So I’m a bit of a fan of Harlan Ellison both as a writer & an intriguing personality, so I actually heard of this movie before it came out. But the odds of me knowing the one weekend it would be in a local theater & then making it to it aren’t so hot. & of course I’m not on Netflix & haven’t rented a movie since 2001, so the odds of stumbling on a movie are pretty low. But I was at a buddy’s house & this was on Netflix streaming so the magic of me seeing it happens.
Normally I watch a movie while working on something; but at a friend’s house, that seems a little rude. So I guess maybe it wasn’t my typical personal movie watching experience & made me probably have higher standards, but this wasn’t too engaging to me. I generally like documentaries & I like hearing Harlan Ellison rant randomly on various YouTube clips, but this just didn’t cut it. Documentaries (to me) are supposed to make boring things intriguing &/or reveal how intriguing & confusing things work & for me this did neither. Maybe because I already have plenty of general Ellison knowledge & a lot of the interview clips that make up the film I’d seen in their full forms (which I’d suggest as more interesting than the movie), but this didn’t seem to reveal too many new things. I wasn’t given any new sacred knowledge about how Ellison’s brain works. I mean listening to Ellison talk on re-run is still better than most things, but I think if you watched 90 minutes of interview clips with him you would get some more enlightenment than from the movie. I’ll put a couple of things not in the movie below for you.
Normally I watch a movie while working on something; but at a friend’s house, that seems a little rude. So I guess maybe it wasn’t my typical personal movie watching experience & made me probably have higher standards, but this wasn’t too engaging to me. I generally like documentaries & I like hearing Harlan Ellison rant randomly on various YouTube clips, but this just didn’t cut it. Documentaries (to me) are supposed to make boring things intriguing &/or reveal how intriguing & confusing things work & for me this did neither. Maybe because I already have plenty of general Ellison knowledge & a lot of the interview clips that make up the film I’d seen in their full forms (which I’d suggest as more interesting than the movie), but this didn’t seem to reveal too many new things. I wasn’t given any new sacred knowledge about how Ellison’s brain works. I mean listening to Ellison talk on re-run is still better than most things, but I think if you watched 90 minutes of interview clips with him you would get some more enlightenment than from the movie. I’ll put a couple of things not in the movie below for you.
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