The People Weekly Harlan Ellison Article
Benno Tallant
December 2, 1985
VOL 24, NO 23
BIO 97
Writer Harlan Ellison dislikes
TV, but now he's at work in
The Twilight Zone
<Page 97>
BIO
Harlan Ellison
Scarred by the insults of childhood, a manic
fantasist slashes back at the world
by Kristin McMurran
Standing in his high-gloss, high-
tech dining room, Harlan Ellison,
writer, social critic and loud-
mouth, is once again disturbing the
peace. Unshaven, uncombed and na-
ked but for a faded terry cloth robe
bearing the embroidered message,
Don't Bug Me, he holds in his hands a
letter from a critical fan who finds him
confusing. The muttering begins as El-
lison's eyes skitter across the paper
like a flat stone across a glassy pond.
The flow of expletives is about to
erupt. "Confusing to you, moron, but
not to me," he shouts. "I'm gonna tear
off your head and piss down your
neck!" Ellison rarely follows through
with such threats, but he often re-
sponds to those who annoy him with a
form letter that reads in part:
Dear Sir (or Madam), Clearly some
brain-damaged moron is writing letters
and signing your name. I suggest you
do something about this.
"I love responding to idiots," says El-
lison with a grin. "My mission in life is
to point out to the monkeys of the uni-
verse that they cannot continue to ex-
ist in the state of stupidity. This does
not endear them to me, but [bleep] it."
For Ellison, stupidity is only one of
life's irritants. Add to that ineptitude
and complacency, Jerry Falwell ("a
self-righteous governor of other peo-
ple's morals"), Neil Simon's plays ("He
is to dramaturgy as Genghis Khan was
to good table manners"), Judith
Krantz("a creative typist"), The Merv
Griffin Show("Talking to him is like
talking to your armpit"), people who
chew gum in public and Oreo cookies
(Harlan favors Hydrox).
Ellison is not about to tiptoe through
life unnoticed. He takes as his man-
date the words of the German poet
Gunter Eich: "Be uncomfortable, be
sand, not oil, in the machinery of the
world." At 51, Ellison has had four
wives, one vasectomy and no childern.
He has, however, fathered an impres-
sive body of work--prickly essays,
cautionary tales and provocative
scripts--that has been honored with 16
major literary prizes, including three
Nebula Awards from the Science Fic-
tion Writers of America. Currently he is
creative consultant to CBS' The Twi-
light Zone, a concession that marks El-
lison's tentative rapprochement with a
medium he has blasted for years.
CONTINUED
<Page 98>
"Generally," Harlan observes, "work-
ing in television is like putting in time
in the house of the dead. I left TV to
go into an honest profession, like
pimping."
Oh, and Ellison can be touchy
about being pigeonholed. When a
CNN reporter promised an interview
by satellite with "science-fiction"
writer Harlan Ellison, viewers who
stayed tuned caught a puzzling
glimpse of an empty chair. A furious
Harlan had bolted. Another time a
publishing executive ignored Ellisons's
pleas not to distribute a novel with
those forbidden words stamped on
the cover. In a Wagnerian display of
pique, Harlan flew from Los Angeles
to New York, laid hands on the man
and trashed his office.
Harlan calls his Los Angeles moun-
tainside home Ellison Wonderland.
Perched above the garage are six fi-
berglass gargoyles depicting, among
others, Richard Nixon and Phyllis
Schlafly, two of his particular betes.
Across his threshold lies a fantasy
kingdom perfectly suited to grown-up
little boys. Tiny plastic dinosaurs graze
on bookshelves lined with nearly
47,000 books. Regiments of toy sol-
diers form up in corners near framed
posters of comic-book heroes. "This is
where we sacrifice virgins," says Har-
lan, pointing to a stained-glass door. (It
is, in fact, the residence of his hot-wa-
ter heater.) Another portal, rounded,
and apparently custom-built for a
Smurf, leads to the staircase by which
the 5'5" Ellison ascends to his writing
loft. There, among his Hasbro toys and
a haphazard collection of buttons,
thimbles and stamps, Harlan shadow-
boxes for up to 20 hours a day with his
muscular muses.
Ellison's surprising return to televi-
sion marks his first involvement with
the medium since his departure in
1975. Before that he had cultivated a
reputation as a pint-size prima donna,
occasionally huffing off sets when col-
leagues tampered with his words.
Explains Harlan: "I'm impossible to
work with in this way: I don't believe
you have to write things stupid for a
stupid audience, I don't believe the
writer is chattel or a beanfield peon. If
my words are treated right, I'm never
difficult." At the moment Ellison is one
of five people adapting stories and
writing scripts for the CBS revival of
Twilight Zone. "They're crazy here,"
Ellison says. "That's why I fit in so well.
<Page 99>
It's a wonderful way of working, be-
cause it's a writer's show."
While it would be reckless to say that
Harlan has mellowed, he has, in the in-
tervening years, lived through the ex-
ploration of his own twilight zone. It
began sometime in 1978. "The first
symptom was lassitude, " he says, "as
if someone pulled a plug out of me and
all the energy drained away. I couldn't
writer for more than an hour or two a
day. Then I'd get these terrible sugar
rushes." When he began wolfing down
two-pound bags of M&Ms, the weight
he gained brought on a hiatus hernia.
"I had to sleep sitting up or I would get
acid in my throat," says Harlan. "The
skin on my fingers started peeling, my
fingernails turned to horn, my nose
would clog up when I ate and my sex
drive vanished." So did a good part of
his income. Ellison supported himself
by lecturing and by writing reviews
and a weekly newspaper column. He
missed deadlines for larger projects,
which only enhanced his reputation for
being difficult. A romance foundered,
and he retreated from his friends.
By 1981 he was subject to unpredict-
able rages and once reacted to some
spilled coffee grounds by ripping a
cabinet door off its hinges. That fall El-
lison spoke at a neuropharmacology
seminar conducted by Brandeis Uni-
versity, discussing the use of drugs in
literature. "As I was doing my research
about mood elevators and antidepres-
sants," he says, "I realized I was read-
ing case studies of myself. At the
end of my talk I told all these scientists
what was happening. I said, 'Please
help me.' Then I staarted crying."
Months of medical consultations and
tests followed, and Ellison was treated
with a rainbow of antidepressants.
Nothing worked.
Finally he conferred with a Beverly
Hills psychiatrist, "He told me I was
nuts," says Harlan, "but that I turn my
craziness and anger into productive
channels." The doctor concluded that
Ellison suffered not from a psychiatric
disorder but from dysphoria, a general-
ized feeling of anxiety and restless-
ness that sometimes afflicts hightly
creative people whose productivity is
blocked. Since then Harlan has minis-
tered to himself. "I decided I would not
let this thing ruin my life," he says. "I
might be in the middle of a rage and I'll
think, 'Un-oh, this isn't me being an-
gry--it's this thing.' I try to control it."
Beneath Ellison's bombastic armor
CONTINUED
<Page 100>
is a small boy still battling the demons
of his childhood in Painesville, Ohio.
His father managed the family jewelry
store; his mother tried to manage Har-
lan. "I was a troublemaker because I
was filled with ideas and passion and
had no place to put them," says Elli-
son. "I was also smaller than the small-
est girl in my class. My parents gave
me shots to make me grow, but I
stayed little. I was unathletic and Jew-
ish in a town where there were real
anti-Semitic bigots." Comic-book and
radio heroes nourished his rich fantasy
life, and in a seventh-grade class pho-
to Harlan stand proudly, wearing a
Captain Midnight secret decoder
badge like a corsage. The real world
was more inhospitable. When bullies
tossed him around the playground,
Harland learned to fight back. "I'd never
let anything pass," he says. "Someone
would say any damn thing to me and
they'd go to their grave with their teeth
in their throat."
Ellison's memories are not mere
paranoia, "What Harlan remembers is
true, and he was hurt by it," says for-
mer classmate Jean Pengal, now a
housewife in Fairport, Ohio. "People in
Painesville were very prejudiced. The
bullies called him 'little kike' and 'Jew-
boy.' Harlan was very hyper and al-
ways clowning. He'd walk around with
a hand puppet he called Roscoe. The
boys thought he was weird, but he was
just very inventive."
At 13, as a sort of homage to the
boys'-book hero Toby Tyler, Harlan ran
away and joined a carnival. A Pinker-
ton detective hired by his parents re-
trieved him. Two years later Ellison
was alone in the living room with his
father when the older man dropped
dead of a heart attack. "For the next
month," he says, "all I did was stand
outside the house and bounce a tennis
ball off the wall and catch it in a mitt my
dad had given me." Harlan's spirit was
bent but not broken.
After being booted out of Ohio State
as a sophomore for decking an English
professor who disparaged his writing
talent, Ellison headed for Greenwich
Village. He churned out pulp magazine
stories under various pseudonyms. His
first marriage, at 21, lasted three
years, two of which he spent in the
Army. His next encompassed the publi-
cation of Gentleman Junkie, a critically
acclaimed account of the 10 weeks he
had spent with a street gang. A year
later he took off for Hollywood, where
he separated from wife No. 2 and took
on an agent. "We hated each other
instantly," says Marty Shapiro, who
has represented Ellison for the past 23
years. "He was very abrasive. He has
no compunctions about letting people
know his opinions. You wanna say,
'Shut up, Harlan,' but you gotta admire
him. He's very real in an industry that is
not real."
After selling a story to The Alfred
Hitchcock Hour, Ellison served a profit-
able apprenticeship on various series
including The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,
The Outer Limits and Star Trek. In be-
tween, he married, for 45 days, a wom-
an he describes as "the most accom-
plished con artist I've ever met. I
thought I was her third, I was her sev-
enth." By the mid-'70s Ellison was
making a comfortable living writing
books and working in television. He
edited two celebrated fantasy antholo-
gies, Dangerous Visions and Again,
Dangerous Visions, fournd himself lion-
ized by science-fiction fans and be-
came a gleefully outrageous fixture on
the college lecture circuit.
In 1976 he married again. He was 41,
she was 19. "I was desperately in love
with her, but it was a stupid marriage
on my part," says Harlan. They were
divorced after eight months. "I prefer
the company of woman, but I can't sus-
tain a relationship," he admits. His
friend, Brother Theodore, an oddball
monologist and artist of the bizarre,
once explained the problem succinct-
ly: "When women meet us we seem ex-
citing and dangerous. We sparkle; they
cling to us. Then six months go by and
they say, 'When will it end? When will
CONTINUED
<Page 104>
there be some peace? Some quiet?'"
Some of Harlan's friends know the
feeling. "Harlan is quite a show, though
not one I always wish I were attend-
ing," says science-fiction writer Robert
Silverberg. "But Harlan is easier on the
universe now. He knows, for example,
that I would be embarrassed if he
picked up a potato and threw it across
the room to display his dissatisfaction
with dinner."
For other reasons, perhaps, Ellison's
live-in relationships have fared better
than his marriages. Since October he
has shared his home with a British psy-
chology student he met last summer.
"I'm easy to get rid of," he observes.
"If someone says, 'Look, I love you, but
I didn't sign on for this craziness,' I un-
derstand. I never dog women or throw
bricks through their car windows." But
that doesn't make him a pushover. "It's
hard to be Harlan's friend because
he's demanding," says writer Jessie
Horsting. "But he has always offered
100 percent to people without reserva-
tion, and most of his life that trust has
CONTINUED
<Page 106>
been betrayed. Though he has made a
career of confessional writing, he is an
intensely private individual."
It is Harlan's disarming kindness that
most endears him to his closest
friends. "Harland looks out for under-
dogs of all kinds," says Silverberg.
"He's very generous to new writers,
quite beyond their merits, and he's
crazily loyal to his friends. If I needed
somebody killed, Harlan would see
that it was done." Robert Bloch, author
of Psycho, describes Ellison as the
only organism that thrives in hot water.
"Harlan is scrupulously honest and has
a tremendous passion for justice,"
says Bloch. "He is also his own worst
enemy. He can win over an audience in
five minutes, then he will push further
until he infuriates them." And he can
be inventive in working off grudges.
When a New York publisher broke a
contractual agreement by allowing a
cigarette ad to be placed in an Ellison
paperback, Harlan retaliated by send-
ing the company comptroller a dead
gopher--fourth class.
Ellison has no qualms about these
lurid tales of his mischief. "People who
have never read a word of what I have
written know who I am because of
these crazy stories," he says. "I love
my reputation because maybe I have a
shot at a kind of posterity. I mean, what
the hell is it all about? I've sat behind a
typewriter for 30 years. I've eschewed
wife and family. I have hemorrhoids--
to what end?" Snatching a dust mote
out of the air, he crushes it between his
fingers. "So that maybe when I'm gone
the work will still be here. Okay, I
counted in a little way."
Still striving for his sliver of immor-
tality, Ellison attacks each day with
manic intensity. Up before 6, he vac-
uums in the nude while he assembles
his thoughts. Before two or three of his
assistants arrive at 10, Harlan is al-
ready at his typewriter. At midday he
often prepares grilled salami sand-
wiches on rye for the group, then re-
truns to work with his stereo booming.
At 3 an alarm goes off to remind him it
is pill time--Lysine, for his herpes, and
vitamins. He breaks at 5 for milk and
cookies, then resumes his labors until
after sundown. "I lead a fairly sedate
life," he observes. "I don't drink or
smoke cigarettes. I'm probably the
only guy in L.A. who has not had a ho-
mosexual experience of any kind. For
me a hot time is Hydrox cookies and a
book." Ellsion is currently completing
the third volume of the Dangerous
Visions trilogy, which is already 10
years overdue, as well as a new collec-
tion of his own stories. One novel in
progress is nearly finished, and anoth-
er is still tap-dancing in his head. It is a
creative maelstrom that brings him
close to contentment.
So, in a different way, did the after-
noon last summer when Ellison went to
see the reshooting of a fragment of the
Twilight Zone episode Gramma. Crew
members welcomed him to the set; the
director listened to Harlan's sugges-
tions. Cameras rolled, and fake fog bil-
lowed down a corridor as the writer
watched entranced. "It's like being Ali
Baba," he whispered. "Anything I can
dream up, they make real." In the
shadows, his face seemed aglow. In
that brief moment, Harlan Ellison was,
for once, in repose.
PHOTO CAPTIONS/CREDITS
Page 97.
"I do not live in fear of going to my grave a beloved figure,"
declares Ellison (shouting defiance from his rooftop).
Picture Credit: Jennifer Cannell
Page 100
"I like her too much to marry her," says Ellison, nibbling
the shoulder of his current housemate, Susan Toth, 25.
Picture Credit: David Strick/SIPA-SPECIAL FEATURES
Page 104
Bursting with inspiration and the need to be both seen and heard,
Ellison sometimes dashes to Twilight Zone headquarters (above)
in a bathrobe and a black panzer helmet.
Picture Credit: David Strick/SIPA-SPECIAL FEATURES
Page 106
"I'm the person I want to be," says Harlan, standing by gargoyles
of those he abhors. (Richard Nixon is second from left.)
Picture Credit: Jennifer Cannell
Igor
what? The journalistic excellence of Pimple magazine? Another cookie cutter
caption writer for the mentally impaired in the AOL/Time Warner stall goes
to her well-deserved obscurity...
"Benno Tallant" <b_ta...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5597a794.0203...@posting.google.com...
O Deus
Well at least it does mention his mental illness, his history of
violent outbursts and erratic behavior, though it does try to put them
in the most positive light possible.
Of course though, you'd think that an elitist like Ellison would never
do an interview for such a mediocre and shallow publication, but
that's where his self-promotion runs over his credibility.
O Deus
> Ah Kristin where are you now? "Pulp science fiction stories" as opposed to
> what? The journalistic excellence of Pimple magazine? Another cookie cutter
> caption writer for the mentally impaired in the AOL/Time Warner stall goes
> to her well-deserved obscurity...
She co-authored a book with Kelly McGillis about her rape ordeal,
which undoubtedly helped prepeare her for her interview with Harlan.
Rufus
od...@bigfoot.com (O Deus) wrote in message news:<c6784f8f.02033...@posting.google.com>...
O Deus
> The book came out long after that article,
Well I guess than the one prepeared her for the other.