Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

…That is how an early L.A. screening of Erik Nelson’s Dreams With Sharp Teeth was billed, and it is as good a description of what this film is as anything. There are few moments in this film when Ellison isn’t unruly. Hell, there are probably few moments in his life when he isn’t unruly.

Co-presented by Toronto After Dark, this film was at the top of my list of my what-to-see list when I was planning my schedule for Hot Docs this year.

I was introduced to Ellison’s work by Stephen King, in his non-fiction look at genre fiction in literature and film, Danse Macabre (1981)… pronounced “McBare” by those who’ve read it and if you are a fan of horror fiction and haven’t read it, WTF is going through that noggin of yours?! Here. That very book has played a major role in my life for reasons like the one I just cited–see pp. 242-247. In the early- to mid-80s I went through a major speculative fiction phase and Ellison’s work was a major part of it.

So I knew what to expect when I sat down last night to watch this portrait of the artist as an angry man. I knew to expect to be thrilled by this man’s mastery of the language (peppered with expletives more foul and frequent than even my own), both tickled and spurred by his rage against the various kinds of stupidity accepted by our society, and delighted by his confrontational fearlessness. I adore the mouthy little bastard!

That goiter was fucking nasty, though. If’n I’d been eating popcorn, it’d've put me off it. Pah!

Described by some critics as more hagiography than biography, Nelson’s portrait of Ellison is presented through the subject’s own words (not just conversations but also readings from his work) as well as those of friends, colleagues, and critics (see the list of thank-yous at the end of the review I linked to at the beginning of this post–that article is very good!). We see him at home–in the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars (curiously but accurately named) in the Santa Monica hills–and on the road for speaking engagements, yelling at drivers as he’s walking across the street, yelling at pedestrians as he’s driving down the street, at Pink’s, and always he is on on on and I am laughing laughing laughing–‘If you had to live with me 24/7, you’d put a gun in your mouth… or my mouth,’ he says.

And if it is too affectionate a portrayal of the subject, then so be it. I don’t blame Nelson. I mean, I wouldn’t wanna risk getting thrown down an elevator shaft, either.