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OT: Hollywood Reporter: Tarantino Readies "Final Movie": "The Movie Critic"


https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/quentin-tarantino-sets-the-movie-critic-final-movie-1235351260/

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Could this be real? The Hollywood Reporter is the "real deal" in Hollywood trade papers.

Interesting if so.

QT's been promising only one more movie (a "10th" though the count is always a bit off getting there) for some time now.

I was betting that he would wait years and years and years(ala Stanley Kubrick's 12 between Full Metal Jacket and his unintentional final film Eyes Wide Shut; because: died) for that "final one."

But says here "a script (ready?completed?) for filming in the fall of 2023.

The last QT movie was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood back in 2019...soon to be four years ago; looks like The Movie Critic would be five years from that one.

If this is real, one of my theories(advanced in the article) is that EVERYBODY might just show up to be in this one. All the "alive" past QT players (Sam Jackson, John Travolta , Uma Thurman, Pam Grier, Chris Waltz -- maybe Leo and Brad) and perhaps every "new" actor who wants in.

A movie called "The Movie Critic" could have lots and lots of Hollywood cameos ala Altman's The Player.

Let the speculation begin. QT -- like Hitchcock -- is nothing if not a great showman who often knew how to get the audience excited about "the next movie" a year before it came out, often while it was still filming.

Not sidebar: The article suggests the movie, set in 1979, might be based on Pauline Kael's misadventure in Hollywood from around that year.

I"ve always felt that was perhaps the biggest personal miscalculation any "intelligent" film critic ever made.

The basics: Warren Beatty -- evidently a bit stung by a dismissive Kael review of Heaven Can Wait(1978) lured Kael from NYC to Hollywood to "take a real movie studio job" at Paramount. Beatty's argument: "Why criticize a movie after its done? Why not participate in the process earlier on, in the writing and making of a film?"

It was a bad bet for Kael. She was assigned one of those powerless jobs where you keep pitching projects to movie execs -- who keep saying "No thanks." Kael had no power as a writer or director or even as a REAL producer. And evidently evil studio exec Don Simpson(in h is pre Simpson-Bruckheimer days) took delight in continually turning down Kael's projects. She worked a bit on some movies that made it(The Elephant Man, for one) but...pretty much left Hollywood and went back to being a critic for the New Yorker in NYC. Simpson was quoted, regarding his ability to keep rejecting Kael projects, "It was like I'd been given a big delicious cake and a knife to cut the pieces with."

The article suggests that QT is a Kael fan -- so perhaps she will get glorified in this one -- maybe succeed in switching history around ala OATIH or Inglorious Basterds.

QT will be 60 or 61 when this last one comes out -- roughly how old Hitchcock was when he made Psycho. As we know, Hitch's career was problematic after that -- less The Birds and Frenzy and Marnie, so maybe not?

By making his "final movie" sooner rather than later, QT leaves the door open for all sorts of other work -- streaming series, novels, more non-fiction -- and might just come back AFTER the final movie.

Just like Frank Sinatra after that final concert...

PS. How about Cate Blanchett for Pauline Kael? She's in EVERYTHING now. Meryl Streep's been left behind...

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PS. How about Cate Blanchett for Pauline Kael?
Kael was tiny (5' 0") so there's that. I'd pick Jennifer Jason Leigh (Daisy Domergue) out of QT's regulars to play her or someone like her. Kael fancied herself as a 1940s bad-ass Barbara Stanwyck babe and *we know* JJL can do that and has walked in those shoes.

That said, this would likely be a career-topping or career-defining role for whoever gets it, so absolutely *everyone* who fits the role's basic parameters will audition or otherwise try to get this role.

I wonder whether QT will do *a lot* of genre-mixing, thereby taking things well out of any 'Kael biopic' territory. QT has a soft-spot for things like Dennis Christopher's infamous flop after he broke out in Breaking Away, Fade to Black, and for the sleaziness of late '70s, early '80s movies generally. E.g., maybe The Kael-figure (uber-critic called to Hollywood to help make better movies) in QT's story sleazes it up in LA and becomes a serial killer while she's there.

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Kael was tiny (5' 0") so there's that.

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Cate Blanchett is not tiny? Well, she's such a master thespian I suppose she can PLAY tiny.

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I'd pick Jennifer Jason Leigh (Daisy Domergue) out of QT's regulars to play her or someone like her.

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Good choice. Note that QT seems to be looking at a female lead this time (ala Jackie Brown and Kill Bill) after the Buddy Boys of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

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Kael fancied herself as a 1940s bad-ass Barbara Stanwyck babe and *we know* JJL can do that and has walked in those shoes.

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Yep. And there's a fair amount of TV footage of Pauline Kael - she was a darling on the Dick Cavett show -- to "get her down" if an impression is what the actress is after.

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That said, this would likely be a career-topping or career-defining role for whoever gets it, so absolutely *everyone* who fits the role's basic parameters will audition or otherwise try to get this role.

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Yep. As the article notes, first of all STUDIOS will compete madly to get the project(as they did for OATIH after Weinstein exited) and actors will likely line up. This could be fun -- the pre-production, the casting, the production, the hype. I love it. "One last time."

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I wonder whether QT will do *a lot* of genre-mixing, thereby taking things well out of any 'Kael biopic' territory.

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Well, we saw that his ostensible "Manson Murders" film went to a lot of other places (like Leo on the Lancer set) so, yeah...anything goes.

I feel that this Kael-based subject matter -- FITS QT's last two books -- the novelization of OATIH and the non-fiction one just out. Simply put: QT has been doing a "deep dive" on movie history, critics, and movies (especially of the 70's -- here we get a 70's film after one from the late 60s.)

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QT has a soft-spot for things like Dennis Christopher's infamous flop after he broke out in Breaking Away, Fade to Black,

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He liked that? Keep in mind that Dennis Christopher was sold in Fade to Back somewhat as a "new Anthony Perkins" (going for horror after the sweet guy he played in the fine Breaking Away.)

I didn't much like that movie at all. Its so far back I can hardly remember it but then again, MY favorite movie of 1980 -- Used Cars -- I pretty much know scene by scene. That's what favorite movies do for you.

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and for the sleaziness of late '70s, early '80s movies generally. E.g., maybe The Kael-figure (uber-critic called to Hollywood to help make better movies) in QT's story sleazes it up in LA and becomes a serial killer while she's there.

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Nifty conjecture. This is PART of how QT's teasing promotions work.

I recall when QAITH was announced -- without a full plot at all revealed -- folks thought that Brad and Leo would play LA cops investigating the Manson murders.

That was wrong-- I remember my delight when I read the REAL plot: "Leo lives next to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski on Cielo Drive." I was excited just by READING that. QT , you MADMAN!

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maybe The Kael-figure (uber-critic called to Hollywood to help make better movies) in QT's story sleazes it up in LA and becomes a serial killer while she's there.

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A "reversal" on that idea.

Pauline Kael had a career-long hatred of Clint Eastwood. It was all purpose: she didn't like him as a movie star or as a director. She hit him hard for his colorless turn in Paint Your Wagon(as if "hiding in plain sight") and didn't like any of the action stuff either. (She's among those who famously called Dirty Harry "Fascist." So did Roger Ebert but I think he was just copycatting Kael.)

She retired in 1991, but still mustered up an interview in 1992 to say that no, she didn't like Unforgiven, either.

For Eastwood's part, the Hollywood ladies man/swordsman got mean. He said something like "Here's this dumpy old female critic getting no attention and write-ups unless she attacks me." I remember the word "dumpy." And Eastwood said "I see it just the same as hating someone for the color of their skin."

Eastwood went "all the way" with his final(and worst) Dirty Harry sequel, "The Dead Pool" of 1988. He had the film's serial killer slash up a female movie critic who looked a lot like Pauline Kael.

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In a different direction: I've been pondering a post for the Roger Ebert page. Because: if you go to imdb for movies from 1967 to 2013(when Roger Ebert was writing reviews) and you look up "Critic Reviews," HIS review is usually at the top of the page, and HIS review is the only "name" critic noted.

Because: evidently his estate has no trouble in making Ebert's reviews available free of charge.

And yet: I grew up on the movies of the 60's and 70s and I almost NEVER saw Roger Ebert reviews. They got no national distribution. He worked for the Chicago Sun-Times(or was it the Tribune?)

Here's who I read in the 70s:

Richard Schickel: first for the oversized Life Magazine; then for Time. His was the first review I saw for Frenzy in 1972: "The Return of Alfred the Great." That was in Life.Schickel wrote: "After flat Marnie, mechanical Torn Curtain, and diffuse Topaz, Alfred Hitchcock has made the kind of sly and savage movie that we thought he either would not or could not make." (Nice writing -- "sly and savage," "would not or could not make.")

Jay Cocks: For Time magazine. His title for the Frenzy review was: "Still the Master." But his opening sentence was rather daunting: "It is not at the level of his greatest work, but it is shrewd and smooth and dexterous, proof that anyone who makes a thriller is still an apprentice to this old master.

Paul Zimmerman for Newsweek. His title for the Frenzy review was "Return of the Master" and he gave the film the biggest boost of all: "As usual, the master has fooled us. This is one of his very best." How I clung to that review. I still ALMOST believe it. Zimmerman also offered a review blurb that ended up on the posters for Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show": "The Greatest Debut of a Director Since Orson Welles in Citizen Kane." Whoa! Talk about overkill. Plus "The Last Picture Show" was NOT Bogdo's debut. His debut was "Targets" in 1968. Oops. Zimmerman's raves for Frenzy AND Last Picture Show ended up feeling overdone. But he went on to write The King of Comedy for Scorsese.

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Richard Corliss for Time: Corliss eventually shared Time reviews with "the other Richard," Schickel. A claim for fame for Corliss was an essay for a 1973 book called "Favorite Movies." His favorite movie -- Psycho, a mere 13 years after release. He wrote of seeing the movie "five times in three days" in New Jersey. Made an impact.

Charles Champlin for the Los Angeles Times: Fine writer. Totally middlebrow. Didn't much like Frenzy( his "second stringer," Kevin Thomas wrote the good first review -- "Hitchcock's Best Movie in Years" -- but Champlin wrote a follow up article that COULD have been titled "Not so fast."

And Pauline Kael.

The New Yorker made her "split the year" with Penelope Gilliatt -- who got summer back when summer had "regular movies in it."

Thus, Penelope Gilliatt reviewed Frenzy -- another rave -- with the title "Pull In? What's a Pull In?" -- a line from the movie uttered by Mrs. Oxford. I always figured Hitch lucked out getting Gilliatt from the New Yorker on Frenzy. I expect Kael would not have been impressed.

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So...ALL those critics I read and grew up on regularly and. I never got to read Roger Ebert's stuff at all. Much. I recall the Los Angeles Times occasionally printing his essays as a "guest writer from Chicago." who I always confused with Marshall Efron of "The Great American Dream Machine" on PBS. (Roger Ebert and Marshall Efron always LOOKED alike to me and their names SOUNDED alike.)

Ebert made his mark with "that show." And with Siskel. And(above all) with the CLIPS from new movies(no YouTube then.)

Syndication made Ebert supperich. IMDB keeps him superfamous. Irony: you have to PAY to find most old Time and Kael reviews.


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I feel that this Kael-based subject matter -- FITS QT's last two books -- the novelization of OATIH and the non-fiction one just out. Simply put: QT has been doing a "deep dive" on movie history, critics, and movies (especially of the 70's -- here we get a 70's film after one from the late 60s.)

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I return to note that QT has recently surfaced for a brief interview in which he confirms that his next(last?) film "The Movie Critic" will NOT be about Pauline Kael.

One wonders how these rumors get started in the Wild West entertainment journalism of the internet.

I'm reminded that when Leo and Brad were announced for a movie "about" the Manson Murders, someone in the internet press wrote that Leo and Brad were going to play "Los Angeles policemen investigating the murders." I assume that was somebody's GUESS (what other kinds of characters could these guys be playing?)

I recall the slight anticipatory rush I got when the plot and roles WERE announced: Leo as a fading TV star who lives RIGHT NEXT DOOR to Sharon Tate on Cielo Drive, and Brad as his stunt double buddy. Suddenly I SAW the possibilities and the movie became an even bigger must see.

This article in which QT says "The Movie Critic" is not about Pauline Kael also notes that he has said that he LOVED Kael's criticism, and that "Pauline Kael was my film school." Well, she sure did write long reviews.

She also wrote a long New Yorker piece about Hollywood called "The Numbers"(based on her short brutal time there) which a studio mogul referred to as "surface, naïve and unknowing"(or something like that) in his book about the making of Heaven's Gate, "Final Cut" (what went around came around; Kael made sure to write a review about that book and to castigate the mogul for losing control of his job.)

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New question: QT has been "Mr. Ultraviolence" in every one of his movies except Jackie Brown -- and THAT one still has four killings in it.

Could "The Movie Critic" possibly be "non-violent QT?" I kind of doubt it but -- on the other hand -- OATIH was a non-violent story for most of its running time, about other things. So maybe yes...maybe no.

Someone has specified 1979 as the time of "The Movie Critic," now someone has specified 1977. A difference there -- 1977 would put us in the year of Star Wars and the sudden end of "the gritty downbeat 70s movies."

QT has got us interested, I'd say, speculating about Pauline Kael(wrong) and the like.

Like Hitchcock, QT knows showmanship and how to get us excited for his new project. (Remember his big blow-up over the script leaking to "The Hateful Eight" and how he might NOT MAKE the movie? Had us worried there for awhile...)

Let the fun continue. Its a nice diversion from the rest of the world right now.

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On the general theme of "important figures announcing new projects", Spielberg announced a few weeks ago that he was developing for HBO a 7 episode miniseries about Napoleon, The series has the cooperation of the Kubrick estate and will be based on the script and years of pre-production and research that Kubrick carried out on in the 1960s and 1970s for a Napoleon film (some of which material was recycled by Kubrick into Barry Lyndon). Here's Deadline.com's coverage of the story:
https://deadline.com/2023/02/steven-spielberg-stanley-kubricks-napoleon-7-part-series-hbo-1235266372/

Incredibly, Ridley Scott has been shooting a Napoleon epic (w/ Joaquin Phoenix as his Napoleon) for the last year or so for AppleTV+:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_(2023_film)

So after no Napoleon projects for 40+ years (after the big bombs that led Kubrick to cancel his own Napoleon) we've got two coming along almost at once including a version of Kubrick's! Bizarre, but thrilling.

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On the general theme of "important figures announcing new projects", Spielberg announced

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Hmm..Spielberg is certainly historic in importance, and in competition at the Oscars the other night (no wins; which was satisfying to me, I was especially rooting AGAINST Judd Hirsch; glad he's lived this long, didn't like the character)....but all THAT major anymore in terms of "the future?" Mr. Spielberg seems to be proving Mr. Tarantino's case about older directors...even WITH Oscar nominations galore. I think there is a story there.

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a few weeks ago that he was developing for HBO a 7 episode miniseries about Napoleon, The series has the cooperation of the Kubrick estate and will be based on the script and years of pre-production and research that Kubrick carried out on in the 1960s and 1970s for a Napoleon film (some of which material was recycled by Kubrick into Barry Lyndon).

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Well, I can't say that is NOT exciting(double negatives: that IS exciting.)

Here's Deadline.com's coverage of the story:
https://deadline.com/2023/02/steven-spielberg-stanley-kubricks-napoleon-7-part-series-hbo-1235266372/

Incredibly, Ridley Scott has been shooting a Napoleon epic (w/ Joaquin Phoenix as his Napoleon) for the last year or so for AppleTV+:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_(2023_film)

So after no Napoleon projects for 40+ years (after the big bombs that led Kubrick to cancel his own Napoleon)

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When I was fairly young, my parental "take 'em to the movies to teach 'em history" routine took me to "Waterloo"(1970), with Big Rod Steiger as the Little Man, and Christopher Plummer as Wellington and...I remember actually liking it, though I cannot remember a scene. I guess that was one of the flops.

As I recall, Kubrick eyed Jack Nicholson for the part and when that didn't pan out...The Shining came in.

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we've got two coming along almost at once including a version of Kubrick's! Bizarre, but thrilling.

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Oh, its the old story, isn't it? Two farm movies, two volcano movies, two meteor-hits-earth movies, etc. But more elite.

About Apple: I've held off subscribing to Apple. I'm waiting for Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon," which after a long COVID delay in production now seems to be a bit TOO delayed - they let it miss 2022 Oscar season...is there a problem with it?(Probably not; as with Hitchcock, there's no such thing as "bad Scorsese.")

Streaming is getting to be a real conundrum. Back in the day, I had three networks and four independents for FREE. (But I'll grant you -- with commercials.) Now, if I really want to see a PARTICULAR movie or series...I have to pay for the entire package (a streaming channel) over(HBO Max) and over(Netflix) and over (Amazon Prime) and over (Hulu) and over(Peacock) and over(Apple) again. I guess "smart folk" subscribe, watch the "big movie" and unsubscribe.

The Scorsese movie and Scott's Napoleon movie will likely push me to Apple to subscribe. I hear all the Universal/Paramount Hitchcock movies are on Peacock(I have DVDs but I don't want to wear them out; I might subscribe). I forgot the Paramount streaming service. I watched some of "The Offer" at a relative's house, it was good enough -- bu not so good to order Paramount at my home to finish it.

And "Ted Lasso"? Forget it. I'm now old enough to be "out of the loop" on certain shows because I won't pay for EVERYTHING.

But I digress. Let's see how the dueling Napoleons do. Let's see who SS casts as Napoleon. (Joaquin -- a bit too TALL?)


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the research that Kubrick carried out on in the 1960s and 1970s for a Napoleon film

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We've been here before, when Spielberg filmed "AI" based on various spare parts from Kubrick's prep(SOME script, SOME drawings, etc.)

Some like/love AI. I don't. Overlong, to start. My take is this: the injection of Spielberg's emotionalism into Kubrick's cold heartlessness made the movie way too mean and depressing to watch.

AI surely wasn't my favorite movie of 2000. I went with two big emotional schmaltzmobiles that year -- The Perfect Storm(with James Horner's powerful wraparound theme and score -- thunderous and later heartbreaking.) And "The Legend of Bagger Vance(back when Will Smith was likeable and charismatic.)

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(some of which material was recycled by Kubrick into Barry Lyndon).

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I did not KNOW that....the battle scenes, likely...and recall Kubrick's great battle scene for Spartacus, a movie he disowned.

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Streaming is getting to be a real conundrum. Back in the day, I had three networks and four independents for FREE. (But I'll grant you -- with commercials.) Now, if I really want to see a PARTICULAR movie or series...I have to pay for the entire package (a streaming channel) over(HBO Max) and over(Netflix) and over (Amazon Prime) and over (Hulu) and over(Peacock) and over(Apple) again. I guess "smart folk" subscribe, watch the "big movie" and unsubscribe.
Agree. Not only is it incredibly expensive to subscribe to all these different streaming services, if you *are* lucky enough to afford it you are still confronted with having to *remember* which of all your services any given program is on. And this whole setup sets one up to feel overloaded as each service frantically tries to pitch you on all its also-ran shows as well as their one or two big hits.

With Food inflation in particular being very tough these days, I think a lot of people are looking to streamline their official streaming services right now.

It's interesting to compare with how music streaming has evolved. Spotify, Apple Music etc. all stream essentially all the music that's out there to be streamed. They differ a bit over how their interfaces and algorithms work, and also their podcast offerings and maybe a few other special features, but they all do the same basic job. You only *need* a subscription to one. Of course Netflix originally was going to be a universal streamer for film and TV the way Spotify is for Music, but the studios rebeled and started set up their own streaming service, and Netflix itself became the biggest Movie and TV studio. What has yet to be established is whether, having destroyed Netflix's original Spotify-like business model, whether any of the new partial streamers can make money.

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It's interesting to compare with how music streaming has evolved. Spotify, Apple Music etc. all stream essentially all the music that's out there to be streamed. They differ a bit over how their interfaces and algorithms work, and also their podcast offerings and maybe a few other special features, but they all do the same basic job. You only *need* a subscription to one.

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Spotify's been a nice little Godsend in the car.

As with movie recordings(VHS, DVD, streaming) music recordings came a long way: wax records(singles and full albums); eight track tapes(with some songs "split in two" with a minute of silence in the middle of the song while the tracks changed; casette tapes(presold by the record company; blank tapes to put all your favorite songs together.)

And now streaming of the music. Spotify has managed to find old songs of my youth that nobody else plays(or remembers.

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Of course Netflix originally was going to be a universal streamer for film and TV the way Spotify is for Music,

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I did not know that

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but the studios rebelled

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They always do. Those dirty double crossers!


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and started set up their own streaming service, and Netflix itself became the biggest Movie and TV studio.

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And an OK studio sometimes (Roma, The Irishman, Buster Scruggs) but making a lot of pre-processed "200 million dollar TV movie stuff" with Ryan Reynolds and mediocre scripts(summoning up my movie buff mother's dismissal of bad movie scripts: "I could have written that! I pay for better quality that what I myself can produce."

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What has yet to be established is whether, having destroyed Netflix's original Spotify-like business model, whether any of the new partial streamers can make money.

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I dunno. Netflix is producing a lot of original content(fairly pedestrian TV series that would have been free on network , you have to pay for on Netflix and Apple and Amazon Prime.)

But its the movies I want to keep. The "old movies" of the 20s, 30s, 40s, and especially of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

If streaming services shut down, with DVDs not being marketed much...where will the movies go?

PS. Speaking of Ryan Reynolds, I find him movie star handsome (moreso than Affleck or Damon), and certainly a funny guy. He makes pretty mediocre stuff for Netlix, but they pay him a lot and NOW he's just cashed in a billion or so selling some phone service he started. That follows George Clooney (a rather faded star now) making $300 million off of a tequila brand a few years back.

Do these stars REALLY make that kind of money off these products? I'm not sure we can be sure....

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Kubrick's 1969 script for Napoleon has floated around on-line since a copy of it was turned up in 1994 in a Kansas salt-mine (!) where United Artists and MGM kept their archives. See this Hollywood Reporter link for the story about *that*:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/hollywood-studio-hid-priceless-papers-an-underground-salt-mine-1247668/
The following link for the script itself still works:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010625040837/www.interlink.es/cookies/guion/Napoleon.txt

At first glance it's fantastically detailed with immense amounts of narration that's impossible not to hear in the Barry Lyndon voice. Concluding notes from Kubrick report his discoveries about lens made for NASA that he wants to use, and that he would subsequently put to good use on Barry Lyndon. The unavoidable conclusion is that Napoleon was supposed to *look* and *feel* a lot like BL.

Back in 2007 the 'Mystery Man' Hollywood screenwriter blog published a series of 10 pretty enthusiastic articles/long blog posts many of which amount to a direct analysis of the script. I was thrilled to discover yesterday that that blog series still stands here:
http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2007/02/stanley-kubricks-napoleon.html

If Spielberg and co. are serious about making a 7-part miniseries then Kubrick's script which is most definitely precisely for a 2.5 hour film *will* have to be greatly expanded. I wonder whether Kubrick left any suggestions about what sorts of longer treatments he might have been attracted to? Kubrick's writing in this period is so icy that some of the obvious ways to expand - e.g., lots more background about characters - might be blocked by the tone of 'abstract historical analysis' he liked.

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Just my opinion here, but I don't think Pauline Kael was a genuine film critic. By that I mean I think she was a writer who happened to fall into the line of work of movie criticism, and wasn't really much of a fan of cinema. What she chose to praise and what she chose to excoriate almost seems like a coin toss. But either way her review went, she could be counted on for biting wit and sardonic, sometimes controversial observations. I think she was rather whimsical and often based a film review on whether she had a personal liking for or an animosity toward the people who made it. Obviously, she had a special hatred for any macho American actors like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, but she also seemed to let personal politics leak substantially into her criticisms. This latter trait, in my opinion, led her often to misunderstand what filmmakers and actors were actually trying to communicate. Weren't the police chiefs Harry Callahan was always at war with equally culpable of "fascism" by her standards? Was Paddy Chayevsky really as "reactionary" as she seemed to think, or did she not really grasp his scathing sarcasm? Was it personal animus underlying her attacks on certain films? I always thought so. Not that I think a film critic should be inhumanly objective, necessarily, but I never trusted her film reviews because I never trusted the person's intentions behind them.

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@ccr1633. I think that something like your view of Kael is the majority, even consensus view these days. I won't and can't mount any full-scale defence of Pauline, but I would add a couple of observations. First, her hyperbolic, hyper-opinionated, hyper-lengthy (7000 word review articles not uncommon), not to mention hyper-sexualized (she always let you know her how turned on or not she was by a movie - her first book of reviews is 'I Lost It At The Movies') style *really* stood out at the time. I think we can, looking back, recognize Kael as anticipating one of the major house styles of the blogospheric film-fan-ish internet.

When I first encountered her - late '70s in my high school library - she had 5+ books in that small (maybe 200 books total) Film section in the library. Probably no other critic had more than a single book in that section. Note that Hitchcock and Welles and Ford really stood out in that small film section at the time too. They were the only directors I remember as having multiple books about them, and in Hitchcock's case some of those books were deeply imprinted on a generation. The Hitchcock-Truffaut book of interviews and Anobile's photo-book of Psycho especially could *not* have been more important for me. Those two books along with Kael's Reeling were probably the first three books about Film I ever read cover to cover.

In sum, Kael's significance for many people who were awakening to film's possibilities in the 1970s (including Tarantino) was enormous but clearly also an artefact of the times. In some respects she hasn't worn well, and there really is no reason to expect later generations to dig her in anything like the same way. Note that Kael had some colorful counterparts in music- and broader cultural-criticism such as Hunter Thompson and Lester Bangs (although Kael never had their drugginess and self-destructiveness). They're being reevaluated for their parochialty, unreliability, and personal peevishness now too, which is what we should expect.

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Very interesting, thank you. I'm of the age where I was mentally developed enough to appreciate (or dislike) Kael's reviews only at the very tail end of her career. Even when I became aware of her she was pretty much a non-entity because I grew up in a desert state. J. Jonah Jameson was a bigger New York icon than Kael. I do appreciate people like Kael who write with pizzaz, as with your examples of Bangs and Thompson. I respect Kael's writing ability and her success in producing so many influential books of film criticism. I just don't trust the origins of her perspective, generally. Take Lester Bangs. I never doubted for a second his genuine passion for music. He certainly had a bias for unpretentious, more simple-minded rock and roll, and clearly disliked some rock stars for their shameless embrace of their stardom. But even in some of his scathing reviews, like of The Doors mid-career albums (and especially of Jim Morrison), Bangs's criticisms seem rooted in a firm idea of what truly creative, honest, and cathartic rock n' roll is supposed to be. I never got the sense that Kael really, really loved any particular films the way Bangs loved The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, The Clash, Miles Davis, and Van Morrison. Not being anchored to the art form in this way, as I see it (and I could be wrong), is what always made me think that Kael was writing far more for herself than for film audiences. I am an unabashed fan of Kubrick and Chayevsky, so take that into account.

Let me also give a shout out to ecarle for initiating yet another entertaining, thought-provoking thread that brings out other very interesting and well-written perspectives.

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I am an unabashed fan of Kubrick and Chayevsky, so take that into account.
One particular detail of Kael's practice is perhaps relevant here. Although it's hard to believe given her emphasis on the importance of cinematic pleasure, according to all her disciples, Kael made a point of only ever seeing a film *once*. Apparently she was deeply suspicious of the 'growing on you'/entrainment phenomena that attend cultural items you expose yourself to multiple times. As I said, this is hard to believe and I really *don't* believe she saw Kane or His Girl Friday or Ball of Fire or any of her other beloved '30s and '40s films only once.

But let's suppose that she did in fact see most films only once. Well, on the one hand that alone can be taken as proof that she wasn't a true film lover as opposed to someone who just kinda fell into film-reviewing. On the other hand, it also explains her aversion to Kubrick, puzzle filmmakers like Antonioni and Resnais, smarty-pants writers you might not understand the first time like Chayevsky, and so on. All of these types of figures assume that they're good enough to keep you coming back, whereas Kael insisted on being turned on *right* *now* and so was never going to going to grant them that. Too bad for her.

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All of these types of figures assume that they're good enough to keep you coming back, whereas Kael insisted on being turned on *right* *now*


That's funny. If your speculation is true, she was even more prescient than you indicated earlier (a forerunner of bloggers). If there's anything that characterizes audience tastes in the Internet age, it's instant gratification. I wonder how she would've responded to the deluge of superhero films? I'd guess her contrarian instincts would kick in and she'd find them instantaneously ungratifying.

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I wonder how she would've responded to the deluge of superhero films? I'd guess her contrarian instincts would kick in and she'd find them instantaneously ungratifying.
Well, one of Pauline's most famous essays (collected in "Taking It All in" and anthologized a lot elsewhere) was 1980's 'Why Are Movies So bad? Or, The Numbers" where she complains about a million different things leading to Hollywood making terrible films by her lights but especially about all the conglomerates now owning studios and former TV people running them, all the sequels that were starting to come along, all the test-screening and TV pre-sales and massive marketing budgets, the difficulty of getting Studios to make relatively modest bets (one of her examples is Peter Yates having to shop around an excellent script for Breaking Away for 6 years when according to her that should have been a no-brainer to make), and so on. I guess this piece was strongly informed by her time in Hollywood, e.g.:
There's a pecking order in filmmaking, and the director is at the top—he's the authority figure. A man who was never particularly attractive to women now finds that he's the padrone: everyone is waiting on his word, and women are his for the nod. The constant, unlimited opportunities for sex can be insidious; so is the limitless flattery of college students who turn directors into gurus. Directors are easily seduced. They mainline admiration.

Anyhow, given this it seems clear that had Pauline lived another 20+ years she'd hate the superheroes turn in movies, the sort of people who make them, the fans of such films, and much more. I never got to see the doc about her that was out a few years ago, What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018) - streamable on Vimeo for a smallish sum it appears - but presumably that will have a bunch of answers or at least good discussion about this sort of topic.

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Although I'm not positively impressed by Kael's taste in cinema, I must say that you and ecarle have helped me see her in a more positive light. At the very least I've had to rethink my dismissive view that she was a film critic who secretly wished to be an op-ed writer for the NY Times.

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What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)
Ok, this doc. can be watched for free in a variety of marginal (so make sure your anti-viral/anti-malware defences are on and up-to-date) places online, e.g., here:
https://tinyurl.com/42avvauc
It's good both on how she was a unique product of her times, and how volatile and seemingly contradictory her opinions could be. It has some good clips, including, e.g., Bob Evans talking about how he held The Great Gatsby's release date to, say, April 15 to get Penelope Gilliat's shift and review rather than Kael's, David Lean talking about being invited to a NY Critic's Circle Event around 1970 and having Kael and her followers harangue him all evening about how terrible his films were (by their lights) and how this shook his confidence and literally stopped him making movies for a few years, audio from Ridley Scott saying her uncharitable, uncomprehending review of Blade Runner made him so mad he gave up reading *all* critics for good after that.

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What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)

Ok, this doc. can be watched for free in a variety of marginal (so make sure your anti-viral/anti-malware defences are on and up-to-date) places online,

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Well, maybe for now I'll have to take your word for it!


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It's good both on how she was a unique product of her times, and how volatile and seemingly contradictory her opinions could be.

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Kael WAS a "go to" critic for various thoughtful TV programming in the 70's -- Dick Cavett for instance, and perhaps on PBS sometimes. (Meanwhile, the Today show had the rather clownish Gene Shalit with his big Jewish afro and rather jokey,meh opinions.)

--- It has some good clips, including, e.g., Bob Evans talking about how he held The Great Gatsby's release date to, say, April 15 to get Penelope Gilliat's shift and review rather than Kael's,

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I here again apologize for calling her Penelope Houston in some of my posts(but not all?) I think I read that about Evans' strategy to movie Gatsby onto Gilliatt's turf(if memory serves, she was generally easier on flicks that Kael was.)

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David Lean talking about being invited to a NY Critic's Circle Event around 1970 and having Kael and her followers harangue him all evening about how terrible his films were (by their lights) and how this shook his confidence and literally stopped him making movies for a few years,

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Very odd to me. First of all, Lean ended up with some real champions among the "New Hollywood guys" like Spielberg and Scorsese; amusingly, a few "hack" Hollywood execs in the 80's came claiming Lawrence as their favorite film(but greenlit NO movies like it).

Second of all, I can't say I'm much of a fan of the big "coffee table book" movies Lean made in the 60's, myself BUT clearly they were hits with young and old alike and why should it have MATTERED WHAT Kael et al said. Lean just strikes me as a bit of a chicken. As I've noted elsewhere, I think Lean got a few projects cancelled in the 70s, that must have helped dampen his enthusiasm.

Hitchcock had some VICIOUS enemies among 60's critics(Dwight MacDonald and Stanley Kauffman) , but he also had protectors led by Truffaut and the French critics and, eventually, Robin Wood with his seminal "Hitchcock's Films" book and its seminal introduction: "Why Should We Take Hitchcock Seriously?" (followed by "its a crime that such a question need even be asked.") But in any event, Hitchcock ignored his critics, kept making movies (spacing them further and further apart as he aged)...just didn't much care WHAT the critics said.

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audio from Ridley Scott saying her uncharitable, uncomprehending review of Blade Runner made him so mad he gave up reading *all* critics for good after that.

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I've often wondered if studio people try to keep bad reviews away from fillmmakers, or if filmmakers self-protectively don't read reviews. Here's what happens when you read a bad one.

There was nastier critic than Kael in the 70's and his name was John Simon. He wrote physical insults about actors -- a really nasty one about Liza Minnelli's face, and about Burt Reynolds, the interesting: "his head looks oddly like an armored car made out of meat." Hmm. Robert Altman dissed him at a party saying "I'm sorry, I can't talk to a man with yellow teeth." Nice.

BTW, I was physically at the premiere of Hitchcock's Family Plot (Century City Plitt Movie Theater, 1976) and I recall as Hitchcock climbed out of his limo with assistance, he was immediately taken to a big chair and Hollywood columnist Army Archerd handed Hitch some papers and said "Hey, Hitch, take a look at what I have in my hand! TWO rave reviews of Family Plot from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter!"

Family Plot didn't end up getting all the good reviews that Frenzy got -- in fact, it got some really mean pans -- but it must have heartened Hitchcock to be handed "two good ones" (albeit by the softball trade papers) at his premiere. (As I recall, the reviews weren't so much raves as thankful for Hitchcock's career and respectful.)

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Second of all, I can't say I'm much of a fan of the big "coffee table book" movies Lean made in the 60's, myself BUT clearly they were hits with young and old alike and why should it have MATTERED WHAT Kael et al said. Lean just strikes me as a bit of a chicken. As I've noted elsewhere, I think Lean got a few projects cancelled in the 70s, that must have helped dampen his enthusiasm.
On the one hand, when Lean describes his experience, you want to tell him, "You're David F-ing Lean, just shrug it off". On the other hand, a large part of being a good director *is* being a creative spirit and no matter how 'big you get' that creative and self-believing side often does remain fragile, easily cowed, and so has to be protected from negative doubting voices, and so on. It sounded to me like Lean felt very attacked and ambushed, caught off guard at an event where he was supposed to be guest of honor. But, as you suggest, Lean going into the '70s was starting to be viewed as Old Hat and was finding it hard to raise all the money for his various new projects so perhaps he was feeling vulnerable even before he climbed in to the bear-pit of the NY Critics' Circle.

Lean's story is a reminder I suppose of part of what allowed Hitch to keep working in the '70s: he was able to work cheaply whereas Lean could not. And the thing Lean wanted to keep making - adaptations of dense, literary works that (near plotlessness not withstanding) were hard to fit in to less than 3 hours doubtless looked by, say, 1975, like some of the riskiest bets of all.

Film is a tough business because the bets it requires are so big. Even if you have great success in a period you have a very good chance of being called out-of-date/out-of-fashion in subsequent periods. And in some ways people who loudly revere your old stuff but aren't prepared to green light your new stuff are even worse for your Psyche than the outright skeptics and condescenders are.

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If only Lean could have fast forwarded to the early ‘80s when Kael gave her “rapturous” review of the Night of the Shooting Stars, that 14-year gap wouldn’t have happened.

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Just my opinion here, but I don't think Pauline Kael was a genuine film critic. By that I mean I think she was a writer who happened to fall into the line of work of movie criticism, and wasn't really much of a fan of cinema.

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I don't have her biography book(NOT an autobio, critical of her at times) handy, but if memory serves , she started her life on the West Coast near the Bay area and then started reviewing movies for a local revival movie theater in Berkeley.
Those early 60's reviews were calling cards and soon she was writing for...Redbook?(which FIRED her over a bad review of The Sound of Music) and then eventually she found her way to New York and The New Yorker.

It was a great big, long rave review of "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967 that put her on the map. Warren Beatty had just pushed for NYT critic Bosley Crowther's retirement for HIS bad review of B and C(which some modern critics now DEFEND -- as if Bosley saw the tasteless era of amoral comedic ultra-violence coming.) Now, Beatty could help support Kael -- but of course, she done him wrong on "Heaven Can Wait"(11 years later ) and...she was too young then to push into retirement, so he lured her to that Hollywood smackdown. And then sent her back, bowed and a LITTLE broken.

By the way, between Bosley Crowther's pan of Bonnie and Clyde and Kael's ringing defense of it, Newsweek critic Joe Morgenstern(sp?) did something famous with that movie too: he PANNED it on first viewing, and then came back with a LATER review in which he basically said "I take it back -- I was wrong on Bonnie and Clyde, I didn't understand it, its GREAT." I wonder how Beatty got to HIM. This second "I'm sorry" review became a Newsweek cover story on Bonnie and Clyde and violence -- and I've read the article and it has an itty-bitty one sentence acknowledgement of Psycho as a precursor to Bonnie and Clyde.

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By that I mean I think she was a writer who happened to fall into the line of work of movie criticism, and wasn't really much of a fan of cinema. What she chose to praise and what she chose to excoriate almost seems like a coin toss.

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I think she made a point in print of talking about "good trash movies" -- she was willing, sometimes to like certain movies even if they weren't "prestige." Still, all I can remember is PANS of movies like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno(Kael got the Christmas movie beat where , back then, MOST of the big movies were -- Penelope Gilliatt got the summer movies. It was a 6 month split.)

Alfred Hitchcocks Topaz came out at Christmas 1969, but she didn't give it a full review. Just a throw away line in a larger article: "Hitchocck's Topaz is the same damn spy movie he's been making since World War II." Well, SORT of. Bottom line: she didn't think it was worth writing about.

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But either way her review went, she could be counted on for biting wit and sardonic, sometimes controversial observations.

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To her credit, when she hated a movie she hated it - but when she LOVED it (Last Tango in Paris, Nashville, DePalma's The Fury) she went WAY out there to show her love(and to get panned in return -- especially about Tango and The Fury.)

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I think she was rather whimsical and often based a film review on whether she had a personal liking for or an animosity toward the people who made it. Obviously, she had a special hatred for any macho American actors like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds,

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More Eastwood than Reynolds. Reynolds had three major hits in the 70's(well, he had other hits, but these were seminal): Deliverance, The Longest Yard, and Smokey and the Bandit. Deliverance and Smokey were summer films and out of Kael's jurisdiction. The Longest Yard was a fall hit, but I don't remember if Kael reviewed it(she missed some.) Despite The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas early in the 80s, by the mid-80's, Reyholds was pretty much over. He DID appear with Eastwood in City Heat(1984), but the movie wasn't good and Eastwood capitalized on Reynolds "fade"(they weren't really equal stars anymore.)

I wonder if Kael reviewed City Heat(a Christmas time movie, in her jurisdiction.)

No, she didn't like Eastwood. This started with his(to her) "colorless" performance in Paint Your Wagon(where he plays a REALLY NICE GUY who wouldn't harm a fly...fatal to him, I must admit)

Kael's famous "fascist" review of Dirty Harry took on water as the years went by(it is a VERY good movie, and VERY important movie, directed by Don Siegel) but I always found it interesting that Siegel's next movie -- Charley Varrick (1973) was about bank robbers who killed cops in the opening scene; and Eastwood made "Magnum Force" to face Harry with some REAL Fascist cops(a "Death Squad" of executioners) and then HE played a bank robber in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In short, I think Ms. Kael drew blood with Clint and Don...they knew, even then, that they worked in a pretty liberal industry, and they made amends.

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Eastwood was THE giant star of the 70's, but I noticed his movies were often a bit cheap and like TV movies(R-rated TV movies.) Magnum Force wasn't as good as Dirty Harry; The Enforcer wasn't as good as Magnum Force. The Gauntlet was very silly; the first orangutan movie was sillier...but a big hit.

Kael probably had an easy target in ol' Clint.

Still, he made some highly regarded movies in the 70s: Outlaw Josey Wales(summer, Kael didn't review it) and Escape from Alcatraz(summer, Kael didn't review it.)

I think Kael jumped on Eastwood's acting style, which, when not in whispery rage COULD be rather...colorless. I liked McQueen better in the 70s, but he quit for half the decade, came back for two movies...and died in 1980 at age 50. Clearing the field for his rival Paul Newman in old age...and for Clint in action.

More soon.

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I think Kael jumped on Eastwood's acting style, which, when not in whispery rage COULD be rather...colorless.


To be fair to Kael, I probably like Eastwood for many of the same reasons that she disliked him. It may boil down to man vs. woman (boy do I sound old fashioned). Eastwood's gift as an actor is his physical stature: he's tall, tough, and handsome in a unique way that blends a California pretty boy with the chiseled rough edges of someone like Robert Mitchum. Between Play Misty for Me and The Gauntlet, his characters were always extremely competent and didn't take shit from the types that the counterculture in those days would also find villainous (although these days I wonder if Scorpio would be considered a hero, not just a victim of fascist cops). Before he threw punches, he would respond to hostile insults with wry one-liners, preceding by a decade what would become Schwarzenegger's trademark. His persona was drenched in dissatisfaction with "the system," yet he deftly worked within it for his own ends. He wouldn't initiate a fight, but if you picked one with him then watch out. These are distinctly male traits that appealed to many a man, given his massive popularity. I'd wager that his kick-ass and very male stoicism were among the things Kael despised about him. Clint did what he was good at, and it wasn't displaying versatility as an actor. I've always known that and didn't care one bit. Now, I do have many criticisms of the Clint persona, especially in lesser films from the 70s like, say, The Eiger Sanction. One of them is the clunky manner in which so many women swooned over him, like the Asian lady from Magnum Force who lived in his apartment building. Nowadays, I think the word is "cringe."

By the way, I think you meant "The Enforcer" wasn't as good as "Magnum Force," unless you were throwing us a curveball with a Zen koan.

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I think Kael jumped on Eastwood's acting style, which, when not in whispery rage COULD be rather...colorless.


To be fair to Kael, I probably like Eastwood for many of the same reasons that she disliked him. It may boil down to man vs. woman (boy do I sound old fashioned).

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Not really.

I've reviewed a lifetime of movie going(as a guy) and the bottom line: my favorite movies stars were pretty much guys. That's hardly "alert the media" news. In the action era that Eastwood pretty much started, the movies filled with tough guys, some still "hanging on" from before Clint(like his Paint Your Wagon co-star, Lee Marvin, who turned down Quint in Jaws and watched his career dwindling down), Harrison Ford, Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson, Arnold, Sly, Bruce Willis. I recall Bruce Willis doing an interview about one of his action movies and he joked: "You know what I have? I have a license to save the world. There's about 8 guys in Hollywood right now who have that." (For diversity sake, we can include Eddie Murphy early on, Denzel, Wesley Snipes, Jamie Foxx and the Asian martial arts stars.)

And c'mon, second tier (way back when) we had Rod Taylor and James Coburn; modern second tier was Kurt Russell and Jeff Bridges, but they are higher ranked now.

Not to mention: Sean Connery in his several eras.

I've often said about leading men -- we're really just being asked to choose exactly which one(or many) of a bunch of good looking fit guys we want to hang our identification on. All of them, I say. The late TCM host Robert Osborne once said of movie stars that they all made it up through the ranks and beat other people to become stars "because thats why they became stars."

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But movie resumes make a difference, too.

Burt Reynolds started strong with Deliverance, but slowly shifted to comedy in the main, and then really SILLY comedy in the 80s, and watched his career collapse. Too many simply silly, dumb movies. (If HE didn't take his choices seriously, why should WE as audiences.) There was an injury to his jaw(ironically suffered on City Heat with Eastwood, who protected his co-star from the movie closing down on his account), but he simply made too many bad movies to survive.

As for Clint -- he ran a "mom and pop" movie making operation for the 70s and 80s: he produced(Malpaso) and usually directed(never working with major outside directors) and rarely with major co-stars until forced to in the 90s (the Reynolds movie in the 80s was a one-off.) The Eastwood career crashed and burned(says I) in the summer of 1988, when his marginal fifth Dirty Harry movie(The Dead Pool) filmed as cheap as usual(despite future stars Jim Carrey and Liam Neeson in the cast as little knowns) went up against the big budget explosive action of Die Hard and...The End. (With a surprise comeback in the 90's based on Unforgiven and some name co-stars.)

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By the way, I think you meant "The Enforcer" wasn't as good as "Magnum Force," unless you were throwing us a curveball with a Zen koan.

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Corrected! Exactly. Boy, I'm glad I was around tonight. If I'd left that out there for a couple of weeks I'd been humiliated.

Zen Koan? I had to look it up. Astute!

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Pitted against Burt Reynolds with his suicidal career of bad comedies(Dom DeLuise as co-star; bad idea), and Clint Eastwood's isolated family business(Clint movies starring Clint, directed by Clint) was: Jack Nicholson.

Jack rarely directed(and not well when he did.) He found good to great directors to work with, including the famous Kubrick but also Mike Nichols and John Huston and Roman Polanski and Hal Ashby and Martin Scorsese(WAY late in the game)..the list goes on and on. James L. Brooks directed Jack to two Oscars ...and made what looks to be Jack's final film ever (sadly, it was not good. How Do You Know.)

Nicholson managed to maintain a "prestige art film superstar career" (three Oscars in three separate decades) while still occasionally cutting loose for the box office -- Batman(uber alles), The Witches of Eastwick(an "adult" summer movie), Wolf (shoulda been much better.)

And his Colonel Nathan Jessep in A Few Good Men is REALLY a pop entertainment villain, not a prestige role.

Why do I linger on Jack? Because to the extent one(I) have to grapple with the very concept of "the movie star" -- Jack's a great example of how they function when they are at their best. The voice. The 1,001 moving face muscles with great control over expressions and thoughts. The eyebrows. The heavy dose of sexuality well into paunchy middle-age(a true model for some of us.)

But mainly this: the movies. Like Bogart before him, Jack picked his material well and ended up in more great movies(one way or another) than any peer I can name(including Al and Bobby; though Dustin gave him a run.)

Look: Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Last Detail, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...and that's just the START.

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Jack also illustrates one of my personal rules: "The movie, not the movie star."

In other words, rather than worship the star "as is," the star has to function in a good to great movie to REALLY function.

Example: Paul Newman made some great movies in the 60s: The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke. Oscar nominated each time, yes?

And his biggest hit -- Butch Cassidy -- at the very end of the decade.

And then some cult classics: Harper, Hombre

But if you look at that decade, he was sure in a lot of mediocre movies, too. (I don't count Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, which I think is serious auteur stuff.)

From the Terrace, Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, The Prize(NXNW done WRONG), A New Kind of Love, What a Way to Go, Lady L, Harry Frigg...not great stuff.

"The movie, not the movie star." Still Newman got more hits and classics than most. He LASTED.

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Speaking of Pauline Kael, she wrote long essay on Cary Grant ("The Man From Dream City") and I've read it and she and I are EXACTLY the same way on Grant:

She said that only four movies REALLY defined Cary Grant:

Three Hitchcococks:

Notorious
To Catch a Thief
NXNW

And one "pseudo Hitchcock":

Charade.

That's the four I love, too! Suspicion (a favorite of -- get this -- Tarantino!) is too flawed a film with too simpy a heroine and too stunted a Grant, to "work."

But anyway, I think Kael said only Hitchcock three times and Charade...were...something (I can't believe she didn't give him props for Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday.)

"The movie, not the movie star."

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Eastwood's gift as an actor is his physical stature: he's tall,

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Screenwriter William Goldman(sorry, he's all I GOT) wrote a funny essay about how most modern movie stars(when he wrote his book) are ...pretty short. He cited only Eastwood and Connery at the time(80s) as tall.

Goldman actually followed Sly Stallone around one day to get side by side for a height comparison.

But Eastwood was TALL, and big (not as beefy as Connery, but big enough) and sure it made a difference.

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tough, and handsome in a unique way that blends a California pretty boy with the chiseled rough edges of someone like Robert Mitchum.

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I guess Eastwood was a bit of a "two face." He could look pretty indeed (in his youth) but eventually he got real rugged and grizzled looking.

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Between Play Misty for Me and The Gauntlet, his characters were always extremely competent and didn't take shit from the types that the counterculture in those days would also find villainous (although these days I wonder if Scorpio would be considered a hero, not just a victim of fascist cops).

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Oh, I don't think Scorpio would ever be considered a hero, then or now. He kills women and children. He threatens children with death to their faces(on the school bus.) He rapes a woman and buries her alive(no, wait, she was dead already. How?). And Clint delivers sweet pain in punishment. (Along with that black guy whom Scorpio queasily pays to beat him up.)

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Before he threw punches, he would respond to hostile insults with wry one-liners, preceding by a decade what would become Schwarzenegger's trademark. He wouldn't initiate a fight, but if you picked one with him then watch out. These are distinctly male traits that appealed to many a man, given his massive popularity.

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Generally: yes. But I remember one time that I was rather shocked (by his character): in an early scene from "Every Which Way But Loose," Clint keeps goading a older guy, not too fit at all, into a quick fight and downs him with a punch or two. Clint does it by eating the guy's popcorn out of his bowl. It was a non-lethal fight, but I remember thinking: "Clint is playing a guy who picks a fight with an out of shape guy who he can easily beat down...and beats him down." It was rather bullying behavior, but Clint was establishing a bare knuckle brawler - the man probably SEEKS fights.

But more often than not, some bigger guy would make a move on Clint and pay the price, its true.

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(Kael) also seemed to let personal politics leak substantially into her criticisms.

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It occurs to me that most film critics of the 70s didn't really bring politics directly into their reviews. Kael wrote for the New Yorker and could fit it in. Roger Ebert wrote fairly liberal reviews(and, as I recall, edged a bit in favor of Kael's "fascist" review of DH.)

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This latter trait, in my opinion, led her often to misunderstand what filmmakers and actors were actually trying to communicate. Weren't the police chiefs Harry Callahan was always at war with equally culpable of "fascism" by her standards?

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Kael wrote her Dirty Harry review with some knowledge(said she) of REAL San Francisco cops( she grew up near SF) and how she was warned: "never go to the cops for help." They were corrupt, in her learning. So she saw Harry through that lens.

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Was Paddy Chayevsky really as "reactionary" as she seemed to think, or did she not really grasp his scathing sarcasm?

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Probably, though I looked at her review of Network recently and it felt a little correct on Paddy: "He wants to tell you a thing or two." She felt his characters speeches were all the SAME speech, really HIM talking to us, not them. Fair enough, though I think he differentiated the mad Peter Finch from the noble William Holden from the venal Robert Duvall pretty well. Not to mention Ned Beatty's one-scene Superboss from Above. They may have spoken in the same tone, but not from the same positions.

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Was it personal animus underlying her attacks on certain films? I always thought so.

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Its possible, it happens.

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Not that I think a film critic should be inhumanly objective, necessarily, but I never trusted her film reviews because I never trusted the person's intentions behind them.

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Which reminds me. I noted how William Goldman wrote of Roger Ebert:

"And he's supposed to be one of the good ones. There are no good ones."

Well, I kept an eye out for Ebert's next review of a William Goldman scripted film.

It was "The Ghost and the Darkness." (About killer African lions, with Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer.) Ebert tore it up!

Back to Kael: Butch Cassidy director George Roy Hill wrote Kael an enraged letter about her criticism of the sound in a scene in Butch. Hill evidently opened with: "Listen you ignorant bitch" or something, showing her that she knew nothing of how sound is recorded for film.

Kael loved to read from that letter to friends. She GOT to someone rich and famous with a mere review.

Alfred Hitchcock, well versed in abnormal psychology(his psychos) said in an interview that he felt a lot of film critics "liked to be hated, it turns them on." Maybe....

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These are distinctly male traits that appealed to many a man, given his massive popularity.

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Eastwood often noted that his Dirty Harry character appealed to married men with kids and jobs.."Under the thumb of their wives and their kids and their bosses and here's this Harry guy who doesn't take shit from anybody."

I often felt that Harry pleased audiences(especially working men) as much as when Harry yelled at his bosses as when he shot psycho killers and gangsters. Oh, how we would LIKE to tell off our bosses.

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I'd wager that his kick-ass and very male stoicism were among the things Kael despised about him.

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Possibly. Just not her type. Woody Allen was more like it..oh she liked a lot of movie stars though. I recall her writing of Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King, "other than Brando, Sean Connery is the star I most like to watch on the screen."

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Clint did what he was good at, and it wasn't displaying versatility as an actor. I've always known that and didn't care one bit.

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As Harry says in Magnum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations."

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Now, I do have many criticisms of the Clint persona, especially in lesser films from the 70s like, say, The Eiger Sanction. One of them is the clunky manner in which so many women swooned over him, like the Asian lady from Magnum Force who lived in his apartment building. Nowadays, I think the word is "cringe."

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Hmm..well, yes and no.

I've noted that a key thing about Clint Eastwood is how many R-rated movies he was in. For the violence, yes, but also for the sex.

He was a "70's hero" and he had sex on screen a lot. Famously, he raped a "loose woman" in High Plains Drifter who was yelling at him -- and she ended up enjoying it, of course. THAT wouldn't be filmed today.

But more often than not, it was consensual and he basked in his sexuality and sold it(women fans, maybe?)

I liked a scene in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" where young stud Jeff Bridges brings Clint two (again) loose women(not hookers, I don't think) for each of them to bed. Clint isn't interested at first, Jeff know he's gonna score. But, of course -- criss cross. Stoic, muscled Clint scores(and we watch the encounter). Jeff gets turned down. Egotistical on Clint's part? I suppose, but he knew what he was doing. Action star for men. Sex star for women.

Conversely, he seduced ALL the women in The Beguiled...and look what happened to him...

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The Longest Yard was a fall hit, but I don't remember if Kael reviewed it(she missed some.)
She reviewed it as part of a more general meditation (collected in Reeling) on 'The Actor and The Star' that had Caan in The Gambler and Eastwood in The Longest Yard as its principal examples. I remember much of her discussion of The Gambler, somewhat characteristically, being devoted to explaining how inferior it was to Altman's California Split and a lot of her discussion of Reynolds being devoted to his appearances on Talk Shows.

Her capsule review of TLY in her A-Z capsule collection, 5001 Nights at the Movies is as follows:

The Longest Yard (1974) — Burt Reynolds, as a sellout quarterback turned superstud gigolo, lands in prison; he rediscovers his manhood through helping a bunch of convicts fight for theirs. The picture is a brutal bash, but the laughter at the brutality has no meanness in it; everybody knows that the blood isn't real. Robert Aldrich directed this comic fantasy, centering on a football game between crazily ruthless convicts and crazily ruthless guards; for all its bone-crunching collisions, it's almost irresistibly good-natured and funny. With Ed Lauter, Eddie Albert, and Bernadette Peters. Paramount, color.

Update: Just flicking through Kael's capsule review book, '5001 Nights at the Movies: A Guide from A to Z' I can see that, just sticking to the As, there are no capsule reviews of Alien, Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz, American Graffiti. To me, it's weird that she doesn't have anything to say about those movies. She *must* have seen them even if some other reviewer for the New Yorker got paid to review them, and you'd think that she'd want some sort of basic completeness for her A-Z book. Weird.

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Shifting gears, from Clint to Burt:

The Longest Yard was a fall hit, but I don't remember if Kael reviewed it(she missed some.)

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She reviewed it as part of a more general meditation (collected in Reeling) on 'The Actor and The Star'

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She did that a lot. Jaws didn't get its own review, but was part of an essay. I guess maybe that's because Jaws was a summer movie she couldn't review -- so she waited until fall to look back at it? Characteristically, she felt that the whole movie was about making a fool of "macho man" Robert Shaw and then watching him get gobbled up. So...ccr1633 has a right-on point about Kael's "anti macho stance."

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that had Caan in The Gambler and Reynolds in The Longest Yard as its principal examples. I remember much of her discussion of The Gambler, somewhat characteristically, being devoted to explaining how inferior it was to Altman's California Split

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Well, it kinda is -- California Split was just great -- loose and rambling and shaggy and Gould was great and Segal was great - - The Gambler was heavy, just too heavy.

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and a lot of her discussion of Reynolds being devoted to his appearances on Talk Shows.

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Yes, Reynolds got a lot of reviews as much for his talk show persona(very funny -- I personally had seem him as a cold, mean-looking unhumorous man in TV cop shows like Hawk and Dan August -- and here was this funny guy with the high-pitched laugh-- though he was a bit mean and macho in his humor.)

I recall the Time reviewer writing of Reynolds in "Shamus": "We now have a male movie star who has patterned his persona on Johnny Carson." Hey, maybe...a real MUSCLE-BOUND Johnny Carson.

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Her capsule review of TLY in her A-Z capsule collection, 5001 Nights at the Movies is as follows:

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Ah yes. Famous Kael may have been for 7000 word reviews, but the New Yorker also paid her to write "capsules" at the front of the magazine -- even for old movies in revival.

I remember how her capsule for Strangers on a Train begins:

"A good case could be made for Alfred Hitchocck as the master entertainer of the mid-20th Century..."

So you see? She kinda DID like Hitchcock, but evidently not as the years went on. Predicting QT, Kael wrote that directors like Hitchcock didn't so much age as they "kept making movies in a style that became increasingly out of date."

Her Strangers review also noted the performance of Robert Walker as "dear, degenerate Bruno."

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The Longest Yard (1974) — Burt Reynolds, as a sellout quarterback turned superstud gigolo, lands in prison; he rediscovers his manhood through helping a bunch of convicts fight for theirs. The picture is a brutal bash, but the laughter at the brutality has no meanness in it; everybody knows that the blood isn't real. Robert Aldrich directed this comic fantasy, centering on a football game between crazily ruthless convicts and crazily ruthless guards; for all its bone-crunching collisions, it's almost irresistibly good-natured and funny. With Ed Lauter, Eddie Albert, and Bernadette Peters. Paramount, color.

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That's about right. What worked so oddly about The Longest Yard is that Reynolds team of convicts included guys who dismembered people, killed their own mothers...maybe even a rapist? On PAPER, these should have been "the worst of the worst," but we rooted for them, because the guards were just as sadistic(and willing to fight it out on the football field for one day) and warden Eddie Albert was Evil Personified(THERE's your fascist.)

At least one of the guards is flat-out killed by a convict on the field("I think I broke his f'in neck") but the movie ignores it, takes it in stride.

And Burt Reynolds was PERFECT here. Muscled and macho, but also funny and, in the end, very principled in a hard decision about the rest of his life(behind bars, maybe.)

Reynolds said at the time "This was the first script sent to me that didn't have Redford or Newman's fingerprints on it." He fit the role(former college footballer that he was.)

PS. I saw The Longest Yard not at a theater, but in a college cafeteria rigged up for about 400 people. The cheering and yelling during the final 15 minutes of that movie -- a FAKE football game -- was something to remember.

PPS. I've stated it elsewhere, but here's a perfect place: Alfred Hitchcock LOVED The Longest Yard, laughed hard, probably liked the sadism -- and hired three cast members to be in Family Plot(henchman Joe Maloney/Ed Lauter, plus the gravedigger and the tombstone cutter.) He offered Burt Reynolds the villain, Arthur Adamson. Can't you see Reynolds having some fun with that? But he didn't want to be a villain I guess. In an ensemble.

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Update: Just flicking through Kael's capsule review book, '5001 Nights at the Movies: A Guide from A to Z' I can see that, just sticking to the As, there are no capsule reviews of Alien, Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz, American Graffiti. To me, it's weird that she doesn't have anything to say about those movies. She *must* have seen them even if some other reviewer for the New Yorker got paid to review them, and you'd think that she'd want some sort of basic completeness for her A-Z book. Weird.

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Maybe she had a contractural requirement NOT to review the same films that Penelope Houston reviewed -- it would have amounted to second guessing the entire oeuvre of the other New Yorker critic. That's just a guess. Revival movies like Strangers on a Train didn't count there.

I did read in the book that Kael jointly begged New Yorker editor William Shawn(father of Wallace Shawn of My Dinner at Andre's and The Princess Bride) and Houston to let her review ONE summer movie: I think it may have been Nashville. They relented but Shawn said, "this once and no more." Kael respected the deal.

After all, in the 70's, Kael got to review November-December releases, and back then, that's where almost ALL the Oscar bait was, not to mention blockbusters like The Sting and The Exorcist(she called that "the biggest advertisement for the Catholic church since Going My Way.")

Funny: Kael asked William Shawn if she could write a serious review of "Deep Throat" and...he said absolutely not. What a review that would have been!

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@ecarle. I just found Kael incidentally reviewing Alien in her 'Why Movies are So Bad The Numbers' essay:

It would be very convincing to say that there's no hope for movies—that audiences have been so corrupted by television and have become so jaded that all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level. And there's plenty of evidence, such as the success of Alien. This was a
haunted-house-with-gorilla picture set in outer space. It reached out, grabbed you, and squeezed your stomach; it was more gripping than entertaining, but a lot of people didn't mind. They thought it was terrific, because at least they'd felt something: they'd been brutalized. It was like an entertainment contrived in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World by the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering. Yet there was also a backlash against Alien—many people were angry at how mechanically they'd been worked over.
Pauline could be quite the know-nothing when she wanted to, and she was never worse than when she didn't like or was insensitive to something, but nonetheless insisted on diagnosing at length anyone who reacted relatively positively.

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I just found Kael incidentally reviewing Alien in her 'Why Movies are So Bad The Numbers' essay:

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Very interesting. First of all it proves there was no ban on Kael reviewing the "summer movies" that the other critic got to review(Penelope GILLIATT, I have recently learned, NOT Penelope Houston. Houston wrote some reviews on Hitchcock in the 60's, that's where I got that name. I'm afraid I have neither the memory nor the device to go change Gilliatt's name in for previous Houston posts. Hah.)

I think what Kael did was to use her first fall reviews to look back on interesting summer movies. In 1975, shesnuck some writing on Jaws into a review of September's Dog Day Afternoon for instance.

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Now back to Kael:

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It would be very convincing to say that there's no hope for movies—

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Ha. 1979. And here we are, decades later, in a new century, and it is STILL convincing to say that there is no hope for movies(with Marvel movies as the ostensible culprit, but not really.)

That said, I can say that I, for one, NOTICED the movies starting the change in the late seventies that would leave behind the kind of slate we got in The Wonderful 1973(hey, 50th anniversary this year), and indeed launch the Spielberg/Lucas era and what one angry critic called "the infantilization of movies." Star Wars in 1977 DEFINITELY started it immediately.

Yeah, but I contend that was waiting all along. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Them(giant ants) were huge hits for Warners in the 50's; Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts and The Birds were hits in the 60s...sci fi/fantasy was coming to the A movie all along. And The Thing was a big hit for RKO in 1951, and IT The Terror From Beyond Space was a TV staple from 1958 and "Alien" and 'The Thing 1982" SPRANG from that.



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audiences have been so corrupted by television and have become so jaded that all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level.

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And here we arrive at a good rationale for Elizabethjoestar(if not here, then over on the Robert Ebert board where we have been discussing critics) to HATE Pauline Kael. I'm not sure I ever hated Kael so much as took her with a grain of salt.

But Kael's comments above reveal the dark underside of too many movie critics of a certain era: they didn't just dislike certain MOVIES. They disliked PEOPLE, and felt a desire to characterize them (in so many words) as dullards and idiots.

Read Kael here again:

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Read Kael here again:

all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level.

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Kael is making assumptions about "stupid" audiences that reveal her own self-loathing and, of course, reflect the fact that she evidently wrote this piece not long after having been humiliated "in the belly of the beast" where not-so-nice movie people were making THESE movies.

Her comments "zoomed me back" to TWO separate disses of the audiences for Psycho by TWO different Hitchcock-hating critics of the 60;s:

Dwight MacDonald: "The audiences didn't care(that Psycho was bad movie), they got their two little shock thrills, one of them particularly delicious: a naked woman being stabbed to death in a shower."

"their two little shock thrills" -- how dismissive. Actually there are THREE shock thrills in Psycho (two murders and the fruit cellar) but even JUST the two murders are/were a LOT bigger deal than MacDonald made them out to be. Historic. Scream-inducing. Forever haunting. "The Mount Rushmore of murders," wrote one fan.

Stanley Kauffman: "Hitchcock's function, at its fiercest, in Psycho, is to send Ma and Pa back to beer and bed with a couple of shocks to their system.

Ma and pa. Beer and bed. (What, not champagne?)

I think that Roger Ebert may have done best in his field with readers because he didn't INSULT them to their faces -- if Kael and Kauffman and MacDonald felt such contempt towards moviegoers...why care about their opinions anyway?

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Back to Kael:

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And there's plenty of evidence, such as the success of Alien. This was a
haunted-house-with-gorilla picture set in outer space. It reached out, grabbed you, and squeezed your stomach; it was more gripping than entertaining,

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This is the kind of "Kael phraseology" that the satirist wrote having Kael say : "It shakes up a spritzer bottle and pours it all over my head." Ha. Plus "Haunted House with Gorilla Picture" doesn't really take the brilliance of the sex/birth/shape shifting nature of the alien itself. Sounds more like a Bowery Boys movie -- which was from Kael's youth.

(But hey, I LIKE Kael OK...just in a rather condescending way, now, I suppose.)

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it was more gripping than entertaining, but a lot of people didn't mind. They thought it was terrific, because at least they'd felt something: they'd been brutalized.

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Oh, we WERE , were we? How could Pauline be so sure? "They thought it was terrific"(insult A), because at least they'd felt something(insult B.) This broad was already starting to lose her marbles and she had 12 more years as a critic to go.

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It was like an entertainment contrived in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World by the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering.

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Well, have to give Pauline credit for a literary reference. Truly , the better film critics of their time usually had some background in literature and Shakespeare against which to compare movies.

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Yet there was also a backlash against Alien

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There WAS?

—many people were angry at how mechanically they'd been worked over.

They WERE?

How'd Pauline KNOW this, or was she just guessing? I suppose there may have been some bad reviews.

Truth be told, I myself wasn't totally enamored with Alien when I saw it opening night May 1979(it opened two years to the day after Star Wars.) I thought it was way too slow to start, and pretty slow to finish.

But I certainly saw the artistry of it, the shock surprises in general were great(favorite: Tom Skerritt), the chest burster sequence was a classic -- I'm not sure that Kael knew how to relate to that movie at all(like how about how it LOOKED? Incredibly artful. How about Jerry Goldsmith's score? Doesn't sound from her words above as if she noticed or cared about THAT at all.)

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swanstep wrote:

Pauline could be quite the know-nothing when she wanted to,

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Yes, she just threw herself out there and blabbed and ratted herself out.

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and she was never worse than when she didn't like or was insensitive to something, but nonetheless insisted on diagnosing at length anyone who reacted relatively positively.

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"diagnosing at length anyone who reacted relatively positively." Bingo. Again: an analysis of THE AUDIENCE. A certain elitist hatred of THE AUDIENCE. Now we all may feel that same way in certain ways -- certain movies of my lifetime have been aimed at people with less sophistictation than I think I personally have -- we ALL sometimes feel that our intelligence has been insulted by certain movies.

But Kael -- like Dwight MacDonald before her and Stanley Kauffman before and DURING her -- sure went out of her way to insult the masses.

BTW, speaking of "know nothingism," a fairly famous political quote is attributed to Kael. When Richard Nixon won his landslide 1972 reelection, Kael marvelled "I don't know a single person who voted for Nixon." Well, deep in NYC culture circles...she wouldn't.

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I'm looking for another place to put this information -- maybe its own post here or at Tarantino's board -- but I recently found him dissing Hitchocck all over the place -- and North by Northwest in particular, with Psycho as a side-diss and..

...and well, it kind of tracks with Kael's "personal attack on the audience" angle.

I found these quotes from QT on Hitchcock:

ONE: "People discover North by Northwest at 22 and think its wonderful when actually it is a very mediocre movie."

TWO: "I've always felt that Hitchcock's acolytes took his cinematic and story ideas further. I love Brian De Palma's Hitchcock movies. I love Richard Franklin's and Curtis Hanson's Hitchcock meditations. I prefer those to actual Hitchcock."

THREE: "The 50s held him down, Hitchcock couldn't do what he, left to his own devices, would've wanted to do. By the time he could do it in the late 60s and early 70s, he was a little too old. If he could have gone where he wanted to go in the early 60s and through the 50's, he would have been a different filmmaker."

FOUR: "While DePalma liked making thrillers(for a little while at least), I doubt he loved watching them. Hitchcockian thrillers were, for him, a means to an end. That's why when he was forced to return to the genre the mid-eighties, they were so lacklustre. Ultimately , he resented having to make them Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

Hmm.

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ONE: "People discover North by Northwest at 22 and think its wonderful when actually it is a very mediocre movie."

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OK. Here, QT is "doing a little Kael" : insulting an imaginary audience who discover NXNW at 22 and think its wonderful. (Such, silly, naive young people.) Hey I discovered NXNW a lot younger than 22 and it excited me for LIFE. And no WAY it is a very mediocre movie. It has landed on the Top 100 films of all time list of the AFI and Number 4 greatest thriller (AFI) and all sorts of critical lists and the reviews were even great in 1959 (not so Psycho and Vertigo, as much.)

Forget about the Rushmore climax and the classic crop duster scene(mediocre? my ass)...try the intricate camera movements and angles and great dialogue and acting of the early , tense "Glen Cove library scene."

Methinks that QT is a "content over style" guy, or something and while he's certainly entitled to his opinion, it just strikes me as so wrong that he has lowered my opinion of him for CRITICAL thinking( it has not lowered my love of HIS movies.)

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TWO: "I've always felt that Hitchcock's acolytes took his cinematic and story ideas further. I love Brian De Palma's Hitchcock movies. I love Richard Franklin's and Curtis Hanson's Hitchcock meditations. I prefer those to actual Hitchcock."

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Well with Richard Franklin, that would be Psycho II, of which, QT's idol Brian DePalma told an interviewer, "Its not worth talking about" and which includes among its murder scenes a boyfriend/girlfriend episode lifted directly from...Jaws 2. I hear that Franklin's "Road Games' is pretty good, but the guy simply didn't have the longevity or following of the Main Man.

DePalma DID, almost, and I know that ALL of his movies were allowed to be gorier than Hitchcock's (the first thriller, Sisters, came a year after Hitchcock's brutal but not bloody Frenzy), but many of them are severely flawed in the script department -- plot, dialogue -- and DePalma always seemed to fumble his set-pieces. DePalma also never really got the Oscar respect that his peers Coppola,Spielberg, and Scorsese got. DePalma directed some of MY favorite movies(The Untouchables is my favorite of the 80's) but Hitchcock has a more lasting imprint.

QT cites Curtis Hanson as a Hitchcock copycat better than Hitchcock. Well, Hanson wrote and directed my favorite of the 90s -- LA Confidential -- but that's not terrribly Hitchcockian (well, a particular surprise murder was rather Psycho like.) I guess QT is talking of Hanson movies like The Bedroom Window(with Steve Gutenberg!) Bad Influence, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and The River Wild -- all of which were rather OK but no preparation for the greatenss of LAC. Oh, wait, The Silent Partner with Elliott Could and villain Chris Plummer. Pretty damn good but...no Rear Window or Psycho.

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THREE: "The 50s held him down, Hitchcock couldn't do what he, left to his own devices, would've wanted to do. By the time he could do it in the late 60s and early 70s, he was a little too old. If he could have gone where he wanted to go in the early 60s and through the 50's, he would have been a different filmmaker."

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Well, isn't that TRUE of ALL filmmakers from the censored era(30s, 40s, 50s?) Maybe not Frank Capra, but Wilder's movies and Preminger's movies would have had more blatant sex and Hitchocck would have upped the sex AND the violence but...that's not when they worked so QT can hardly blame the directors in question, Hitch included.

I've noted that Hitchcock actually got away with a LOT of sex and violence in the 40's and 50s.

Violence: the opening (sexual) gay strangling in Rope; the raw brutality of the killing of Walter Slezak in Lifeboat(and the implied amputation scene); the diplomat shot in the face in Foreign Correspondent; the young boy impaled on an iron-spiked fence in Spellbound, the rape-like attack on Grace Kelly in Dial M(and the scissors in the back close-up as her assailant dies); the lingering knife in the back death of Louis Bernard in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Sex: Ingrid Bergman's trampy ways in Notorious(and pretty direct references to sex with both Cary Grant and Claude Rains on her part); Miss Torso's gyrations in Rear Window; the sexual banter twixt Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief; James Stewart having see Kim Novak nude in Vertigo; Eva Marie Saint's blatant come-on to Cary Grant on the train in NXNW...EVERYBODY's sexual banter in The Trouble With Harry(plus "I'd like to paint you in the nude" on first meeting.)

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QT knows what we all know: eventually the movies could show more violence and more sex(though QT has recently given an interview about why he does NOT film sex scenes in his movies, on balance -- less DeNiro and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown, a seconds-long sex joke.) Eventually, Hitchcock's movies could NOT compete with modern films for blood and horror and action and sexuality -- but they sure DID run the table in their time, and Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain and Frenzy were damn shocking in their violence with Psycho, Marnie and Frenzy taking on sex.

QT in suggesting that by the 70's Hitchcock was too old to do what he wanted to do reminds us: Hitchcock DID manage to get that sexual and horrific rape-strangling scene into Frenzy-- t that's Hitchcock at his WORST, and QT sort of built his career from that kind of content for the WHOLE career(except for jackie Brown.)

QT re-staged at least the strangling part of Frenzy in Inglorious Basterds; and staged some dismemberment murders of young women in Death Proof, and gave us wall to wall samarai sword carnage in Kill Bill (complete with spurting blood and flying limbs) much of it girl-on-girl killings; and had Sam Jackson narrate a particularly lurid sexual torture of a white man by a black man in "The Hateful Eight" and showed Sam Jackson entering a scene of a white man torturing a black man in Django Unchained...

...is there where QT regrets that Hitchcock could not go?

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FOUR: "While DePalma liked making thrillers(for a little while at least), I doubt he loved watching them. Hitchcockian thrillers were, for him, a means to an end. That's why when he was forced to return to the genre the mid-eighties, they were so lacklustre. Ultimately , he resented having to make them Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

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Before reaching the main point of contention (Frenzy might be a piece of crap), consider QT's take on DePalma (this entire passage is from his new book).

QT is basically saying that after DePalma flopped with a comedy("Get to Know Your Rabbit") he started making HItchcock homages to survive(and if QT thinks that DePalma's Obsession is better than Vertigo...ay ay ay.) QT contends that DePalma actually switched to action in the 80's(Scarface, The Untouchables) but that's not entirely true; he kept making his Hitchocck copycat stuff in the 80's and 90's and then added more action in the 90's(Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible.)

In any event, it begs the question: DePalma seems to have gotten STUCK with his Hitchcock copycat label even as his peers Coppola and Spielberg and Scorsese "branched out" and were taken more seriously.

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Ultimately , (DePalma) resented having to make them(Hitchcock copycats.)

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Does QT KNOW that? Did DePalma personally TELL him that? Or is that just QT's guess? Kael-style.

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Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap, but I doubt Alfred was bored making it."

-- So QT is saying that whereas DePalma's heart wasn't in making Hitchcock movies, Hitchcock's WAS. Makes sense, doesn't it? Gives Hitchcock the edge, doesn't it?

"Hitchcock's Frenzy might be a piece of crap" suggests to me that QT THINKS that. It would be nice to know WHY. My guess is that even though the movie had one ultra-violent sex strangling to "forecast the QT era," a lot of it was probably too staid and tamped down and expository for QT's taste: any of the scenes with Blaney and Babs together, probably even the twee British comedy of the Oxford dinners.

No matter. I think by the time we get through with all of QTs quotes, a guy who thinks North by Northwest is mediocre, a guy who likes Psycho II better than Psycho, and a guy who has no use for HItchcock's 50's films ...is never going to be brought over to Hitchcock fanhood.

His loss. But I still like his movies pretty much as much as I liked Hitchcocks. They are both genre auteurs, whose movies have great scripts AND great cinematic style.

PS. QT is some years younger than me and was raised in a pretty turbulent hardscrabble household and saw his movies in some tough places and perhaps just never had reason to connect to Hitchcock's omnipresence on network TV in the 60's. Maybe QT never experienced "the hype of Hitchcock" like I did in my more settled childhood. QT went to grindhouses to see his movies; I saw most Hitchcock on the "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" in the comfort of my home.

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Formerly ecarle.

Tarantino has now elaborated in -- I think -- very interestingly on the core premise of "The Movie Critic."

It is based on QT's young career life in the porno theater/porno video industry(funny how he stuck more to the Redondo Beach "movie video store" as his career launch originally; turns out the guy worked in his teens at the Pussycat porn theaters in LA, too.)

Evidently, there was a "porn movie magazine" which allowed for reviews of REGULAR movies in release, too, and this one particular movie critic was MERELY THE SECOND STRINGER (they had room for TWO regular reviewers) and according to QT, this guys reviews were just hilarious and profane and knowing and QT wants to turn THAT GUY into the lead of his movie.

So statements that this would be about Pauline Kael are revealed to be the usual internet guessing game bullshit...

In this interview, QT also says that Leo and Brad are "too old" for the lead -- he will be looking for a "35 year old guy." Any votes out there? I know we've got a lot of young semi-stars -- that Timothee Chavet or whatever strikes me as very wispy but maybe he'd fit, I don't know.

I like how QT is starting to "set the stage" in dribs and drabs for The Movie Critic. It is almost June, 2023. I think he wants to be filming by the fall. Over the summer we will probably start to get one by one casting announcements -- always exciting for me.

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I wonder if the actors strike will delay the casting and making of this move. I expect that QT finished his script before the writers strike.

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@ecarle. The impact on all films in production is going to be enormous. I was staggered to hear that all the stars of Oppenheimer walked out of their London/World premiere Thursday(?) night, i.e., as soon as the strike was called. Slate has a good article on what happened the last time the Actors went on strike (in the year of Psycho, 1960):
https://slate.com/culture/2023/07/sag-aftra-actors-writers-wga-strike-hollywood-1960-ronald-reagan.html

and its a good bet that this strike will be just as tumultuous. The difference this time is that while *some* of Actors' and Writers' concerns now are about concrete issues that have *already* arisen (the way TV had already been around for a decade in 1960), many of their issues are completely speculative and prospective about AI and other tech that doesn't exist yet and so isn't currently litigable (where you'd have to show actual injury). Because of this there's a real chance that the current disputes could spiral on for quite a while with parties just talking past each other. Mini-recessions seem likely in Southern Cal, London, Atlanta, and anywhere else that has a big film production sector. :(

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(aka ecarle. Depends on which computer I use.)

The impact on all films in production is going to be enormous. I was staggered to hear that all the stars of Oppenheimer walked out of their London/World premiere Thursday(?) night, i.e., as soon as the strike was called.

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Pretty amazing, wasn't it? I've never heard of strikes being time to screw up red carpet stuff -- its like "oh forget it, we don't care THAT much about this movie." Bad news for Oppenheimer!

---Slate has a good article on what happened the last time the Actors went on strike (in the year of Psycho, 1960):

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Indeed in the year of Psycho 1960. I've read enough books and articles on Psycho to know that the strikes(also writers AND actors) cast pressure on getting that movie(and others) up and shooting(finished?)

Psycho started shooting in November of 1959 and finished in February of 1960. If the strikes hit AFTER February(actors at least), I guess Hitchcock was in the clear.

This perhaps explains why Hitch got Psycho up and running and scripted(including the firing of the first writer) in record time. High pressure delivered a classic.

The OTHER 1960 movie I've read that was racing the actors strikes was The Magnficent 7. Psycho came out in June, 1960; The Mag 7 came out in October 1960 - casting on THAT one (including finding all 7) came in just under the wire.

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and its a good bet that this strike will be just as tumultuous.

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Probably. I recall the Emmy Show back in 1980. They put it on without ALMOST all the nominees. Strikebreakers Dick Clark and the Smothers Brothers hosted, I think, maybe Steve Allen.

ONE -- and only one -- acting award winner was there to take the stage: newbie Powers Boothe, who won for playing Jim Jones, the Jonestown guy. Didn't stop him from getting hired later -- maybe helped(though did ACTORS hate him?)

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The difference this time is that while *some* of Actors' and Writers' concerns now are about concrete issues that have *already* arisen (the way TV had already been around for a decade in 1960), many of their issues are completely speculative and prospective about AI and other tech that doesn't exist yet and so isn't currently litigable (where you'd have to show actual injury). Because of this there's a real chance that the current disputes could spiral on for quite a while with parties just talking past each other. Mini-recessions seem likely in Southern Cal, London, Atlanta, and anywhere else that has a big film production sector. :(

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Kinda sad, these strikes showing up pretty much right after "release volume" got back to normal after COVID delays. Well -- a buck is a buck.

Streaming revenue is surely an issue. Ties into residuals off of TV(in 1960) and VHS and DVDS later. Now, streaming.

The Slate article had studio defenders saying about residuals: "Why pay an actor twice or more after you already paid him to act?" How about "why make money from an actor's performance again?"

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Regarding AI and the writers strike, this is kinda funny to me.

The fear: Old Law and Order script beats are fed into AI and new epsidoes are produced.

The reality: A 1967 book about 20th Century Fox called "The Studio" had a real life scene where producers of various Fox series got in a room and "traded each other's scripts" so that the same story could REPEAT across several series over time. A story from the cop show Felony Squad could be revamped for...Daniel Boone! Word.

"There are only 7 stories" they say in showbiz. Easy enough for AI to duplicate.

But now, you come up with a story about a guy and his mother running an isolated motel down the hill from a Gothic house..THAT's not from AI...

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