Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008)

A Brilliant Conflict

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

You get a bit of everything here; looks at cranky Harlan, rants, and book excerpts. While it'd be nice to have some more in depth analysis of his work, his personality is just so big that it overpowers it all. Super entertaining movie.

...after Harlan Ellison was born, simple as that, and the world will be a lesser place once he is gone. Fortunately, though, his writing will survive, and that's good enough for me. In my pantheon of cultural heroes, he remains at or near the top, depending on my situation at the time; he has spoken to me and for me throughout my lifetime of reading more than any other author, almost as though he were a second father, or perhaps an older brother to be worshiped from afar. I will weep at his passing.No one who is at all literate can remain unaware of Ellison's work, and very likely unaware of his reputation. Mercurial, iconoclastic, savage, unrelenting; a thesaurus can barely contain all the descriptives that apply to Ellison and his voluminous output. My sole encounter with him occurred decades ago, when I was lucky enough to attend one of his speaking gigs at a nearby college. I brought several spoken word LPs he had recorded, prizes of my collection, in hopes of an autograph or two, and when I made it to the front of the line and was face to face with the man himself, all I could think to say beyond the obvious sycophantic pleasantries was that I had read everything he'd ever written. He looked at me askance, and said something along the lines of, "Really?" and then signed my LPs. I fled, chastened, grateful that I had been spared further ignominy. My love for the man and his work now knows no bounds."Dreams with Sharp Teeth" is a must-see for all Ellison devotees, and neophytes as well.

I had the privilege of watching this with two other people who saw Harlan Ellison with me at a now legendary appearance in the late 80's in Toronto, and we kept looking at each other and snickering. But even if you never saw him live, read any of his work, or had any familiarity with him at all, you can appreciate this documentary as being about a man WORTHY of a documentary. He's just that bloody entertaining.The soundtrack - by Richard Thompson, the legendary Brit folkie - is amazing, by the way.Some of the camera work is really amateurish, but most of the straight interview footage is well shot. The camera work and the parts that got left out of Ellison's bio - probably in deference to his storied litigiousness - are what knocked this down to 8 out of 10.His initial 'interview' with Robin Williams is worth watching even if you can't spend the time on the rest of the movie. Within minutes we were all helplessly laughing.If you're at all interested in SF, either literary or media, movies, have a love affair with the English language or just want to see what it's like to be a legendary, visionary, prolific, brilliant and uncompromising pain in the rear, see this film. I intend to watch it again as some of the dialogue went by so fast I missed it, and it was really, really funny.

Many of my heroes have gone unheralded in their own lifetimes. How many people have ever heard of (let alone actually read) Robert E. Howard or Shirley Jackson or Charles Beaumont or Harlan Ellison? Edgar Allen Poe, though he died in a gutter, is still read (though not as extensively as one might think: besides THE TELL-TALE HEART, THE BLACK CAT and THE RAVEN, how many of his vastly varied tales truly "live on"?). If not for the efforts of friends and admirers, H.P. Lovecraft would be dead and long-forgotten by now. Richard Matheson is one of a select few whose outstanding craftsmanship and boundless imagination have elevated them to the level of a "Grand Master." Another is Harlan Ellison. Ellison, unlike any other writer I've encountered (I actually met him at a comic book convention in Charlotte, North Carolina about ten years ago), pulls no punches- on the page or off. He has his way with words, if you will. It's fun to listen to him dissemble about comics (THE MASTERS OF COMIC BOOK ART) or writing (DARK DREAMERS, Vol. II, in which he mentions his story TERRA COGNITA and how it came to be) or anything else. His undeniable passion for writing is in itself inspirational. (When members of my own writing group used to ask me where I got my ideas, I would simply tap my temple with my index finger. "In here," I would tell them: "It's all in here, just waiting for me to access it." Ellison's response to that question is much funnier than mine, by the way...) When I came across an issue of something called ROCKET'S BLAST COMIC COLLECTOR (or something like that) that showed Ellison Wonderland itself, I pored over the fotos like an archaeologist trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics. I looked for clues to Genius. They're there, I'm sure... all I have to do is decipher them. Then apply them. In a college writing course, I came up with what I've always thought was an apt metaphor: "Writing is the God-like act of Creation." Amen.