I recently posted about the passing of science fiction pioneer cum pain in the ass, Harlan Ellison. The loss of Ellison has found me going back through lots of written reviews and obits as well as checking out a bunch of videos and recordings on YouTube. One of the things I like best about Harlan Ellison is the variety of writing that he did and I really enjoyed reading Harlan Ellison is watching — a compilation of Ellison’s film and television reviews and essays from 25 years of writing for Cinema magazine, the Los Angeles Free Press, Starlog magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction among others. As a science fiction book and story author as well as a script writer, Ellison brought an uniquely intimate insider’s perspective to the magic of bringing science fiction and fantasy to life onscreen.

Harlan’s book sort of came to the small screen when the author’s “Harlan Ellison’s Watching” came to the “Sci-Fi Buzz” show on the Sci-Fi channel in 1993.
Here’s a YouTube playlist including more than 50 episodes of the show and countless insights, insults, punning praises and cracking criticisms from Ellison…

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Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935. Here’s Kurt Russell as The King in John Carpenter’s 1979 made-for-TV-movie, Elvis. As I remember, this is the end of the opening scene, before we flashback to Elvis’ childhood in Mississippi. Celebrate the birth of rock ‘n’ roll by watching TV Elvis shoot a hotel television…

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Anticipating the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, here’s a look back to a super project dreamed up by Wim Wenders at the festival way back in 1982: Room 666 is a documentary project that profiles a number of prominent filmmakers using a static camera in room 666 of the Hotel Martinez. According to the Wiki…

Each director is given one 16 mm reel (approximately 11 minutes) to answer the questions. The principal question asked was, “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” Wenders then edited this footage and added an introduction.

Directors interviewed include Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died less than a month after filming. The film was later screened out of competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

This year’s Cannes Film Festival will get underway on May 13. In the meantime, here’s Room 666…

Stay Awake!

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Petey Greene was a pioneer of shock radio and television who became the voice of his black community in Washington, DC from the 1960′s — the 1980′s. He achieved international fame for his hilarious, outspoken, outrageous rants and interviews and for his tireless activism for civil rights, poverty rights and the rights of prisoners.

Greene was raised by his grandmother and dropped out of high school before enlisting in the army and fighting in the Korean war. Greene found little opportunity when he came home from the war and he gradually drifted into crime and alcoholism. Greene was convicted of the armed robbery of a grocery store in 1960 and sentenced to ten years in penitentiary.

In a sense, going to jail was Greene’s big break: During his incarceration Greene became a prison DJ and vowed to change his life and never be in prison again. Greene became famous throughout the cell blocks for his hilarious broadcasts and he eventually won a parole when he convinced a fellow prisoner to climb to the top of a water tower so Greene could talk him down and “save his life.”

Greene struggled on the outside, but this time he persevered, becoming both a pillar of his community and the broadcast celebrity portrayed in the 2007 film Talk to Me, starring Don Cheadle.

Cheadle narrates this PBS Independent Lens special about the man and his mighty mouth: Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene pictures our hero reveling being as potentially offending as he is positively affecting — keep your eyes peeled for Greene eating a watermelon, Howard Stern in blackface, and a parade of celebrities who built their own careers on Greene’s influence and generosity.

Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene (2008) from GodsConnect2 on Vimeo.

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