Pauline Kael

by Brian Kellow

  175 “extraordinarily well made”: Ibid.

  175 “what we once feared mass entertainment might become”: Ibid.

  176 “primarily an American Jewish contribution”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 13, 1971).

  176 “probably the only successful attempt ”: Ibid.

  176 “the Jews as an oppressed people”: Ibid.

  176 “self-hatred and self-infatuation”: Ibid.

  176 “Younger members of the audience—particularly if they are Jewish”: Ibid.

  176 “Thank you for your in depth critique”: Letter from Norman Jewison to Pauline Kael, March 15, 1972.

  177 “man in his natural state”: The New York Times, January 4, 1972.

  177 “directed toward cuteness at every opportunity”: Life (February 4, 1972).

  177 “a viciously rigged game”: Ibid.

  177 “If such a catastrophe has indeed occurred”: The Village Voice, December 20, 1971.

  177 “a victory in which we share”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 1, 1971).

  177 “symptomatic of a new attitude in movies”: Ibid.

  177 “corrupt”: Ibid.

  178 “At the movies”: Ibid.

  178 “right-wing fantasy”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 15, 1972).

  179 “falling to the water in an instant extended to eternity”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 29, 1972).

  179 “take the façade of movie violence”: The New York Times, February 26, 1995.

  179 “got so wound up in the aesthetics of violence”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 21, 1970).

  179 “profoundly depressing”: Letter from Sam Peckinpah to Pauline Kael, May 22, 1970.

  180 “You can’t make violence real to audiences today”: Kevin J. Hayes, Sam Peckinpah Interviews (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2008), 102.

  180 “The vision of Straw Dogs is narrow and puny”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 28, 1972).

  180 “intuitions as a director are infinitely superior to his thinking”: Ibid.

  180 “stale anti-intellectualism”: Ibid.

  180 “one of the few truly erotic sequences in film”: Ibid.

  180 “the punches that subdue the wife”: Ibid.

  180 “The rape has heat to it”: Ibid.

  180 “The thesis that man is irretrievably bad and corrupt is the essence of fascism”: The New York Times, January 2, 1972.

  180 “What I am saying, I fear”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 29, 1972).

  180 “Fascist, God how I hate that word”: Letter from Sam Peckinpah to Pauline Kael, February 21, 1973.

  181 “Doesn’t Kael know anything about sex?”: Hayes, 100.

  181 “Cabaret is a great movie musical”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 19, 1972).

  181 “distinctive, acrid flavor—a taste of death on the tongue”: Ibid.

  182 “The grotesque amorality in Cabaret is frightening”: Ibid.

  182 “you can create a new organic whole”: Ibid.

  182 “the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 18, 1972).

  182 “tenaciously intelligent”: Ibid.

  182 “mellowed in recent years”: Ibid.

  183 “those old men who carry never-ending grudges”: Ibid.

  183 “Organized crime is not a rejection of Americanism”: Ibid.

  183 “one of the most intricately balanced moral dilemmas imaginable”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 25, 1972).

  183 “Inexplicably”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  186 “improbable one”: Author interview with Erhard Dortmund, February 9, 2009.

  186 “She would throw a little dart in”: Author interview with James Wolcott, August 3, 2010.

  187 “Sometimes I would just sit there silent as a stone”: Author interview with James Morgenstern, May 8, 2009.

  187 “She thought that the editorial department should be doing more”: Author interview with Hoyt Spelman, January 15, 2009.

  187 “fossil”: Author interview with Joseph Morgenstern, May 8, 2009.

  188 “Pauline was one of the women”: Author interview with Karen Durbin, January 12, 2010.

  188 “that a Negro family can be as dreary as a white family”: “Trash, Art and the Movies”: Harper’s (February 1969).

  188 “never pushes a moment too hard”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (September 30, 1972).

  188 “the singular good fortune”: Ibid.

  188 “to strive for classical plainness”: The New York Times, September 25, 1972.

  188 “no resemblance whatsoever to reality as I observed it”: The New York Times, November 12, 1972.

  188 “Are they available only for fantasies”: Life (October 20, 1972).

  189 “heavy and glazed”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 4, 1972).

  189 “Factually it’s a fraud, but emotionally it delivers”: Ibid.

  189 “Pop music provides immediate emotional gratifications”: Ibid.

  189 “want Billie Holiday’s hard, melancholic sound”: Ibid.

  190 “Everything outside this place is bullshit”: Bernardo Bertolucci and Franco Arcalli, screenplay of Last Tango in Paris, 1972.

  191 “our marriage was nothing more than a foxhole for you”: Ibid.

  191 “Listen, you dumb dodo”: Ibid.

  191 “drenched”: Author interview with George Malko, April 15, 2009.

  191 “Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 28, 1972).

  192 “having a seizure onstage”: Ibid.

  192 “a study of the aggression in masculine sexuality”: Ibid.

  192 “Americans seem to have lost the capacity for being scandalized”: Ibid.

  192 “might have been easier on some”: Ibid.

  192 “this is a movie people will be arguing about”: Ibid.

  192 “I’ve tried to describe”: Ibid.

  193 “Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 28, 1972).

  193 “I remember we came out of the movie”: Author interview with Charles Simmons, June 29, 2009.

  193 “I saw Last Tango, not with her”: Ibid.

  193 “stylistically wasteful and excessive”: The Village Voice, February 1, 1973.

  193 “its best scenes are isolated from each other”: Ibid.

  194 “Under ordinary circumstances”: Ibid.

  194 “That . . . was her last tango with Sarris”: Author interview with Hoyt Spelman, January 15, 2009.

  194 “the ultimate princess fantasy”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 11, 1972).

  194 “too sensitive for this world”: Ibid.

  194 “ridiculously swank”: Ibid.

  194 “a writer’s performance”: Ibid.

  195 “wanted Frank Perry to direct”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 11, 1972).

  195 “I replied that actually we wanted Sam Peckinpah to do the picture”: Letter from John Gregory Dunne to Pauline Kael, November 20, 1972.

  195 “a simple matter of economics”: Ibid.

  195 “I confess a certain ambivalence about the book”: Letter from John Gregory Dunne to Pauline Kael, December 5, 1972.

  196 “Sorry you didn’t get my crude attempt”: Letter from Sam Peckinpah to Pauline Kael, February 21, 1973.

  196 “be made into such a shitty film”: Ibid.

  196 “Rex and Judith loved”: Ibid.

  196 “I trust instinct more than any study of logical conclusions”: David Thompson, Altman on Altman (London: Faber & Faber, 2006), 74.

  196 “almost frighteningly non-repetitive”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 23, 1972).

  197 “He made me sit down and write a postcard to Pauline Kael”: Author interview with Rene Auberjonois, September 2, 2009.

  197 “grimly controlled”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 30, 1972).

  197 “an unnecessarily confined and schoolmarmish performance”: Ibid.

  197 “
a new kind of hip and casually smart screen actor”: Ibid.

  198 “Jeremiah signals him back, giving him the finger”: Ibid.

  198 “only assume that by that point you were so bored with the film”: Letter from Sydney Pollack to Pauline Kael, January 5, 1973.

  198 “to save me the buck twenty”: Letter from Robert Getchell to Pauline Kael, December 31, 1972.

  198 “The idea should be for them to keep going with lots of engagement”: Note by Pauline Kael on screenplay of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974.

  199 “a record of the interaction of movies and our national life”: Pauline Kael, Deeper into Movies (Boston: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1973), xv.

  199 “Right now, movie critics have an advantage”: Ibid.

  199 “Right now, movie criticism in America seems livelier”: The New York Times Book Review, February 18, 1973.

  199 “crisp sentences”: Ibid.

  199 “aggressive wit”: Ibid.

  199 “she brings to her movies a grounding in literary culture”: Ibid.

  199 “Sometimes she drops into a sort of brawling”: Ibid.

  199 “excessive praise”: Ibid.

  199 “I suspect either that, as a result of seeing too many movies”: Ibid.

  200 “the worst movie that I’ve stayed to see”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 20, 1968).

  200 “self-satire”: The New York Times Book Review, July 23, 1973.

  200 “slow reaction time made her seem daffy”: Ibid.

  200 “Who knows what to think about Marilyn Monroe ”: Ibid.

  200 “to cosmic proportions”: Ibid.

  201 “His strength—when he gets rolling”: Ibid.

  201 “a rip-off all right”: Ibid.

  201 “a runaway string of perceptions ”: Ibid.

  201 “Mailer’s way to perform character assassination”: Ibid.

  201 “malevolence that needs to be recognized”: Ibid.

  201 “What for?”: Pauline Kael, Introduction, For Keeps, (New York: Dutton, 1994), iii.

  201 “That’s right”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  202 “I live in a rather special world”: Newsweek (February, 1973).

  202 “The Watergate hearings”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (October 1, 1973).

  202 “The Vietnam War has barely been mentioned on the screen”: Ibid.

  202 “there was no virtuous side to identify with”: Ibid.

  202 “a depressive uncertainty”: Ibid.

  202 “When Vietnam finished off the American hero as a righter of wrongs”: Ibid.

  203 “corruption seems to be inescapable”: Ibid.

  203 “perhaps someone in the head office at Fox”: Ibid.

  203 “I invited her to lunch”: Author interview with Lamont Johnson, April 6, 2009.

  203 “I am sorry to say”: Author interview with Judith Crist, July 17 2008.

  204 “a fuckin’ politician”: Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin, screenplay of Mean Streets, 1973.

  204 “a true original of our period”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 8, 1973).

  204 “breaks out so unexpectedly”: Ibid.

  204 “the psychological connections”: Ibid.

  204 “We were easily discouraged”: Joyce Maynard, “I Remember,” New York (August 18, 1975).

  206 “It’s amazing how decisions are forced upon us willy-nilly”: Arthur Laurents’s screenplay of The Way We Were, 1973.

  206 “it’s hardly the definitive film about McCarthyism”: American Film (April 1978).

  206 “a torpedoed ship full of gaping holes which comes snugly into port”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 15, 1973).

  206 “bewildering”: Ibid.

  206 “miraculous audience empathy”: Ibid.

  206 “caught the spirit of the hysterical Stalinist workhorses”: Ibid.

  206 “defensive and aggressive in the same breath”: Ibid.

  206 “a gradual conquest of the movie public”: Ibid.

  206 “hit entertainment and maybe even memorable entertainment”: Ibid.

  207 “Maybe the reason some people have difficulty getting into Altman’s wavelength”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 22, 1973).

  207 “He’s not a pusher”: Ibid.

  208 “when you hear the improvised dialogue”: Ibid.

  208 “But I understand Pauline”: Author interview with Elliott Gould, September 9, 2009.

  208 “an erratic comic genius”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 31, 1973).

  208 “found a nonaggressive way”: Ibid.

  208 “essential sanity”: Ibid.

  208 “the base from which he takes flight”: Ibid.

  208 “without the lapses that had found”: Ibid.

  208 “Allen’s new sense of control over the medium”: Ibid.

  209 “The battered adolescent . . . still thinks that’s the secret of happiness”: Ibid.

  210 “When you see him on TV”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 7, 1974).

  210 “learning about the Catholic Church while I was doing that film”: Author interview with William Friedkin, May 10, 2008.

  210 “no indication that Blatty”: Ibid.

  210 “The whole movie was balanced on that”: Author interview with William Friedkin, May 10, 2008.

  210 “I wonder about those four-hundred and ninety-nine mothers”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 7, 1974).

  210 “the biggest recruiting poster”: Ibid.

  210 “I found it wrong-headed”: Author interview with William Friedkin, May 10, 2008.

  211 “I remember her walking in”: Author interview with Joan Tewkesbury, February 4, 2009.

  211 “What you got was this sense of women”: Ibid.

  211 “the pensive, delicate romanticism of McCabe, but it isn’t hesitant or precarious”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 4, 1974).

  211 “saphead objectivity”: Pauline Kael, Time (March 14, 1968).

  211 “Robert Altman spoils other directors’ films for me”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 4, 1974).

  212 “Pauline Kael saved McCabe & Mrs. Miller”: Letter from Grover Sales to Pauline Kael, October 22, 1973.

  212 “In terms of the pleasure that technical assurance gives an audience”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 18, 1974).

  212 “If there is such a thing as a movie sense”: Ibid.

  212 “an intellectualized movie—shrewd and artful”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 18, 1974).

  213 “I guess you didn’t know that Terry is like a son to me”: Modern Maturity (March–April, 1998).

  213 “Tough shit, Bill”: Ibid.

  213 “Movie criticism is a happy, frustrating, slightly mad job”: Pauline Kael, acceptance speech, National Book Awards, April 18, 1974.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  214 “With her review of Last Tango, I think”: Author interview with Howard Kissel, July 2, 2008.

  214 “I would say film critics have power ”: Ibid.

  214 “the reputations of virtually every writer in town”: David Denby, “My Life as a Paulette,” The New Yorker (October 20, 2003).

  215 “those who didn’t turn away in anger”: Ibid.

  215 “It’s shit, honey”: Ibid.

  215 “You’re too restless to be a writer”: Ibid.

  215 “I’ve thought about this seriously, honey”: Ibid.

  215 “Ray, his face cast down into his shrimp and rice”: Ibid.

  216 “the emotional resources”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (December 23, 1974).

  217 “about midway”: Ibid.

  217 “Is it our imagination”: Ibid.

  217 “the physical audacity”: Ibid.

  217 “openhanded”: Ibid.

  217 “the sensibility at work”: Ibid.

  217 “a magnificent piece”: Letter from Penelope Gilliatt to Pauline Kael, December 17, 1974.

  217 “in a position”: Kael, The New Yorker (August 5, 1975).

  217 “didn’t
plan on The Conversation being a success”: Ibid.

  218 “audiences like movies that do all the work for them”: Ibid.

  218 “The movie companies used to give all their pictures a chance”: Ibid.

  218 “Perhaps no work of art is possible without belief in the audience”: Ibid.

  219 “really care about the business end”: Letter from Fred Goldberg to Pauline Kael, August 22, 1974.

  219 “a hell of a writer”: Ibid.

  219 “strikingly well-edited”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 14, 1974).

  219 “complete without us”: Ibid.

  219 “the secret of gambling ”: Ibid.

  219 “The poor bastard who buys a two-dollar ticket”: Ibid.

  219 “I always enjoy reading you”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.

  220 “For a while I just felt awkward: Ibid.

  220 “a lot of characters”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 14, 1974).

  220 “She never liked to talk about being Jewish”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.

  220 “She thought, ‘I’m just what he was”: Ibid.

  220 “one of the rare films that genuinely deserve to be called controversial”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 13, 1975).

  221 “the first angry-young-woman movie”: Ibid.

  221 “Burstyn appears to be”: Ibid.

  221 “The trouble with Ellen Burstyn’s performance is that she’s playing against something instead of playing a character”: Ibid.

  221 “so many of those discordant notes”: Ibid.

  222 “might have been no more than a saucy romp ”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 17, 1975).

  222 “the emotional climate of the time and place”: Ibid.

  222 “an easy role”: Ibid.

  222 “the most virtuoso example of sophisticated kaleidoscopic farce”: Ibid.

  223 “She was very entertaining and interesting and funny about herself”: Author interview with Michael Murphy, October 15, 2009.

  223 “I always had a feeling about Pauline”: Ibid.

  223 “Bob was very flattered by how wonderful she thought he was”: Author interview with Sue Barton, October 23, 2008.

  224 “That’s what the screening was for”: Jan Stuart, The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 281.

  224 “Is there such a thing as an orgy for movie-lovers”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 3, 1975).