Harlan Ellison on Woody Allen

[Will Dockery]

"Chafetz Chayim ha'Yehu'di" wrote in message
> news:09bb0461-d2b5-4018...@googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Benjamin Ivry, 2018. Sci-fi visionary Harlan Ellison reveled in his
> > Jewishness. Forward.com, 29 June
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> I need to see if the story of him and Woody Allen , or rather one of them,
> is online...

This is the one I remembered:

http://novelpark.org/novel-online/harlan-ellisons-watching-part-20

I was talking to Woody Allen the other afternoon... and he looked at me out of the middle of a conversation about something else entirely, and he asked me, "How come they've never given me a Hugo award? Whaddaya think, anti-Semitism?"

"But I've done so much fantasy and science fiction," he said. "Sleeper was pure sf. So was Zelig. And what about that flying saucer at the end of Stardust Memories? Or the fantasy subtext of A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy; or the sperm fantasy segment in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Etcetera)? I bet if L. Ron Hubbard had written Purple Rose of Cairo they'd have given it a Hugo . . . I mean, it is sort of a hip, updated version of Typewriter in the Sky..."

Follow the link for the rest of the story, because one thing Harlan Ellison hated was to have his works quoted on the internet...

[Will Dockery]

https://submittedforyourperusal.com/2011/11/21/woody-allen-science-fiction-filmmaker/

"In Part 1 of Woody Allen: A Documentary, which aired last night on PBS (Part 2 airs tonight), documentary maker Robert Weide tells Allen that Sleeper was the first time he ever heard the term “cloning.” Allen nods and says that’s why he felt the need to include a scene explaining it; no one at the time knew what cloning was. Now, of course, Allen jokes, everybody clones..."

"This exchange reminded me of Harlan Ellison’s argument that Woody Allen is partly, maybe even primarily, a science fiction filmmaker":

"Can I be the only reader of fantastic literature to perceive that Woody Allen has been, and continues to be, one of our best filmic interpreters of the je ne sais quoi we call “the sense of wonder”? Surely not. Surely some other observer of the flickering screen image has stumbled on this obvious truth! But I search in vain through all the treatises on Woody, and I find no support for my theory... But nowhere does anyone simply say, 'This guy has a for-real science-fictional-fantasy outlook'..." -Harlan Ellison

"Ellison calls Sleeper and Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo “pure SF,” and contends that many of Allen’s other films have science fiction and/or fantasy elements..."

"Since Harlan Ellison wrote the above words in 1987, Allen has made Deconstructing Harry, Melinda and Melinda, and Midnight in Paris – all movies that, when you think about it, are essentially science fiction films. Hell, one might even argue that Woody Allen is one of the premier science fiction filmmakers of the last fifty years..." -Matt Thomas