Dreams with Sharp Teeth Erik Nelson USA 2007
In case you’ve never heard of him, Harlan Ellison is a prolific Sci-Fi novelist, script-writer, essayist and penner of short-stories. He also, we are told early on in the documentary, claims to have slept with over 700 women. So he’s no doubt got quite a knack for time management too. In this swift-moving bio-documentary by Erik Nelson we are told Ellison’s story, from his early years as a poor Jewish boy growing up in Ohio to his current status as a cult author regarded by some as one of the finest of this century in the English language. Along the way we are shown what footage exists from Ellison’s early years and are introduced to a succession of talking heads.
Ellison himself is an absolute motor mouth, with a vehement and informed opinion on just about everything. A dogged foe of obscurantists and enemies and a mercurial promoter of friends and those in whom he detects potential, Ellison is a fantastic documentary subject. He is a natural performer, whether reading his work, letting rip at the idiocy around him, or regaling the camera with a stream of anecdotes about his past, his take on the world and his attitude to life, the universe and everything. On every single subject broached in the documentary Ellison is able to perorate, challenge and contradict. To the extent that it does this, Nelson’s film is a fantastic document of Ellison’s life and ideas, and the central message of Ellison’s work comes through loud and clear. On every single subject Ellison urges his readers, his viewers, in fact, anybody standing within earshot, to challenge received opinion.
Erik Nelson, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have heeded this advice, and while Dreams With Sharp Teeth is, as I said, a fine document, it is a pretty bland in its use of the documentary format. For the most part, Nelson is happy to stand aside and let Ellison occupy every square inch of celluloid. The main problem this stance entails is over-reverence. We are told, and shown, that Ellison’s work is about thinking, probing, challenging, struggling against everything at all times without truce or compromise. Yet the talking heads we see, with the qualified exception of Neil Gaiman, offer only hagiography (though Robin Williams is continually witty and entertaining). We are shown the scorn Ellison displays for sycophantic fans, whose indiscriminate enthusiasm for him gainsays the message he is trying to transmit to them, but as though this attitude was no more than the antisocial foible of a favourite uncle. In his heartfelt admiration for his subject, Nelson drifts towards negating Ellison’s life work.
There are a few leads in the documentary that are left underdeveloped, but which might have provided the sort of contrasts and context necessary to get a little more under Ellison’s skin and magnify the relevance of his work and the opinions for which it acts as a vehicle. At one point we are introduced to another writer called Dan Simmons and the difference between Simmons and Ellison is one that would have borne exploring. The relationship between the two writers is described as one of at times fractious friendship underlain by a deep mutual respect. We see Simmons tell a fan that he is not now writing Sci-Fi, but “literature”. This distinction is, I imagine, more one of dust-jacket than of content quality for Ellison, who resolutely describes Sci-Fi as “exploratory fiction”. Ellison has struggled all his life due to his obdurate opinions, whilst Simmons seems slick and business-like. I don’t know enough about Simmons’ work to really comment, but perhaps a parallel somewhere along the lines of that established between the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols in “DiG!” might have been possible, giving Nelson’s documentary a critical edge concerning the Sci-Fi milieu.
Ellison is not an easy writer to get hold of in the UK. His work is not widely available in paperback and second-hand copies are going for inflated sums on the internet. The contrast between Simmons and Ellison suggests that Ellison’s place in the canon of great writers may be prejudiced by his uncompromising personality and blithe concentration on expanding the possibilities of genre fiction. Dreams With Sharp Teeth simply doesn’t show us why. I still recommend catching it if you can. It is not memorable as a documentary, but it has left me with a great desire to get hold of Ellison’s books, which, I imagine, is the great toothless dream of its maker.
