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"What She Said" (Documentary on Pauline Kael) And "Psycho"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Amazon is screening a documentary on Pauline Kael from 2018 called "What She Said." Kael was most famously the film critic for the New Yorker for the 70's and the 80's(with a little bit of the 60s and the 90's on each side; she retired in 1991.)

It is a companion piece(based on?) a biography of Kael from 2011, and the book and the film cover the same ground. The movie has an advantage: it can put clips from great movies on the screen the second that Kael or somebody else speaks about them. We do get some clips of Kael on TV being interviewed, too, which helps "sort out the clips." And Sarah Jessica Parker reads many of Kael's film reviews -- speaking lines that I , personally, know by heart.

Its been said that, modernly, the only truly famous critics were Roger Ebert(sometimes with Siskel in tow, but also alone) and Pauline Kael. Ebert got his TV show, but Kael got not only The New Yorker, but PAGES to write her reviews. As one of the interviewees says in this doc, "its like she was writing short stories, or sonnets." More like short stories. I'm reminded that reviews in Time and Newsweek of the Time were lucky to go for five paragraphs(like their 1972 Frenzy reviews.) Kael could write about 80 paragraphs. (Kael said that was the main reason she was so famous; how long her reviews were; an enemy said they were overlong and ruined the effect of criticism. I tend to go with Kael: long was good.)

A thing to remember about Pauline Kael is that she really didn't write much about Hitchcock. I know, I read a lot of her work. She was only writing for The New Yorker from Topaz through Family Plot.

She didn't give "Topaz" a full review -- she just wrote OF it in another review, and wrote: "Topaz is just the same damn spy story Hitchcock has been making since World War II." So there.

"Frenzy" escaped Kael's wrath because she only reviewed movies for The New Yorker half the year --September 15 through March 15 -- so her "alternate" , Penelope Gilliatt, a Britisher, I believe, wrote the "Frenzy" rave (I even remember the title: "A Pull In? What's a Pull In?") Gilliatt also wrote the Family Plot review --I seem to remember it was a good one...because I remember the BAD ones.

In the documentary , a clip of the late Robert Evans shows him saying "Pauline Kael wanted to see The Great Gatsby before March 15, but I wouldn't let her -- I didn't want her to review it."

With Kael unable to review many Hitchcock's first run, she only barely touched on Hitchcock's earlier(greater?) works. I remember snippets, and one is a surprise for folks who thought that Kael hated Hitchcock:

It goes like this(for a one paragraph revival summary of Strangers on a Train): "A good case could be made for Alfred Hitchcock as the greatest entertainer of the first half of the twentieth century. My favorite of his is this one."

You see? Kael did NOT hate Hitchcock. Or did she?

Early in her career(and before the New Yorker gig), Kael elected to take on fellow critic Andrew Sarris and to attack his Americanization of the French "auteur theory" . The late Harris's wife, fellow film critic Molly Haskell(then and now, a looker as film critics go) says on this documentary "Kael attacked my husband in a very personal, almost slanderous way." And since Sarris put Hitchcock at the top of his auteur list(with a few other directors, in the Pantheon), Kael wrote "the stink of a skunk can be just as auteuristic as the smell of a rose" and hit Hitchcock as a director "who kept repeating himself until it just didn't matter anymore."

As Sarah Jessica Parker reads those words, we get comparative shots of The Man Who Knew Too Much Albert Hall scene(both from '34 and '56 -- C'MON, that's cheating, it was a remake.) But more to the point, we get a series of strangling scenes, leading off with Uncle Charlie flexing his hands and then showing the stranglings(or attempts) in Man Who Knew Too Much '34, Strangers on a Train, Rope, Dial M for Murder and...Frenzy(the worst of them; we get Brenda desperately yelling "someone help meeee..." as the necktie pulls tight.)

But really...that's like FIVE stranglings out of 53 movies, and Hitchcock saw strangling as the most "intimate" means of murder. Your weapons are your hands -- perhaps aided by a scarf or a necktie.

"Psycho" enters the Kael documentary suddenly and not because it is being talked about on screen. Rather, Parker reads Kael writing about "hidden conflicts surfacing in rage" -- and we get clips of Norman at the swamp watching Marion's car sink; then Liz and Dick arguing in Virginia Woolf, then Vera Miles screaming in the fruit cellar, then SLIM PICKENS yodeling as he rides the bomb in Dr.Strangelove...hey, the clips are great but one wonders: what's going on here?(And I say: something good -- these clips are NOT being used in the usual way.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Later, and equally out of nowhere, we get a clip of William Peter Blatty -- author of both the novel and the screenplay of The Exorcist(1973) on the Johnny Carson Show, telling Johnny: "Pauline Kael needs an enema." She panned The Exorcist("The biggest advertisement for the Catholic Church since Going My Way") and Blatty gives it back to her here. Blatty rages a bit more then says: "I mean what can you say about a critic who said that Psycho was PLAYFUL?"

...and then we cut to Norman, in the cell, looking out at us. Huh?

One of my problems with The Exorcist is that I always felt its director William Freidkin and its writer William Peter Blatty(hey, "The Two Willams") were, at heart, very mean, arrogant, and angry men...no fun to be with. Blatty even LOOKS scary on this Johnny Carson appearance. But I guess he was defending Psycho against Pauline Kael -- and linking HIS horror epic(The Exorcist) to it.

I don't recall Kael writing about Psycho being playful. I do remember her writing about it in some other review, and noting(paraphrased) "It scared me and it disgusted me because in the shower scene, I felt that Hitchcock had some sort of gleeful identification with the killer." So maybe William Peter Blatty mixed up "gleeful" with "playful." Hitchcock got the same rap("Identifies with the killer") from David Thomson about Frenzy. I think the answer is NO -- Hitch doesn't LIKE these killers...he likes using them to scare the hell out of us.

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Lots and lots of clips thread through this Kael piece -- and some talking head inteviews (QT is very "QT" during his -- overemotional and rather incoherent...and its all about HIM.)

The nudity in the Frenzy rape-murder is intercut with clips from "Last Tango in Paris" -- which Kael went nuts over -- in a section on Kael's approach to sex and violence in the 70's. An interesting reminder that Hitchcock WAS keeping up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

About that "Last Tango in Paris" thing. Those of us who have read the books ON Kael know that she has a rather sequential "greatest hits" catalog of historic reviews -- they are her "acheivements" and they are both read from (by Sarah Parker) and discussed(and argued about) by some talking heads.

In order:

Her first film review of note was about "Hud" (1963) with Paul Newman.

She was hired at McCall's magazine, but her vitriol-filled screed AGAINST The Sound of Music(1965) got her fired(and we see some out of context, sickly sweet clips from The Sound of Music -- a mega-hit which I personally liked -- making the case FOR Kael.)

Her most HISTORIC review was a very long one in favor of Bonnie and Clyde(1967). That film was famously panned by New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther(now too old in mind and writing style, and "retired" because of it); the Kael review helped save the movie for immediate re-release(as a hit), and get Kael her New Yorker gig.

Side-bar: Bonnie and Clyde star Warren Beatty and others said that a bad review in the New York Times was the worst thing you could get -- it was simply too influential a paper.

To which I say, two years after Bosley Crowther panned "Bonnie and Clyde," his replacement Vincent Canby lauded Topaz as "Hitchcock at His Best -- One of 1969's Ten Best Films." So how come Topaz isn't more famous? I thought the New York Times was a big deal?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

On to Kael. Once she was ensconced with her super-long reviews at the New Yorker, she praised The Godfather and Cabaret with great readable prose, and she wrote her NEXT historic review:

Last Tango In Paris. A famously X-rated art film with some sex scenes(Marlon Brando was far less nude than his younger female partner; but he DID participate). Kael saw its opening as "the greatest cultural event" since some play in the early 1900's, and her entire review became a two-page ad for the movie in New York and Los Angeles.

I think critics can get hammered for their raves as well as their pans, and here, Camille Paglia attacks Last Tango as "an awful film..unerotic" and can't understand why Kael went gaga for it.

Kael also gets roasted a bit for her love of Brian DePalma's "The Fury." Kael loved almost ALL of DePalma's stuff(more than she cared for Hitchocck evidently) and she wrote of the wild finale of "The Fury"(bad guy John Cassavetes body shakes and percolates and finally explodes into a hundred bloody pieces and a flying head) as an ending that had "Welles, Peckinpah, Spielberg and (others)" bent over and laughing." I remember at the time other critics attacking Kael for that review and saying that "Welles, Peckinpah, Spielberg and others" were laughing at the review.

For this Kael documentary gets into that, too. Many in Hollywood liked Kael's work, but many more hated it...and hated her. With a vengeance. She eventually was too scared to go to public screenings to avoid being insulted by movie people. And OTHER CRITICS started to hate her. Though some defended her. Not to mention, she got garden variety hate mail and death threats from the general public. (Clint Eastwood had a Kael-lookalike-movie critic get knifed to death in Dirty Harry V -- Kael HATED Eastwood and his movies.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The documentary picks a couple of other Kael critical misfires - she got to review "Nashville" in rough cut form and declare it a masterpiece(critics said: "should a movie be considered final for criticism in rough cut?"(and, how come WE didn't get to see it.)

I've read the Kael "Nashville" review and what was funny was how she wrote: "This will be the blockbuster of the summer." Ah, no, Pauline. Jaws would be. (She could be out of touch.)

Pretty late in her career, Kael panned a Holocaust documentary called "Shoah," and I guess that was her last big mistake. She eventually took ill, retired, got reclusive, eventually passed away.

Another thing covered in the film that has always fascinated me: Warren Beatty -- evidently stung by Kael's bad review of "Heaven Can Wait" -- verbally seduced her to quit her critic job and come to Hollywood to work on movies "for real." But Beatty set Kael up -- she wasn't to write movies, or direct them, she had to try to produce them -- and to keep asking Monster Paramount Executive Don Simpson(soon to die from drugs) for green lights for her projects, and he kept turning her down. ("It was like being given a big cake and a knife," Simpson said of his control over making sure Kael didn't get anything made.) Kael did a little something on "The Elephant Man," but that's it. She slunk back to her New Yorker job as "damaged goods." Beatty got his revenge.

"What She Said" is a fun documentary to watch. As always for movie fans like me, the sheer flow of clilps from "the great movies of our lives"(pretty much from the 50's on , with Kael) are always a treat, and here they are used in conjunction with a fine study of what film criticism once meant -- how important it ONCE was. Kael in person being interviewed is interesting , too -- just arrogant enough to dislike, just insightful enough to value.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Final bits:

At some social gathering, Kael tore into director David Lean(in front of other people, including other DIRECTORS , like John Boorman) to tell him how lousy his recent "Ryan's Daughter" was, and how much she hated Lawrence of Arabia.

Lean didn't make another movie for over a decade -- evidently he was that hurt by Kael insulting him.

And we get Jerry Lewis on an early 70's Dick Cavett talk show -- arrogant, imperious, somehow totally fake trying to act totally snobbish -- saying "Pauline Kael....never writes anything good about me, dirty old broad. But she's the best film critic out there, because she cares about film."

From David Lean to Jerry Lewis...Kael interacted with 'em all. Loved DePalma, and dismissed Hitchcock...or did she?("Greatest entertainer of the first half of the 20th Century.")

Worth watching...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

You see? Kael did NOT hate Hitchcock. Or did she?

I have a book of Kaels called something like '5001 Nights at the movies' which has capsule reviews of 5000+ films ranging over the history of film up to 1985. Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo aren't covered... A range of Hitch films *are* covered including Strangers which she calls Hitchcock's best US film. She also covers the poor-by-Hitchcock's-standards Sabotage (1935), calling it the best of his UK films. This is bizarre.

While I was flicking through I see she hated Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be (1942), although she does note in passing that her assessment is decidedly in the minority. I suspect that there's a case to be made that Kael was flat out the wrongest film critic who ever lived.

The thing that really rings through loudest now with Kael is her sheer opinionatedness. She doesn't seem nearly as committed to understanding films or being right about particular films as she is to her own expression and performance of opinionatedness (with 'the more surprising or contrarian the better' as her pole star). Intentionally or not she really did in practice commit to the weird idea of film criticism as its own expressive artform. It actually seems a little tragic to me now, as if QT had decided at an early age not to try to write screenplays and to direct but instead to delve ever deeper into the expressive possibilities of a new art form: being a loudmouth video-store clerk/recommender.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

You see? Kael did NOT hate Hitchcock. Or did she?
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I have a book of Kaels called something like '5001 Nights at the movies' which has capsule reviews of 5000+ films ranging over the history of film up to 1985. Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo aren't covered... A range of Hitch films *are* covered including Strangers which she calls Hitchcock's best US film. She also covers the poor-by-Hitchcock's-standards Sabotage (1935), calling it the best of his UK films. This is bizarre.

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Given that I used Hitchcock as my "gateway to movie criticism in general," I did notice that Kael didn't have much(anything?) to say about any number of the "great later Hitchcocks"" -- Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, nada. My slighty photographic memory about reviews(particularly Hitchocck reviews) brought forth my memory of Kael calling Topaz "the same old spy story" or of Hitchocck "identifying with the killer" in Psycho. I DO remember that short piece on Strangers on a Train.

I'm reminded that for any critic -- or PERSON, for that matter -- they may have a favorite film from a director that doesn't "match the norm." David Mamet wrote that his favorite Hitchocck was Shadow of a Doubt, for instance(hey, Hitch said it was HIS). And here is Kael with Strangers on a Train. I might add that rarely is the "favorite" Hitchcock NOT from his acknowledged Top Ten. Note in passing, Mamet is drawn to SOAD because it is a "disguised study of abuse" -- which doesn't quite seem right to me. Young Charlie and her mother clearly have feelings FOR Uncle Charlie, but I'm not sure the romance runs in the opposite direction FROM that psychopath. Anyway...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'm where I could go find one of my books on Hitchcock, and I located a 1973 volume called "Focus on Hitchcock," which collected critical writings on Hitchcock. And there are short Kael pieces on 3 Hitchcock films -- The 39 Steps, Spellbound, and Strangers on a Train. And here is the ACTUAL quote:

"A pretty good case could be made for Alfred Hitchcock as the master entertainer of the movie medium; from the 30s to the 60s; his films have been a source of perverse pleasure."

So actually, Kael there is praising Hitch as THE master entertainer of the movie medium, and adding the years as an afterthought. I guess we can take this as indicating Kael was a fan.

Correspondingly, I think when Kael elected to "take on Andrew Sarris" in the sixties, she had to go after Hitchcock's "auteurism" as repetition; Hitch had to get caught in the crossfire. (I seem to remember this throwaway Kael quote somewhere, too: "If Hitchcock is a master, he is a master of a minor kingdom" -- this might track with Kael's feeling that EVEN IF Hitch was "the master entertainer" -- there are more high falultin' acheivements to be saluted by other directors. I guess.

Indeed, in GENERAL , Hitchcock found himself almost equally vilified by some critics who were in fights with the OTHER critics who had championed Hitch -- he became a "False God" who must be torn down. Stanley Kauffman(The New Republic) and Dwight MacDonald(The New Yorker) led the charge. But they should not have messed with Francois Truffaut, who loved Hitch personally and made sure, in the 70's , to write "Stanley Kauffman and his ilk have now clearly lost their battle against Hitch." Which was true -- Hitchcock only got MORE popular after his death, and as Vertigo hit Number One on the Sight and Sound list, the five lost Hitchcocks were re-released ("The best movie of 1983 is Rear Window" wrote one wag), and Psycho became a mega-franchise.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

While I was flicking through I see she hated Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be (1942), although she does note in passing that her assessment is decidedly in the minority.

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Honest of her. Hey, its how I feel about The French Connection...

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I suspect that there's a case to be made that Kael was flat out the wrongest film critic who ever lived.

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Ha. And for PAGES. Its funny , I guess. A critic is probably in more danger when they RAVE about a movie than when they pan it. Kael declaration of "Last Tango in Paris" as a landmark historical event, and of Nashville as a coming summer blockbuster, and of The Fury as some sort of gonzo work of art...came back to haunt her, as other critics started to write parodies of her work and to attack her sensibility.

(Note in passing: I have seen Last Tango, and it is erotic enough...but I think the whole thing founders on letting Brando do some improv speechmaking about his CHARACTER's childhood that is really Brando talking about his OWN childhood(in Nebraska; an unhappy one.) Brando's inarticulate self-indulgence in that passage of "Last Tango" is a reminder of the limitations of some of our actors when they aren't acting. He comes off as kinda dumb.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The thing that really rings through loudest now with Kael is her sheer opinionatedness. She doesn't seem nearly as committed to understanding films or being right about particular films as she is to her own expression and performance of opinionatedness (with 'the more surprising or contrarian the better' as her pole star).

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Yeah...she liked to pick fights. She had a career-long hatred of Clint Eastwood; Eastwood eventually responded that he felt it was like "bigotry" -- personal hatred. (Me, I think Eastwood was a very big star who made some very bad, cheapjack movies that insulted even his fans -- but he also made some good ones and aged well.) As I noted, Eastwood had a "Kael clone" butchered in Dirty Harry V, and said elsewhere, "here was this dumpy, lonely, poorly paid woman out to make her reputation attacking my success." Ouch.

Truth be told, as the film points out and the book made clear, Kael pretty much gave up on men(and didn't take up women) early in her life, and was pretty much a celibate loner for her last decades. Which is OK, I know a few of those, both sexes. Life sort of cuts off your options as you get older. Kael did have a daughter and rather "chained" that daughter to her for her lifetime. The daughter appears in this documenatary, and seems soft spoken and intelligent.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Intentionally or not she really did in practice commit to the weird idea of film criticism as its own expressive artform.

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I'm rather OK with that, myself. I rarely felt the need to agree or disagree with a critic on their view of a movie. Hell, many of my "guilty pleasure" favorites(Capricorn One, Used Cars) aren't critics movies anyway(hey, wait, Kael LIKED Used Cars.) What I am drawn to is the writing itself -- the style, the wit, the command. (I always remembered fTime critic Jay Cocks' take on Frenzy: "It is not at the level of his greatest work, but it is smooth and shrewd and dexterous..." elegant.)

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It actually seems a little tragic to me now, as if QT had decided at an early age not to try to write screenplays and to direct but instead to delve ever deeper into the expressive possibilities of a new art form: being a loudmouth video-store clerk/recommender.

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"Loudmouth video-store clerk/recommender." Hah. Well that's some of us(me included, but not you) around here and -- well, hey, its a living. Someone recently wrote that QT is "Mike TeeVee" from Willy Wonka..totally immersed in having seen EVERYTHING (his spate of references to 50's/60's Western TV series shows this.) I take pride in the fact that QT seems to know 40 movies for every 10 that I know...I can't keep up. Nor would I want to. And he watched a ton of TV series like Gunsmoke and The Virginian - I've never seen an episode of The Virginian in my entire life.

Irony: I think that Pauline Kael retired in 1991, right before QT burst on the scene with Reservoir Dogs. But if memory serves, Kael would do interviews on new movies on through the 90's; I think she may have said something about him somewhere, maybe around Pulp Fiction. Kael DID champion two of QT's muses: Scorsese and DePalma -- so she may have helped influence HIM.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think in the final analysis, Pauline Kael got and stayed famous because she wrote those long reviews, did so in New York City, where she would end up on the Cavett show and PBS episodes and -- importantly -- because she "tagged along" during that renowned "70's Golden Era" to chronicle it. She shrewdly "made friends" with Altman, Peckinpah and Woody Allen -- and they used her a little bit in return.

In the Kael book, there is a letter from Peckinpah to Kael where he apologizes for The Getaway, but writes "it is doing what it was supposed to do...gross 20 million domestic." Peckinpah lost the chance to direct Deliverance, and tells Kael about the movie that was made "I can't believe such an s--ty movie got all those awards." Hah.

And so forth and so on. Pauline Kael made some sort of name for herself, and now she's got a documentary to prove it...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

In the Kael book, there is a letter from Peckinpah to Kael where he apologizes for The Getaway, but writes "it is doing what it was supposed to do...gross 20 million domestic." Peckinpah lost the chance to direct Deliverance, and tells Kael about the movie that was made "I can't believe such an s--ty movie got all those awards." Hah.

The Getaway wasn't one of Peckinpah's great big 'statement' movies but it *is* a hell of lot of fun with really kinetic action sequences and cool characters its fun to hang with - no apologies necessary in my view.

And then Peckinpah just has to talk s*** about Deliverance. It's true, a lot of film-makers are hyper-opinionated just the way Kael is. I find such mouthing off easier to take it from film-makers than I do from a critic like Kael. I guess that I want a little more 'critical distance' than Kael is prepared to offer.

I was involved in music - in a band - in my late teens, and I remember the stress involved in feeling like your band constantly had to explain to itself why your particular style of music was the best and everything else that was around was horrible (because if you couldn't say, e.g., what was wrong with metal or Lionel Ritchie or country or...then maybe you should make one of *those* songs or records). The whole industry was very competitive and part of that competition required finding your own path largely by eliminating almost all others. When I dropped out of the music biz (just before I turned 20!) I remember the relief I felt that now I could listen to and like whatever I wanted, play whatever I wanted.

Modern fan-boy/fan-girl culture seems to me to owe something to Kael. These people are not 'in the biz' but carry on as if they are! That's how Kael was.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I think that lots of people who were influenced by Kael have struck better balances overall than her. Yes, like Kael they're very open with their fan-like enthusiasms but they also strive for more documentarian-like distance at times, and often explicitly try to correct for/make allowance for their own tastes. Kael claimed she never saw films twice whereas Ebert constantly revisited and re-reviewed films, did a host of commentary tracks, etc.. Richard Schickel, Mark Kermode, Mark Cousins, etc. have all made lots of documentaries.

And, of course, the path from critic to writer or film-maker remains open to those with talent and ambition: Schrader and Bogdanovich and Gillian Flynn happened in the US, as did Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer in France.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Getaway wasn't one of Peckinpah's great big 'statement' movies but it *is* a hell of lot of fun with really kinetic action sequences and cool characters its fun to hang with - no apologies necessary in my view.

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Between Hitchcock and QT, there was Peckinpah. I was a BIG fan, and somehow I managed in my teen years to see all his R-rated movies (Straw Dogs, wow) The Wild Bunch was the "Psycho of Westerns"(blood was its selling point, but it was a great film in other ways) and it just blew me away.

I recall thinking -- even in my callow teen years -- that The Getaway seemed a bit cheap and slapdash for Peckinpah, after the greatness of The Wild Bunch (a Polaroid where Peckinpah had once made a daguerreotype), but it has grown on me. Steve McQueen is my favorite star of the 60's and 70s, and he doesn't disappoint in The Getaway. The film's big risk (probably impossible today) is showing him as a handsome man who loves his pretty woman(Ali MacGraw) but is not above slapping her(for sleeping with a crime boss to get McQueen out of prison) and later, threatening her over "losing" the cash from a robbery to a cheap train thief(whom McQueen beats into unconsciousness while retrieving the money.) In short...McQueen is playing a REAL criminal type...his love is tempered by his temper. He's a badass.

But Ali McGraw can't act. And The Getaway will always suffer from that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Keep in mind that McQueen worked TWICE for Peckinpah in 1972. First, in the summer, they brought us "Junior Bonner" -- famously without any bloodshed or killings at all(its a sweet rodeo movie) and famously not a hit. THEN , at Xmas, came McQueen and Peckinpah with the bang-bang of The Getaway...and box office. Me? I was in Steve McQueen heaven that year.

There was a critic named William Pechter who wrote a rave review of the "wonderful" Junior Bonner...and then wrote a pan of "The Getaway"("I just hope that Sam Peckinpah understands what a whore he has become with The Getaway.") Ah...critics. I guess Peckinpah took Pechter too seriously, and ended up apologizing to Kael.

Peckinpah made a so-so action movie called "The KIller Elite' in 1975, which ends with its hero(James Caan) sailing away to sea on a small boat. Kael wrote of that final shot that it represented "Peckinpah sailing away from Hollywood." She was about right. He didn't make many more movies after that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And then Peckinpah just has to talk s*** about Deliverance.

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Ha. Yeah, reading that letter (in a book about Kael) was funny. The idea that directors get mad about the movies they DON'T get to make.

I recently bought a book about a producer named Irwin Winkler, and he defends two of his Best Picture LOSSES by..dissing the winners. To wit:

"Raging Bull was beaten by a movie called Ordinary People...which was."

"The Right Stuff was beaten by Terms of Endearment, which wasn't very good." I disagree on THAT one -- I like Terms of Endearment very much and a lot more than the boring Right Stuff -- but...hey, in Hollywood you fight for your own.

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It's true, a lot of film-makers are hyper-opinionated just the way Kael is.

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Hitchcock could be. Near the end, I'm afraid he gave some "old man" interviews railing against the New Hollywood:

"In Easy Rider, they say they are searching for America. All they're searching for was rednecks in the South."

"The rich boy/poor girl thing in Love Story is practically Victorian."

"If I see one more car bounce off a hill in San Francisco, I'll scream." (It was done more than in Bullitt?")

And there is(was?) a great piece of film where Hitchcock get visibly angry when an interviewer asks him if Straw Dogs influenced Frenzy. Hitchcock cuts him right off: "But...but I NEVER make a movie because of someone else's movie. NEVER." Its real h uman anger...outrage. A great clip of Hitchcock's ego.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I find such mouthing off easier to take it from film-makers than I do from a critic like Kael.

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One letter read out loud in the Kael film is from director George Roy Hill, responding to a specific complaint of Kael's about "Butch Cassidy etc."

Hill's letter opens: "Listen you miserable b---th."

That got Kael's attention. Reportedly, she LOVED that she so upset Hill (more on that momentarily.)

Hill was mad that Kael was "all wrong" about horses running sounding "like they were done on the soundstage." Hill raged that Kael had no technical knowledge of how films were made, so shouldn't be guessing in her reviews. (Hill recoreded the horses on location.)

Filmmakers invariably hold most critics in contempt because , indeed, critics don't know anything about how films are actually MADE. (I know I don't -- its mainly reading and a little guessing on my part.) But that's a little unfair. In the final analysis, it really doesn't matter HOW the film was made..what matters is how the film AFFECTS the viewer. WE get that power as audience members -- not George Roy Hill. Critics are "somewhere in between" -- they aren't filmmakers and often, they don't share "popular taste." Its a hard row to hoe.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

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I guess that I want a little more 'critical distance' than Kael is prepared to offer.

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Yes, well that was part of her fame. "The celebrity reviewer."

Its funny. I've looked at the 1960 Time review of Psycho and the 1960 Newsweek review of Psycho -- and neither one was SIGNED. They're anonymous! That seems incredible now -- readers generally want someone to identify with. (12 years later, Jay Cocks wrote the Time Frenzy review and Paul Zimmerman wrote the Newsweek Frenzy review -- both men would end up writing scripts for Scorsese.)

Anyway, Pauline Kael took things to new personalized heights. There was the New York thing, and the "length of reviews" thing..and also likely the woman thing, in a new feminist age.

But back to this "listen , you miserable b---th" thing.) A coupla of times in the Kael film, she is asked is she has fans who were inspired by her work, and she goes the other way: "Actually I have more people who hate me. Death threats." And she says it with a certain glee. She said she LOVED how angry George Roy Hill got with her.

Which brings us to Hitchcock. I think we can say he was a student of abnormal psychology. He had a set of books on English serial killers that he lent to Barry Foster to help him play Rusk in Frenzy, for instance. And with this knowledge, Hitchcock once opined that he believed film critics "are people who ENJOY being hated. It turns them on." Kind of a masochism thing, I would suppose. Well, Kael's comments would suggest some truth to that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Modern fan-boy/fan-girl culture seems to me to owe something to Kael. These people are not 'in the biz' but carry on as if they are! That's how Kael was.

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Well, as producer Mike Medavoy and others have said: "Everybody's second business is the movie business." Idea being: all of us vicariously live in the movie business because its so much more interesting that what WE are doing. We speculate about star careers, director careers, producer careers. We watch deals come together and celebrate them long before we actually see the movie (Hey! QT's got Leo AND Brad AND Pacino for his new movie!)

So I don't particularly see anything WRONG in extrapolating ourselves into the film world as fans (and this: that comment about how "everybody's second business is the movie business " doesn't seem to extend to SPORTS. Movies are more universal and sex neutral, I suppose.)

So many biographies about movie stars and movie directors end up being about their "list of movies" and how, amidst any number of "regular" movies that did so-so business (I Confess for Hitchcock, The Secret War of Harry Frigg for Paul Newman), eventually they hit on something really big in their careers(Psycho for HItchcock, Butch Cassidy for Newman) and BOOM..suddenly their career got a rocket boost, a classic...and big money. Its fun reading about these things, fun watching the big hits come...and perhaps a bit nice and nasty watching when the flops come, too(and then there was Torn Curtain, for Hitchcock AND Newman.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think that lots of people who were influenced by Kael have struck better balances overall than her.

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That said...remember "The Paulettes"? Evidently this was a cadre of new, young critics, who tended to think like her and write like her. She RAN some of them -- got them jobs as critics on newspapers with her references, withdrew the references if they didn't agree with her on film.

In this documentary, one of them -- David Edelstein -- says "I'm not a Paulette...I'm a Paulinista!" Yeah right.

---Yes, like Kael they're very open with their fan-like enthusiasms but they also strive for more documentarian-like distance at times, and often explicitly try to correct for/make allowance for their own tastes.

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A new breed. You know, I think maybe the age of "internet commenting" has tempered critics. Yes, they used to get private letters, but now they get "criticized themselves" right there in the comments section, for all to see.

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Kael claimed she never saw films twice

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Strikes me as an insane practice...likely not real. But hell, movies were meant to BE re-visited, savored, enjoyed again...studied for contrast.

Here's a recent one for me: I liked Fincher's "Zodiac" very much years ago when I saw it, but I was frustrated at the end because the supposed "definite suspect" was not the killer, after all.

I saw "Zodiac" again last week and realized, no, wait, the suspect IS identified as probably the killer! What's suggested is that the experts were WRONG about him not being the one.

Two viewings over ten years apart -- I FINALLY get "Zodiac."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

whereas Ebert constantly revisited and re-reviewed films, did a host of commentary tracks, etc.. Richard Schickel, Mark Kermode, Mark Cousins, etc. have all made lots of documentaries.

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To my mind, whether its critics or "just plain people"(like here)...the discussion and contemplation of a film after seeing it is part of the joy of the movie itself.

No greater example than Psycho..all sorts of people have been writing about that movie for decades now. A discussion of "the movie AS a movie," and of "the movie as an EVENT" and as "a movie as a part of history." All worthy.

There is also the interest of reading reviews without seeing the movie and starting to picture the movie in your head BEFORE seeing it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I was involved in music - in a band - in my late teens, and I remember the stress involved in feeling like your band constantly had to explain to itself why your particular style of music was the best and everything else that was around was horrible (because if you couldn't say, e.g., what was wrong with metal or Lionel Ritchie or country or...then maybe you should make one of *those* songs or records).

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Interesting...and a salute to your talent,swanstep. Playing an instrument is something I could never do.

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The whole industry was very competitive and part of that competition required finding your own path largely by eliminating almost all others.

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Well, we see that in the movie business, too, don't we. Irwin Winkler talking up "Raging Bull" and "The Right Stuff" by talking DOWN Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment. When all four are fine films in different ways...

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When I dropped out of the music biz (just before I turned 20!)

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There's a line given to dying Jason Robard in "Magnolia" -- "They say life is too short...but I say its too LONG...its really LONG." Long enough to drop out of a career just before 20 and to leave several more lifetimes and careers in the decades to come.

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I remember the relief I felt that now I could listen to and like whatever I wanted, play whatever I wanted.

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Sometimes something STOPPING can be the real joy...