| Harlan Ellison's Watching | |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Release Date: | 1989 (1st edition) |
| Media Type: | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages: | 514 pp (first edition) |
| Isbn: | 978-0-88733-067-4 |
| Dewey: | 791.43 20 |
| Congress: | PN1995 .E58 1989 |
| Oclc: | 19981018 |
Harlan Ellison's Watching is a 1989 compilation of 25 years worth of essays and film reviews written by Harlan Ellison for Cinema magazine, the Los Angeles Free Press, Starlog magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction among others.
In the book, Ellison explains how he became a film critic and his views on film criticism in general. Highlights include a thorough savaging of (entitled "Luke Skywalker is a Nerd and Darth Vader Sucks Runny Eggs"), wherein he describes it as "shallow" and "a film without soul, without a core," and writing that Gremlins "suffers from the dreaded Jerry Lewis Syndrome: it vacillates between a disingenuous homeliness and an egomaniacal nastiness."
Ellison also exposes unjust handlings of films like Brazil and Dune by their respective studios. He also championed obscure films that he felt were of exemplary quality, like Big Trouble in Little China, which had "some of the funniest lines spoken by any actor this year to produce a cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives" and Joe, which he said was "a visceral experience on a par with going black-belting with Bruce Lee. Joe will kick the shit out of you. It will set the blood slamming against your cranial walls. It will make you as cold as Ultima Thule."
In his review for the New York Times, Robert Moss wrote, "In contrast to the detached, impersonal tone of the average film critic, Mr. Ellison pronounces almost exclusively at the top of his voice...His style routinely mixes a standard critical idiom with esoteric vocabulary, slang, a liberal use of obscenities and many homemade coinages."[1]