ARE MOVIE CRITICS OBSOLETE?A Column by Steve BaileyCopyright © Steve Bailey, 2007. Used by special permission. |
Once again, I am reminded that I am not of my time.
On Oct. 26,
The Florida Times-Union printed Matt Soergel's "farewell" column as a
movie critic. My wife saw the column first and told me about it. When I
pondered whom the T-U might get to replace him, she told me, "Nobody.
They're eliminating the position."
I read the column and sure enough, in
Matt's words,
"The newspaper is reorganizing its newsroom to get the most local
coverage out of the reporters and editors it has…The reasoning
goes: Film reviews are available through wire services, and local news
isn't. So the film critic goes…[I]t's happening throughout this
troubled newspaper business. In Florida it's already claimed critics
(fine ones) in Fort Lauderdale and Tampa."
I well realize that this is not a
catastrophe on the
scale of the Iraqi war or the California wildfires. Still, I think a
pause for reflection on my fallen comrades is worth at least a brief
moment.
First, a full disclosure. I've been a
free-lance
movie reviewer for ten years with Jacksonville Beach's twice-weekly
publication The Beaches Leader. Prior to that, I did movie reviews for
a briefly published bi-weekly called Time Out in 1986, and some theater
reviews for a local publication. So I like to think that I
have at least a
small, frail voice of authority on this matter.
I came of age in the 1970's, when
Americans'
appreciation of movies as an art form was probably at its peak. Movie
classics of the 1930's and '40s played at revival houses in the bigger
cities; in smaller areas, they proliferated on late-night and
independent-station broadcasts. Foreign movies, particularly those of
the New Wave era of the late '40s and '50s, were incessantly discussed,
and they were a major influence on naturalistic movie directors such as
Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese.
Like Steven Spielberg – and believe me, this is where the
similarity ends – I was a lonely kid who grew up soaking up
movies on local TV stations. As a kid and a self-educated film buff, I
believed that any movie that wasn't made before 1945 and didn't star
W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, or the Marx Brothers wasn't worthy
of
immortality.
My coming of age came when I was 16
years old,
reading Richard Schickel's laudatory Time magazine review of Woody
Allen's "Annie Hall." I can still remember the headline: "Woody Allen's
Breakthrough Movie." I had seen a couple of Allen comedies but had
summarily dismissed him as a Groucho Marx knock-off. When I saw "Annie
Hall," I realized there were far more possibilities inherent in movie
comedy than just stringing some jokes together.
After that, I started soaking up great
movies, and
great movie reviewers, every chance I got. As a kid, I started out
reading volumes of reviews from legendary critics such as James Agee
and Pauline Kael. Not that I was an idiot-savant of criticism; I first
read them only after noting that they reviewed some of my heroes such
as Fields and Charlie Chaplin. To my delight, I found that Kael was
still writing, for The New Yorker, and I regularly read her and other
greats. Kael, sadly, died in 2001, but for years I've followed many of
her peers who are still in print, such as The New Republic's Stanley
Kauffmann, ex-Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris (now with The New York
Observer), and the still-terrific Roger Ebert.
The point of all of this name-dropping
is to impress
upon you the importance of movie criticism. Prior to, probably, the New
Wave movement, anyone trying to seriously discuss movies as an art form
would have been laughed out of the room. Though volumes of solid,
incisive movie reviews by many of the writers listed above grace the
shelves of your local library, I wonder if movie criticism isn't still
as derided as the subjects of their reviews once were.
It's hard not to think so, when you hear
that many
newspaper editors are content to pick up syndicated reviews rather than
indulge proven talent or encourage budding writers. Forty years ago,
Roger Ebert was a sports writer before the Sun-Times printed his first
movie review and launched him as a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and TV
commentator. Try to imagine, "It's a Wonderful Life"-style, what the
critical landscape would look like without Ebert's presence. I think it
would be about as grim as Pottersville minus George Bailey.
Matt Soergel wrote that he wished he had
a nickel
for every reader who has told him, "If you like it, I know I'll hate
it." I have a best friend of 30 years who lives in Los Angeles and
maintains the same stance on me, and I'm sure all movie critics can
tell similar stories. But that's missing the point.
I have long maintained that what puts a
good movie
critic above the others is, not that you agree with him on every
review, but that his/her writing is so compelling that you'll read it
every time whether you agree with it or not. A really good critic has
seen hundreds or thousands of movies and doesn't mind noting that he's
seen a hoary plot device in one or several previous films, and he might
even mention the films' names whether you recognize them or not. He
speaks from experience and – sorry to sound lofty – wisdom.
A good movie critic is like a voice in
the
wilderness. If you disagree with him, it probably won't be mildly. If
you agree with him, he's like a lone voice telling you that maybe
you're not insane for loving a barely-released gem or disliking the
flavor-of-the-month that made #1 at the box office this weekend. In
both cases, you've probably followed that critic's work passionately
and will continue to follow him to the end. That's an experience which
I don't think can be provided by a wire-service columnist on the cheap.
Another reason that critics are scoffed
at these
days, no doubt, is the proliferation of opinions on the Internet. Why
bother subscribing to a newspaper to read a critic's opinion, when
hundreds of such viewpoints are available for free on the Web? Lots of
familiar favorites such as Ebert regularly post their reviews for free,
making a subscription to his home publication irrelevant if you're
looking only for his reviews. Heck, why bother following anyone? Just
post your own opinions and develop your own mini-following.
There's something to be said for that,
and for the
Internet as the ultimate symbol of freedom of expression. What's
important to remember is that the Internet doesn't live in a vacuum.
Ebert, for example, is a passionate film critic, but he didn't get that
way just from posting anonymous opinions wherever he could. He trained
himself by endlessly watching movies, and he was no doubt guided and
groomed by his editor and other professionals. There's a reason that
any newspaper writer, much less a movie critic, gets a headshot and a
by-line. And it's because he provides the kind of experience that Joe
Blog can't quite muster.
I say that I am not of my time because I wish that movies were still
taken as seriously, if you will, as they were when I first learned what
an art form movies can be. Nowadays, movies are only one more medium
trying to grab our attention, to be squeezed in between our
recreational time on cable TV, MySpace, YouTube, and Xbox 360. And
"back in the day," a blockbuster was a real event, a "Gone with the
Wind" or "The Godfather," not something to be expected on a weekly
basis. Most movies were rolled out relatively quietly, to a few hundred
theaters, with venues to be added as word-of-mouth made each release
more popular.
Now most movies – even many of the
so-called
smaller ones – are preceded by months of hype and making-of
videos. And if a release doesn't hit it big on its first weekend
– or if, heaven forbid, its box office drops off in the second
weekend – it crawls into a dark corner like a beaten puppy,
hoping for a chance at lesser recognition on its DVD release.
And "cult" films? Forget about it. Old,
forgotten
classics and low-budget flicks that struck a chord in quirky viewers'
hearts could be shown on weekends at midnight, grabbing a little profit
and getting "discovered" by new viewers. "The Rocky Horror Picture
Show" was at first considered a flop because its theaters each brought
in about 50 viewers at a time – until theater managers realized
that it was the *same* 50 viewers every week, and turned it into an
event. If "Rocky Horror" had been released in this era, its studio
would have choked what money it could out of it for a couple of weeks
and banished it to the vault for decades.
And so, the thrill is gone. Movies still
make money,
heaven knows. But theatrical release of a movie is just another money
outlet, on the way to DVD and cable and the big networks – if
studios could figure out how to cash in on a movie without actually
releasing it, they'd surely do it. Likewise, it seems as though modern
movie critics aren't touchstones for habitual readers – they're
like one more person in a crowd, frantically waving and shouting, "Over
here! Listen to me!" So their experience and body of work is devalued
for something we can get either cheaper from a syndicate or for free on
the Web.
Some will say that this column is
self-serving, and
I suppose it is to a degree. But as a frequent movie viewer and as a
critic, I've seen, over and over, the enacting of Joni Mitchell's
lyric: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got
'til it's gone." Generations of viewers have seen the heights that
movies can reach and have often had to settle for the crumbs that
modern filmmakers throw their way. I hope that in the future,
moviegoers who are interested in solid, informed, well-written
critiques will not have to look up from a steady diet of anonymous wire
writers and wonder what they've missed.
Ready
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Copyright © Steve Bailey 2007. Used by Special Permission.