HARLAN Ellison is one hell of a writer. Working on an old typewriter, he has turned out more than 2,000 stories (“Angry Candy,” “Deathbird Stories”) and written episodes for TV’s “The Outer Limits” and “Star Trek,” with some screenplays and nonfiction mixed in. But as the documentary “Dreams With Sharp Teeth” points out, his fame as a writer often takes second place to his outsized ego.
Says one talking head in Erik Nelson’s fun film: “Ellison doesn’t have an off switch, doesn’t have a censor button.” Says Ellison himself: “I’m a big-mouthed pain in the ass.”
He unleashes an anti-Warner Bros. tirade because they asked him to write for free, screams at strangers on the street, spars verbally with college hecklers, and puts down Tom Clancy’s writing. He remembers growing up in small-town Cleveland, where he was bullied by anti-Semitic schoolmates.
Robin Williams drops in at Harlan’s outlandishly appointed Hollywood Hills home, which he shares with his fifth wife, a redhead who appears several decades younger than Ellison. A friend remembers: “I never knew anybody that can seduce a woman as quickly as Harlan.”
It would seem no easy task conveying the essence of a bigger-than-life figure like Ellison in a 96-minute film. But Nelson, producer of Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man,” makes it look easy.
Not rated (mild profanity). At Film Forum, Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, through Tuesday.