John Harkness’ funeral is this afternoon. I’ve been asked to be one of the speakers, and I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to say. I suspect everyone else is feeling the same.

There’ve been some very nice comments about him posted on NOW’s page, below Michael Hollett’s eulogy-slash-rememberance essay; there’ve been some less-than-nice ones, as well. That’s cool; John was always willing to defend anything he wrote, so long as his accuser didn’t try to take anything out of context, or misrepresent the sentiment.

That happens a lot, to all of us; you learn to keep one ear on the argument, to make sure the playing field remains level. I think I screwed up the metaphor there, but you get the picture.

Anyway. My first impulse was to approach this the way John would have — to be frank and honest and just the right side of blunt, the better to do justice to my subject. But that won’t work.

I can’t do it the way he did, because no one else could do what he did. And here we are.

On a related note, John filed his Top Ten Films of 2007 for NOW’s year-end issue before he died, and — as always — it’s worth a read. Even if he did fall for “Inland Empire”.