Harlan Ellison and Patton Oswalt

At the second Cinefamily Harlan Ellison event, January 19, Patton Oswalt crashed the interview and took the mike from Josh Olson. An 8-minute video clip is here. (And a much better still of the pair at work is here — one that resists ordinary URL image quoting.)

Oswalt is a veteran comedian, storyteller and actor, who is also a noted writer. He paid tribute to Harlan Ellison’s influence in ”The Book That Changed My Life” for GQ. Oswalt’s encounter with Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog” revealed previously unsuspected possibilities:  

Ellison didn’t change my life so much as he changed my reading habits, revealing a dozen branching paths and side alleys where before there seemed to be an orderly road to adulthood. He brought rawness and confusion and awe and real terror, and I’m forever indebted.

Ellison appreciates Oswalt, too, and wrote this blurb for Oswalt’s 2011 book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland:

I have impeccable taste, and I only converse with the following three: God, the Devil, and Patton Oswalt. All three have opened for me. This book is a funny tragedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll convert to Pattonism. If you do not love this book, remember, I know where you live in your mother’s basement.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]