants and plastic booties.

Yes, there is more machinery in this film per inch of footage than one could find in a True Value hardware commercial, but even the models look cheesy, lacking both the gritty naturalism of Alien's Nostromo or the boggling cyclopean presence of Close Encounters' mother ship. And when we are confronted by a close shot on the princ.i.p.als, standing near a bulkhead that is intended to be stainless steel, when it is obviously a painted flat, all verisimilitude vanishes for the viewer.

Further, the direction in these scenes of great ships in s.p.a.ce is slovenly. The point of view is frequently absent; we are left floating in a cinematic deep that confuses the eye and gives the attentive viewer no sense of correct spatial relationships. One would expect at least professional expertise in such a crucial area when a film has opted for machines over humans.

But Robert Wise, at least in this venture, has seemingly turned a deaf ear to the morphology of filming science fiction. It is bewildering. Wise learned at the knee of Val Lewton, and his credentials prior to this film are una.s.sailable: Curse of the Cat People, the 1945 Lugosi Body s.n.a.t.c.her, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Want to Live, West Side Story, the brilliant adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel in The Haunting, The Sand Pebbles, The Andromeda Strain-not to mention that he was an editor on three undeniable cla.s.sics, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and All That Money Can Buy.

Perhaps having directed The Sound of Music has caught up with him, belatedly. Certainly nothing in the Wise canon but that saccharine perennial casts an ominous shadow that solidifies in his otiose handling of Star Trek-TMP.

One has the niggling suspicion that Wise did not take this ch.o.r.e seriously, that he did it with his left hand, that it did not bulk large in his conception of "important" work. Static medium shots, persistent loss of p.o.v., a perplexing disregard for the overacting and mugging of almost everyone among the featured players, and a singular lack of freshness overall in selection of camera angles supports such a supposition.

Even common attention to detail, de rigueur for the most amateurish B flicks, is missing here. In one scene, as Shatner moves through the turbolift doors exiting the bridge, the woman sitting to my right (a total stranger) said (audibly enough to generate laughter around us), "Look, his toupee doesn't fit right!" Fortunately the mother of ex-Paramount President Frank Yablans didn't notice it: four seats to my left she had fallen asleep. In another scene, when a plaited headband is placed over the cueball baldness of the highly-touted Ms. Persis Khambatta-about whom more in a moment-a dangling ornament hangs on the left side. Instants later, after a cutaway shot, the ornament is hanging over the right side. Editorial matchup, a first-year film-school necessity, was beyond a production crew so mult.i.tudinous they could have been deployed as relief team against Xerxes's ravening hordes.

But this fumblefooted, hamhanded amateurishness is not confined to Wise or the editors. It appears throughout, as if the millions chalked off to studio overhead concealed the employment of a squad of gremlins, sent in to wreak havoc on the production.

Even the special effects photography was slipshod. In the opening sequence we see three Klingon battle cruisers skimming through s.p.a.ce. The matte lines are jarringly evident. So recurrent is this inept.i.tude that the editor of a prominent magazine said, "I was so busy looking for the matte fissures, I lost track of the plot. There was a plot, wasn't there?"

Well, yes, there was. But I'll deal with that in a while because it contains the burning core of the film's ultimate mediocrity.

But first, as I touched on it above, let me deal with the acting. What little there was.

The first human being who speaks in the film (Klingons not being h.o.m.o sapiens) is a female communications technician in a Starfleet outpost. She speaks her lines so stiltedly, so embarra.s.singly soph.o.m.orically, that I had the uncomfortable feeling I was looking at somebody's daughter, girlfriend or secretary who had been given a bit part. It was common practice on the TV series, but I could not believe that in a major studio production of this magnitude such nepotism could be countenanced. I have since learned that that was precisely the case. The "actress" in question was Michele Billy, production secretary to the scenarist, Harold Livingston.

To have our first exposure to thespic technique in a film this big fall on the clearly nonexistent talent of an amateur is shocking. Further, it is symptomatic of the inbred Old Boys' Network thinking that permeates Star Trek-TMP.

Pork-barrel jobs such as filling the rec room scene with fans and a.s.sociates like Roddenberry's secretary Susan Sackett, novelist David Gerrold, Trekker Denny Arnold and the fannish loon who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk are acceptable, because they were only walk-ons. But putting such lames as Ms. Billy and Jon Rashad Kamal (Lt. Commander Sonak) in positions of even pa.s.sing prominence speaks to a loss of rationality on the part of Wise and Roddenberry that beggars pejorative description.

Yet these casting gaffes seem minuscule compared to the sins of the princ.i.p.als. With the exceptions of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, the cast is (why does this word keep springing to mind!?) embarra.s.sing.

Doohan's Scotty is no different from what we saw in the series, no smarter, no kinkier, no older, no more lovable. It is a standard television performance, competent but instantly forgettable. Barrett, Koenig, Takei and Nichols have such brief moments it is impossible to tell if they have the stuff to transcend their stale material. They are thrown sc.r.a.ps from the table: "Warp five, Captain," "Hailing frequency open, Captain," "Negative, Captain," "We're being scanned, Captain." The kind of verbal make-work larded into the script to keep the series' regulars around as furniture, but wholly insufficient to let them practice the craft they have spent their adult lives developing. Uhura remains a glorified switchboard operator, Chekov is the same b.u.t.ton-pusher with a raise in rank, Sulu flies the jalopy and is denied the s.p.a.ce to exude even a scintilla of George Takei's enormous personal charm, Doctor Chapel carries bedpans. And if Transporter Chief Grace Lee Whitney had a line during the molecular dissolution sequence, it was drowned out by the embarra.s.sed laughter provoked by Shatner's "Oh, my G.o.d!" condolence that stands out in a farrago of moments in which one covers one's face wishing one were elsewhere, as the Mt. Everest of inappropriate, awkward readings.

As said, only Nimoy and Kelley came off interestingly. I've been told that Nimoy wrote most of his own part but that in-depth sessions wound up-along with considerable footage of Koenig, Takei, Barrett and others-on the cutting room floor. But even before that stage of post-production, the Enterprise crew found their parts being whittled to nothing. During the course of shooting I had occasion to speak to three or four of the crew regulars who have remained my friends from the old series days. Each of them said, in almost exactly the same words and tone of voice, "Every day when I come in I find my lines a little shorter, my scenes a little more cut."

And to whom were those stolen moments given? To Shatner, Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta.

Collins is a drone. His part could have been played by any rock-ribbed, lantern-jawed actor. He is totally unmemorable. I will pillory him no further. He did the best he could, and that's comment sufficiently pathetic for even John Simon.

Persis Khambatta. Oh dear.

After all the prerelease hype, one would have thought the emergence of a new Ingrid Bergman, or at very least a new Sigourney Weaver, was about to manifest itself.

Such is not the case.

This young woman is quite lovely to look at-but if shaving an esthetically-pleasing head is Makeup's idea of creating a "Vegan" alien then I fear Hal Clement will never work in films-and as for acting ability, well, the poor thing simply has none. I will pillory her no further. She did the best she could, and it is to Wise's credit that he turned her into a machine as quickly as possible, thereby permitting her to function at peak efficiency.

Which leaves us with William Shatner.

He dominates, as usual. Stuffy when he isn't being arch and coy; hamming and mugging when he isn't being lachrymose; playing Kirk as if he actually thinks he is Kirk, overbearing and pompous. Yet occasionally appealing, don't ask me why.

Perhaps it is that I remember Shatner from George C. Scott's production of The Andersonville Trial, in which he was no less than staggeringly brilliant. Perhaps it is that I wanted to like the new, resurgent Kirk. Perhaps it is that I am-despite the catalogue of horrors dealt with herein-hopeful that this film will not bury Star Trek.

Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that Shatner tried to dominate every segment of the series and that he has permitted his actor's ego to drag him down to the level of actually line-counting scenes in which another actor, even Nimoy, might have the limelight a trifle longer. I have no knowledge that such was the case with the film, though I've been told there were extensive "story-conferences" among Shatner, Wise and the scenarist; yet there is no mistaking Shatner's pushiness in the lead role. He is there, for better or worse, and if the pivotal scenes where emotionalism was necessary do not come off, the responsibility is surely his.

Nimoy remains a marvel, even in the truncated sections where he is permitted to flex his talent. His Spock is a character several degrees more interesting than when last we saw him in the series. Nimoy has aged, and so has Spock. There is compa.s.sion and a touching wistfulness just beneath the stoic surface. And in terms of advancement of the original Star Trek format, his is the only alteration. At the end of this movie we have seen the two new characters done away with (for sequel purposes) and we're left exactly where we were when the series was canceled. No change, no growth. But Spock has found there is a reason not to be ashamed of his humanity, his feelings; there is a positive note here-attributable to the sensibility of Nimoy, we must a.s.sume-that uplifts and enriches.

But for my money, it is DeForest Kelley who sparkles most wondrously. His Dr. McCoy is big, curmudgeonly, interesting and d.a.m.ned fine. Of all the people in this film, McCoy is the only one I'd care to spend an evening with. I will praise him no further. He did better than his previous best and that's praise of a high order in consideration of a film where almost everyone else is ponderously portentous, hammy or overblown, added like raisin afterthoughts to a soggy plot pudding in which the most startling aspect is an almost hysterical series of costume changes more numerous than those to be found in the most overclothed Ross Hunter tearjerker.

Bringing me, at last, and with trembling, to the script.

(This part is difficult. For years there was rancor between Gene Roddenberry and me. Now, for years, there has been amiability. The conclusions I will now draw about the quality of the film deal with Gene's talent as a writer, and with Gene as a human being involved in a project that has dominated nearly twenty years of his life. He cannot love me for these observations; nonetheless I am compelled to be candid and critically honest. I can do no other. Gene knows I'm thus trapped by my love of writing. Enthusiasts of Star Trek and of the film may suspect otherwise. I ask those who proceed with the reading of this essay to accept my a.s.surance that I write what follows with difficulty, but with "clean hands and composure." There is no meanness in me.) The mark of Gene Roddenberry's limits as a creator of stories is heavily, indelibly, inescapably on this production. No matter whose name is on the screenplay, no matter who is credited onscreen for the basic story, this is the work of Gene Roddenberry. Yes, I know that in the years between 1975 and 1979 there was a parade of writers through Paramount's gates whose abilities were sought for a Star Trek film. Yes, I know, because twice I was one of them. Yes, I know that runs were made at the screen treatment or script by John D. F. Black, Robert Silverberg, John Povill, Chris Bryant and Allen Scott, by director Phil Kaufman, by Alan Dean Foster, and by Gene himself. Yes, I know that Gene's name was removed from screen credit five times, and finally he was taken to Writers Guild arbitration by Harold Livingston, who wound up with the credit. Yes, I know all of that; nonetheless, this is Gene Roddenberry's story. And he has to be the one pinned to the wall.

This script has all the same dumb flaws that were perpetuated in the series . . . with bigger, prettier pictures.

It is a synthesis of at least four segments of the Star Trek series: "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Changeling," "The Immunity Syndrome," and Norman Spinrad's "The Doomsday Machine."

The ending-what one of the Star Trek novelists has called "a $44 million f-k"-is a direct ripoff of the ending from the film The Last Days of Man on Earth, a strange translation to the screen of Michael Moorc.o.c.k's The Final Programme.

The characterizations are monodimensional with the ghastly addition of endless winking, eyebrow-arching, nudging and mugging on the part of almost every player, so that at moments in the film we feel we're watching a parody of the Monty Python routine-"Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more."

The basic story, for all its "latest state of the art" and its tricked-up trekkiness, is Gene's standard idea, done so often in the series: we go into s.p.a.ce, we find G.o.d, and G.o.d is (pick one) malevolent, crazy, or a child. Not a bad idea, once or twice. Used it myself from time to time.

But even though Alan Dean Foster is given screen credit for the story, he was handed the basic story outline by Gene. It was a treatment intended as a segment of Genesis II back in 1973 when that Roddenberry film-for-tv was being considered as a continuing series. The t.i.tle of the segment was "Robots' Return."

Thus it is ironic and no doubt painful to Gene that the realized dream is blighted by his name being absent from the writing credits. Because more than as creator, producer or guiding spirit of this project, Gene wanted to be known as the writer. And thus it was that he wrote the novel based on the screenplay. Salvation in print.

Notwithstanding the n.o.bility of Gene's hunger for final recognition as a serious writer, it is clearly his heavy hand on the shoulders of all those who tried to beat this script that crushes any hope of originality. The critical a.s.sessment is this: for all his uncommon abilities as producer and developer of science fictional ideas for television, Gene Roddenberry is not a very good writer. And he should have accepted that knowledge, and left the writers alone.

Because Star Trek-TMP throws together weary and simplistic concepts that are ultimately boring because they are ba.n.a.l.

The plot is woebegone and predictable. It is also riddled with holes that let one perceive the vacuum lying beyond.

I will offer only one example. But not even the most rabid Star Trek fan can ignore it.

We are presented with an alien machine intelligence so vast and omniscient and powerful that it can wipe out entire worlds. It is clever enough to build for itself a ship that makes Arthur C. Clarke's Rama look like a Tinker Toy. Yet it isn't smart enough to wipe the dirt off a probe from Earth so that it knows the name is VOYAGER, not VGER.

This is the quality of cheat that obtains in television, but cannot be condoned in a forty-four million dollar epic.

The script . . .

No. I'd rather not go on. This has become too personal, and too painful. I had meant at the outset only to say a film of acceptable mediocrity had been produced. But as the writing emerged I found myself pulled on farther and farther into more d.a.m.ning criticism. I did not want that to happen.

I wanted to end on an upbeat note, to say that one aspect of this film gladdened me. The unswerveable dedication to the concept that the youthful human race is intrinsically n.o.ble and capable of living with equanimity in the universe. It is an important thought, and one that is denied in both Star Wars and Close Encounters. Unlike these previously adored "sci-fi" simplicities, Star Trek-TMP does not tell us that we are too base, too dull and too venal to save ourselves and to prevail in an uncaring universe without the help of some kind of bogus Jesus-Saves "Force" or a Pillsbury Doughboy in a galactic chandelier. It says we are the children of Creation and if we are courageous, ethical and steadfast we can achieve our place in the light of many suns.

I take that to be a worthy message.

And that message, in plenty, is here, in this film.

I wanted to say I was delighted that Gene employed the proper authorities who watched the physics and who kept the filmmakers from acceding to studio and dumb audience desires to hear explosions in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. I wanted to say that I was glad the film finally got made.

And I suppose I've said all that. But this, too, must be said: Though the film has reportedly already started doing land-office business, one cannot judge these superspectacular money-eaters from their takeoff, DC-10s do crash. King Kong and Superman and Alien all took off impressively. They have not earned back their costs. While I wish it well, for personal if not artistic reasons, I hope Star Trek-TMP succeeds beyond anyone's wildest dreams. But I think the cost of the film makes it a no-win situation. And that means Paramount will have to recoup.

A series would be foolishness. But the final moment of the film, in which we are shown a black frame with the words THE HUMAN ADVENTURE IS JUST BEGINNING, points a direction for Paramount, for Gene Roddenberry, and for all those who truly respect the idea of what Star Trek might be.

An annual Star Trek film, enabling the studio to amortize the cost of the construction of those sets. An annual film almost like the James Bond thrillers (but one hopes with greater intelligence behind them). An annual festival of Star Trek that would permit the actors to practice their craft at decent wages, that would dare to do the stories television and the fears attendant on this film put beyond consideration, that would finally live up to the vision Gene Roddenberry had at the outset.

In short, and finally, this dollar-guzzling mediocrity should be a first step, and a bitter lesson. And let those who caused this tiresome thing to be born take heed to their own words. If there is a sequel, or many sequels . . . finally and at last . . . let the human adventure begin.

Starlog / April 1980 HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING [SECOND SERIES, 1984]

INSTALLMENT 1:.

In Which We Begin Our Journey

It was well-met for Charles Foster Kane, and no less salutary for me; and so I begin this initial installment of these monthly ruminations-on-movies with a Declaration of Principles.

I will, first and always, try to entertain. I will judge film both as Art and as Craft. I will never praise a bad film simply because it has spectacular special effects. I will never allow my own film work to impede the honest discussion, favorable or otherwise, of films made by my friends or employers, current or potential. I will not excuse dishonest filmmaking just because it is good sf; I will not excuse good filmmaking if it is bad sf. I will not review sf films as if they were exempt from the highest standards of any art-form . . . to do so would be to apologize for them as if I believed-as many condescending critics do-that they are lame, or trash, and so do not have to measure up to the rigors of High Art. I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior "public service."

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (Warner Bros.) is, conceptually, not only a disaster, but a shameful example of directorial auteurism. It is a film that sells itself as the first authentic rendition of Burroughs's cla.s.sic high-trash adventure novel of 1914, and is, in truth, as skewed a vision as the horrendous Bo-John Derek version.

What we have been given-and there is a story behind the story that could serve as the cla.s.sic paradigm for the way the film industry treats its writers-is more Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than the Lord of the Apes. It is Chimps of Fire by Hugh Hudson, director of that movie about running on the beach to Vangelis music. It is not the Greystoke on which scenarist Robert Towne lavished years and miles of visceral material to shepherd toward production, only to have it taken from his control and given over to another with a Visigoth's respect for the primacy of interest of the creator.

It is Jekyll and Hyde. It is a schizophrenic film. It is half fowl and half foul.

That it has drawn enthusiastic comment from such film critics as Jay c.o.c.ks in Newsweek and Vincent Canby (who fair wets himself with naive enthusiasm) in the New York Times is more saddening than anomalous. They seem to have swallowed whole the hype that this is the variorum Tarzan text. It is not. When Robert Towne (of whom more in a moment) began transferring his admiration and affection for the book to screenplay form, he understood with a fine writer's clarity of vision that the reason Tarzan has become one of the few universal literary icons is that old Edgar Rice knew precisely what he was doing. Canby seems startled to find resonances of the "wild child" fable as previously best-interpreted in the Francois Truffaut film of 1970. Of course! It's there; in the book; Burroughs drew on the familiar trope to provide a subtextual archetype. He was-in the best sense of the word-a consummate hack. (It is not by chance that there are only five literary creations known throughout the world. Children in Zaire who have never heard of Hamlet or Jay Gatsby or Emma Bovary or Raskolnikov know these five: Tarzan, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes. They know them because they are free-floating universal images.) And were parvenus like Canby and c.o.c.ks not above familiarizing themselves with the original novel, they would not be trumpeting this hermaphroditic poseur as True Writ.

True Writ was the original screenplay by Robert Towne. He tried for twelve years to get Greystoke produced. Chances were good. Towne is one of the very few scenarists in Hollywood whose storytelling sense is the equal of a good novelist's. And the only parts of Greystoke that are worth the candle are those that Hudson shot scene-for-scene from the screenplay. How does one know that? Because Greystoke was a legend in Hollywood for more than a decade. Copies of the script were available. Many of us read it and marveled. We waited expectantly, hoping someone would have the sense to give Towne the seed money to begin preparations. More about that in a moment.

You may not know this story about Robert Towne: the screenplay for Chinatown (1974) was based on the historical case of the theft of the Owens Valley water and development of California's San Fernando Valley by machinations so scuzzy that they paralleled for infamous wheeling/dealing the Teapot Dome Scandal. The great Southern California robber barons-after whom streets and highways have been named-Mulholland, May, Doheny, to name a few-fleeced hundreds of thousands of people to effect their scheme. It is rumored that one of the men ruined in this skullduggery was Robert Towne's grandfather. So he wrote Chinatown to get even, to make some small gesture toward justice in the name of his family. The film was, of course, taken over by director Roman Polanski, who-like Hugh Hudson-had his own "vision" of what the film should be. And what went up on the screen bore only minimal resemblance to that which Towne had broken his b.u.t.t to create.

Ten years later: Towne is a gentleman, and continues to resist the temptation to vilify Polanski. He will not speak of the perfidy, but the grinding of his teeth, even today, is like the settling of tectonic plates.

More sinned against than sinning, Towne has had to swallow the bitter vetch of another labor of love being wrenched from his sure hands and given over to an improbable replacement.

The problem for the studios, when they considered his script, was the actualizing of the chimp suits for the jungle sequences. Remember that only in the last ten years have we seen such a quantum leap in technical expertise where such special effects are concerned. The key phrase during those hustling years for Towne was, "The chimps have to age as the child grows up; that means they have to be better costumes than the apes in 2001." For a long time such a thing was impossible. Finally, Warner Bros. gave Towne five hundred thousand dollars and told him they'd make the film if he could find some SFX guy who could solve the problem.

Towne went to all the best people and eventually everyone said, "The only hope you've got is Rick Baker." Remember: this was before Baker's rise to prominence. Towne gave the script to Baker, who read it and came back to say yes, he could lick the problem, but it would take two years. Towne asked him, if he had unlimited financing, how long would it take? Baker said, "Two years."

So the studio-with the predictable parvenu thinking of bottom-line b.o.o.bs-went to that season's hot ticket, Carlo Rambaldi, who had just hit it big with his creation of the alien in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. He read the script and said, "I can do it in eight months; four hundred thousand dollars."

Towne had reservations. He liked what Baker had said; he felt Baker was the answer. But the studio overrode his qualms. They gave Rambaldi the a.s.signment. More than a year and six hundred thousand dollars later: not one suit. And that was the exit for Towne, because the jamook at the studio could not admit it had been his miscalculation.

The film was Warner's property at that point, and they decided to repeat their soph.o.m.oric mistakes by handing the Towne project to that season's hot ticket, Hugh Hudson, whose Chariots of Fire, while not actually making much money, had won the Oscar. He was the fairhaired item, and so it didn't matter that they were turning over what is, essentially, for all its English trappings, an American boys' pulp adventure story to a director known for one film of the Old School Tie, King & Country idiom.

And Hudson, surfeited with hubris, has taken the Towne screenplay, a thing of unity and brilliance, and given it to his writer buddy Michael Austin. And they have looked down their snouts at old ERB's magnum opus, and they have said, "Well, yes, there is rawther a crude vigah to this stuff, but mostly it's muck. Let's have done with the messy parts as quickly as we can, and get back to Old Blighty."

If you recall Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the good doctor Henry Jekyll is something of a bore. A bit more than a bit of a goody-two-shoes, stiff upper-lipped and a model of rect.i.tude. England's answer to the late George Apley. It is not until the appearance of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l Hyde that the story comes to life, that the film leaps off the screen, that the excitement begins to crackle. It is our inherent fascination with the Beast. And Stevenson (like Burroughs) knew that about us. So the best parts of ERB and RLS and Little Caesar and Public Enemy and all the rest are the parts in which the Beast is running loose. Yes, of course, morality almost always insists they get theirs (most notably in the hypocritical ethical code of motion picture and television guidelines which, though loosened these last few years, is still intended to disarm Falwell and his ilk). But what we enjoy most is not the Jekyll goody-goodness, but the Beast.

And that is what is sensational in Greystoke: One-third of the film takes place in the jungle as Tarzan is raised by Kala and the chimps. Two-thirds, however, is the Edwardian humdrummery of Henry Jekyll's world: a larger section of scenes we've seen again and again: in Four Feathers and Beau Geste and every L. P. Hartley yawner in which the tatters of the Empire try to convince the rest of the world that the sun never sets on dieu et mon droit.

The story of how Hugh Hudson ruined Rick Baker's Kala costume (oh, did I neglect to mention that the most stunning aspect of that Towne-inspired valid section is the special chimp suits built-in two years-by, er, uh, Rick Baker?) by scheduling as the first scene to be shot the segment in which Tarzan's adoptive mother is riddled by pygmy's arrows-so that Baker had to keep patching it for all the chronologically earlier shootings that came after-is now legend in the industry. (It has been reported that Baker, who had been forbidden by Hudson even to see dailies of the film for which he was in large part responsible, had to be restrained by studio guards from going for Milord Hudson's throat. Up the Colonies!) But Hudson got in all the dull, vapid manor-house cliches his "vision" demanded. And the studio execs, no doubt snowed by Hudson's British accent, nodded and said, swell.

There is very little of the Burroughs novel left. Towne wrote a savage screenplay, in which Tarzan (a name never spoken in the film for some moronic reason) was a savage, sometimes n.o.ble, sometimes not. Then Hugh Hudson and his buddy Michael Austin savaged it by removing the savagery. If you are looking for a Tarzan who, as in the novel, is an active ent.i.ty, you will be disappointed. They have made him constantly and consistently reactive. He is led this way and that way, even by weak English stereotypes. And in the one scene back in England when Jane's suitor James Fox seems about to use a riding crop or somesuch on a mentally-r.e.t.a.r.ded servant, and Lord John Clayton leaps from the parapet to stop him, and we think we will now see the dichotomous savage in reaction to civilization, all he does is pull the riding crop from Fox's hand and look petulant.

Christopher Lambert as the adult Tarzan is splendid. He looks like, and has the same animal charisma, as Belmondo; and no better choice could have been made for the part. Nor could any better choice have been made for the sixth Earl of Greystoke, Tarzan's grandfather, than the late Sir Ralph Richardson, whose warmth and puckishness are memorable.

The only better choice that could have been made, to save this tragic split-personality film, was to have left it in the hands of its creator . . . and not have given it over to a pompous furriner more attuned to Trollope than Tarzan.

And if, perchance, some pa.s.sing naif senses in you a deep well of humanism, and inquires if you can encapsulate the essence of tragedy, you might suggest that s/he note the screenplay credits on Greystoke. The scenarists listed are P. H. Vazak and Michael Austin. "P. H. Vazak" is the registered pseudonym used by a fine artist named Robert Towne. And you might quote to your wide-eyed questioner the words of the poet Antonin Artaud, who said: "Very little is needed to destroy a man. He needs only the conviction that his work is useless."

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / August 1984 INSTALLMENT 2:.

In Which Sublime And Ridiculous Pa.s.s Like Ships In The Night