by Brian Kellow
119 “Brian would say, ‘I’ve got only three three minutes of film’”: Author interview with Rutanya Alda, April 26, 2009.
120 “I did my own share of soul-wrestling”: Interview (April 1989).
120 “a direct and lucid movie”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 28, 1968).
120 “almost magical lack of surprise”: Ibid.
120 “In film, concentrating on a few elements gives those elements such importance”: Ibid.
121 “She was sore because she was only paid half a salary”: Author interview with Jane Kramer, February 24, 2009.
122 “There is so much talk now about the art of the film”: Harper’s (February 1969).
122 “because it’s smart in a lot of ways that better-made pictures aren’t”: Ibid.
122 “But they are almost the maximum of what we’re now getting from American movies”: Ibid.
122 “At the movies we want a different kind of truth”: Ibid.
122 “connects with their lives in an immediate”: Ibid.
123 “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t admit”: Ibid.
123 “obscenely self-important”: Ibid.
123 “a celebration of cop-out”: Ibid.
123 “to think of himself as a myth-maker”: Ibid.
123 “Trash has given us an appetite for art”: Ibid.
123 “She’s such a sweet girl”: Tagline for Pretty Poison.
124 “When I discovered that Pretty Poison had opened without advance publicity or screenings”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 2, 1968).
124 “When she was on somebody’s side”: Author interview with Lorenzo Semple, Jr., October 5, 2008.
124 “I’m going to bring a friend along”: Ibid.
124 “a habit of hers when she went out to dinner”: Ibid.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
125 “the spray of venom”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (September 27, 1969).
125 “grotesque shock effects”: Ibid.
125 “the simple, Of Mice and Men kind of relationship at the heart of it”: Ibid.
126 “What is new about Easy Rider”: Ibid.
127 “a basic decency and intelligence in his work”: Ibid.
127 “really seem to have the style for anything”: Ibid.
127 “facetious Western”: Ibid.
127 “destroys one’s sense of mood and time and place”: Life (October 24, 1969).
127 “The dialogue is all banter”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 27, 1969).
127 “Listen, you miserable bitch”: Letter from George Roy Hill to Pauline Kael, September 26, 1969.
128 “Americans talk a lot about marital infidelity”: Columbia Pictures publicity handout, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
128 “I felt obliged to note that I did not believe”: New York Daily News, October 6, 1969.
128 “When it was offered to me”: Author interview with Elliott Gould, June 13, 2009.
128 “unpleasant”: The New York Times, September 17, 1969.
128 “I read Canby’s review”: Author interview with Paul Mazursky, September 2, 2009.
129 “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a slick, whorey movie”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 4, 1969).
129 “taken the series of revue sketches”: Ibid.
129 “looks a bit like Lauren Bacall and a bit like Jeanne Moreau”: Ibid.
129 “Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind”: Author interview with Dyan Cannon, June 13, 2009.
129 “probably the most sophisticated intelligence”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 18, 1969).
129 “the most insidious kind of enemy”: Ibid.
129 “High School is so familiar”: Ibid.
130 “Many of us grow to hate documentaries”: Ibid.
130 “Joe is a very soft-spoken, kind guy”: Author interview with Frederick Wiseman, October 8, 2008.
130 “The impression I had was that she felt I didn’t need her”: Ibid.
130 “Dear Sir: I think I’ve figured it out”: Letter from Cornelius Freeman to The New Yorker, November 28, 1969.
130 “There was a time”: Letter from Leslie E. Jones to The New Yorker, November 1969.
130 “They’re looking for ‘truth’ ”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 27, 1969).
131 “Grim”: Author interview with Carrie Rickey, May 9, 2009.
131 “How’re you going to feed it?”: James Poe and Robert E. Thompson, screenplay of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, 1969.
131 “I’m tired of losing!”: Ibid.
131 “She doesn’t try to save some ladylike part of herself ”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 20, 1969).
132 “a good chance of personifying American tensions”: Ibid.
132 “Somewhere along the line”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 3, 1970).
132 “is alive to”: Ibid.
132 “to be liberated from period clothes”: Ibid.
132 “not using decadence as a metaphor for Naziism”: Ibid.
132 “Visconti, though drawn to excess”: Ibid.
132 “I have rarely seen a picture I enjoyed less”: Ibid.
133 “a B-25 pilot”: Twentieth Century–Fox publicity handout, M*A*S*H.
133 “Bob had gotten fired from Warners”: Author interview with George Litto, June 4, 2010.
133 “Did you hear that?”: Author interview with Rene Auberjonois, September 2, 2009.
133 “He was referring to a conversation”: Ibid.
134 “I remember the sound engineer”: Ibid.
134 “Donald Sutherland and I became very close during the process”: Author interview with Elliott Gould, June 13, 2009.
135 “We were completely under the radar”: Author interview with Rene Auberjonois, September 2, 2009.
135 “This picture wasn’t released—it escaped”: Robert Altman, interview for Twentieth Century–Fox DVD release, M*A*S*H.
135 “a marvelously unstable comedy”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 24, 1970).
135 “competence is one of the values the movie respects”: Ibid.
135 “I’ve rarely heard four-letter words used so exquisitely well”: Ibid.
135 “When the dialogue overlaps”: Ibid.
135 “Many of the best recent American movies leave you feeling”: Ibid.
136 “His pictures showed life taking its course”: Author interview with Elliott Gould, June 13, 2009.
136 “After so many movies that come on strong”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 4, 1970).
136 “Pauline Kael is my favorite movie critic”: The New York Times, undated.
137 “While I miss the polemics”: Ibid.
137 “One doesn’t want to talk about how Tolstoi got his effects”: Pauline Kael, “Trash, Art and the Movies”: Harper’s (February 1969).
137 “By neglecting to analyze technique”: The New York Times Book Review, February 22, 1970.
137 “About film art”: Ibid.
137 “In her youth, as the author avows”: Ibid.
139 “I never adapted to New York”: People (April 18, 1983).
139 “for her film criticism”: Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, May 26, 1970.
140 “Gimme a P, Gimme a G”: Letter from Michael B. Pulman, Department of History, Florida State University, to The New Yorker, May 23, 1971.
140 “could focus under the most intense sedation—alcohol”: Author interview with Jane Kramer, February 24, 2009.
141 “My sense was that they stayed out of each other’s way almost intentionally”: Ibid.
141 “My personal feeling—more than personally—is that Pauline did not have any respect, particularly, for Penelope”: Author interview with Sally Ann Mock, February 27, 2009.
CHAPTER TWELVE
143 “there was an obvious hunger for film”: Toby Talbot, The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 53.
144
“at one end of the table were the intellectuals”: Author interview with Judith Crist, July 17, 2008.
144 “I always felt that there was an assumption”: Author interview with Kathleen Carroll, February 25, 2009.
144 “Headliners and by-liners help us do the job”: The New York Times, September 15, 1968.
145 “I have slept through more productions of this dated play”: New York Daily News, June 1, 1973.
145 “Well, when he shows up at screenings”: Author interview with Judith Crist, July 17, 2008.
146 “Pauline! Of course, you come to all the finest pictures”: Author interview with John Simon, March 6, 2008.
146 “There were a lot of directors”: Author interview with Paul Schrader, August 31, 2009.
146 “It used to be that understood that no matter how low your estimate of the public intelligence was”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (October 3, 1970).
147 “no contemporary American subject provided a better test of the new movie freedom than student unrest”: Ibid.
147 “the recently developed political consciousness”: Ibid.
147 “slanted to feed the paranoia of youth”: Ibid.
147 “members of the audience responded on cue”: Ibid.
147 “manipulation of the audience is so shrewdly, single-mindedly commercial”: Ibid.
148 “not caring, and not believing anything”: Ibid.
148 “She owned Gina”: Author interview with Charles Simmons, June 29, 2009.
149 “tone deaf about the effects of things on people”: Author interview with Dana Salisbury, September 20, 2009.
149 “I think George lifted Barbra, in a way”: Author interview with Buck Henry, April 27, 2009.
149 “Were Hepburn and Tracy this good together”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 14, 1970).
149 “to see Streisand”: Ibid.
149 “like thousands of girls”: Ibid.
150 “a good idea in theory, a bad one in practice”: Kevin Brownlow, David Lean: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 585.
150 “no driving emotional energy”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 21, 1970).
150 “gush made respectable”: Ibid.
150 “a lousy lay”: Brownlow, 586.
151 “We’ll give you color”: Ibid.
151 “The book has been promoted from the start”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 26, 1970).
151 “should bring joy to millions”: New York Daily News, January 12, 1971.
151 “It deals in private passion at a time when we are exhausted from public defeats”: Ibid.
152 “You don’t want to be a minister”: Paul Schrader, Schrader on Schrader & Other Writings (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), 291.
152 “some cold chitchat”: Ibid., 292.
153 “I don’t trust critics who say they care only for the highest and the best”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 23, 1971).
153 “free-spirited”: Ibid.
153 “have been so sold on Pop and so saturated with it that they appear to have lost their bearings in the arts”: Ibid.
153 “In most cases, the conglomerates”: Ibid.
153 “they understand that their job is dependent on keeping everybody happy”: Ibid.
154 “I don’t have any doubts about movies being a great art form”: Ibid.
154 “summery richness”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 20, 1971).
154 “no emotional head of steam”: Ibid.
154 “Our desire for grace and seductive opulence is innocent”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 27, 1971).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
156 “You have no say at all”: Patrick McGilligan, Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
157 “I hear you’re pretty good in seminars but boring as a lecturer”: Author interview with Howard Suber, July 28, 2010.
158 “Why would the biggest film critic in America”: Ibid.
158 “all the time, but not as a distinguished visitor”: Author interview with Tom Mankiewicz, December 16, 2008.
159 “bitter experiences”: Howard Suber interview with Sara Mankiewicz, housed at the Lilly Library, Indiana University.
159 “A brand-new bicycle”: Ibid.
160 “to write and produce a work of fiction”: Deposition of Orson Welles, April 1949.
160 “When an actor becomes the role offstage”: Note written by Pauline Kael, housed at the Lilly Library.
161 “Well . . . it’s a trivial point”: Author interview with Howard Suber, July 28, 2010.
161 “Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture”: Pauline Kael, “Onward and Upward with the Arts,” The New Yorker (February 20/27, 1971).
161 “Citizen Kane . . . isn’t a work of special depth”: Ibid.
161 “conceived and acted as entertainment in a popular style”: Ibid.
162 “conventional schoolbook explanations for greatness”: Ibid.
162 “to miss what makes it such an American triumph”: Ibid.
162 “never been rivaled in wit and exuberance”: Ibid.
162 “may for a brief period”: Ibid.
162 “When I got into it”: Ibid.
162 “idiotic indiscretion”: Ibid.
163 “Men cheated of their due”: Ibid.
163 “such worship generally doesn’t help”: Ibid.
163 “Welles isn’t in it”: Ibid.
163 “Gothic atmosphere”: Ibid.
163 “I already know what happened”: Author interview with Howard Suber, July 28, 2010.
163 “had been advertised as a one-man show”: Kael, “Onward and Upward,” The New Yorker (February 20/27, 1971).
164 “has lived all his life in a cloud of failure”: Ibid.
164 “98% hustling and 2% moviemaking”: DVD, Citizen Kane, Turner Home Entertainment, 2001.
164 “a first-rate account and I am a better man for having read it”: Letter from Nunnally Johnson to Pauline Kael, March 5, 1971.
164 “the references to Mank’s drinking”: Ibid.
164 “There have always been the Welles idolators”: Author interview with Tom Mankiewicz, December 16, 2008.
164 “a highly intelligent and entertaining study”: The New York Times, October 31, 1971.
164 “superficial and without one quotable line”: Ibid.
164 “he was the one who did in fact put it all together”: Ibid.
165 “loaded with error and faulty supposition presented as fact”: Esquire (June 1972).
165 “were to collaborate in writing the prefatory material to the published screenplay”: Ibid.
165 “full credit for whatever use she made of it”: Ibid.
165 “That is 100 percent, whole-cloth lying”: Esquire (June 1972).
165 “vivified the material”: Ibid.
165 “twaddle”: Ibid.
166 “The revisions made by Welles”: Ibid.
167 “How am I going to answer this?”: Author interview with Peter Bogdanovich, September 26, 2009.
167 “Don’t answer”: Ibid.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
168 “I don’t really care much about the story in a film”: Commentary by Robert Altman, DVD, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Warner Bros., 2002.
169 “saddened and disgusted”: Rona Barrett broadcast, Channel 5, June 2, 1971.
169 “rated R, presumably for rotten”: Ibid.
169 “got up and walked out”: Ibid.
169 “McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a beautiful pipe dream of a movie”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (July 3, 1971).
169 “so indirect in method”: Ibid.
169 “the theatrical convention that movies have generally clung to”: Ibid.
169 “Will a large enough American public accept”: Ibid.
170 “Seeing Sunday Bloody Sunday”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 2, 1971).
170 “MRS. GRENVILLE: Darling, you keep throwing
in your hand”: Penelope Gilliatt, Sunday Bloody Sunday: The Original Screenplay of the John Schlesinger Film (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971), 89.
171 “Peter Finch’s Dr. Daniel Hirsh”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 2, 1971).
171 “the characters here all are coping”: Ibid.
171 “instantly recognizable as a classic”: Ibid.
171 “lost his stridency”: Ibid.
171 “what few people who write for the screen think to do”: Ibid.
171 “mistake the film for the filmmaker”: Author interview with William Friedkin, May 10, 2008.
172 “bland, barren, gray look”: The Village Voice, February 24, 1972.
172 “It’s a dismal town”: Ibid.
172 “I have visions of Pauline Kael in the year 2001”: Ibid., October 14, 1971.
172 “turn into a bludgeon to beat other filmmakers with”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 9, 1971).
172 “worked-up, raunchy melodrama”: Ibid.
172 “exploitative of human passions and miseries”: Ibid.
172 “a lovingly exact history of American small-town life”: Ibid.
172 “perhaps what TV soap opera would be if it were more honest”: Ibid.
173 “For several decades”: Ibid.
173 “still feeling that they represented something preferable ”: Ibid.
173 “part of the truth of American experience”: Ibid.
173 “Pauline misses the point”: Author interview with Peter Bogdanovich, September 26, 2009.
173 “It would have taken Winchester’73”: Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show (New York: Dial Press, 1966), 204.
173 “If Bogdanovich replaces Hopper”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 9, 1971).
174 “I told him that Pauline had said it was a picture that even Richard Nixon would like”: Author interview with Peter Bogdanovich, September 26, 2009.
174 “I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not”: Ibid.
174 “I thought Pauline was deaf to feminism”: Author interview with Karen Durbin, January 12, 2010.
175 “the best high of all”: Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, screenplay of Panic in Needle Park, 1971.
175 “everyone seems to be dressed for a mad ball”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 30, 1971).
175 “It is literally true”: Ibid.
175 “often irrational and horrifying brutal”: Ibid.