by Brian Kellow
224 “Nashville isn’t in final shape yet”: Ibid.
224 “The great American popularity contest”: Ibid.
225 “all of those things”: Ibid.
225 “Altman wants you to be part of the life he shows you”: Ibid.
226 “no longer singing”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 17, 1975).
226 “The main problem I had with Funny Lady”: Ibid.
226 “volatility is gone”: Ibid.
226 “Dear Ray”: Letter from Pauline Kael to Ray Stark, April 15, 1975.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
227 “the funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker, March 3, 1975.
227 “If one can review a film”: The New York Times, March 9, 1975.
227 “The Last Tycoon bombs like a paper bag full of water”: Ibid.
227 “really not very talented”: Jan Stuart, The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 285.
227 “always foaming at the mouth about something”: Ibid.
228 “Nobody got rich”: Author interview with Joan Tewkesbury, February 4, 2009.
228 “In the twilight land of flickering ”: Doctor of Humane Letters citation to Pauline Kael, Haverford College, May 13, 1975.
229 “Cary Grant is your dream date”: Kael, The New Yorker (July 14, 1975).
229 “He draws women to him”: Ibid.
229 “not the modern kind”: Ibid.
229 “We could admire him”: Ibid.
229 “the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 8, 1976).
230 “Michael Ritchie really had the pulse of America”: Author interview with Barbara Feldon, November 4, 2010.
230 “There hasn’t been a small-town comedy in so long”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 6, 1975).
231 “the shocking messiness of love”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 12, 1972).
231 “perceptions of what I thought no one else knew—and I wasn’t telling”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 12, 1972).
231 “romantic and ironic”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1975).
231 “Now it is the bad guys”: Women’s Wear Daily, November 17, 1975.
231 “long literary tradition”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1975).
231 “a powerful, smashingly effective movie”: Ibid.
231 “how crude the poet-paranoid system”: Ibid.
232 “half smile”: Ibid.
232 “so much of a Nicholson role”: Ibid.
232 “externalized approach”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 29, 1975).
232 “As it becomes apparent”: Ibid.
232 “slack-faced and phlegmatic”: Ibid.
232 “his face straining with the effort to be what the Master wants”: Ibid.
232 “Kubrick isn’t taking pictures in order to make movies”: Ibid.
233 “I think it is important to remind everyone”: New York Daily News, January 2, 1976.
233 “intensely, claustrophobically exciting”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 12, 1976).
233 “As the losing battles”: Ibid.
233 “Peckinpah has become so nihilistic”: Ibid.
234 “If God had not meant man to drink”: Letter from Sam Peckinpah to Pauline Kael, December 14, 1976.
234 “She was done completely”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
234 “Miss Wertmuller’s King Kong”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 16, 1976).
234 “If Seven Beauties is all these things, what is it?”: Ibid.
234 “beyond annoyance”: Ibid.
234 “the characters never shut up”: Ibid.
235 “the stated ideas”: Ibid.
235 “raising the consciousness of the masses”: Ibid.
235 “its life-denying spirit”: The Village Voice, February 16, 1976.
235 “may just naturally be an Expressionist”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 9, 1976).
235 “used his own emptiness”: Ibid.
236 “No other film”: Ibid.
236 “He’s still out there!”: Author interview with Joseph Hurley, February 6, 2009.
236 “animation and charm as a movie reviewer”: The New York Times Book Review, April 4, 1976.
236 “I don’t mean to quarrel with Miss Kael’s opinions”: Ibid.
237 “It is always an entertaining book”: Ibid.
237 “What she so often practices now”: The Village Voice, June 11, 1976.
237 “desire to relieve the lonely detachment”: Ibid.
237 “Everything had to be the greatest”: Author interview with Greil Marcus, November 12, 2010.
237 “Did you really mean all that stuff that you wrote about me?”: Ibid.
238 “She just sort of expected”: Ibid.
238 “happy to do any radio or TV that comes up”: Letter from Pauline Kael to William Abrahams, March 16, 1976.
238 “She is not lacking in exigence as an author”: Letter from Peter Davison to Perry Knowlton, June 14, 1976.
238 “too high by far”: Letter from William Abrahams to Perry Knowlton, undated.
239 “as uncomfortable to watch as a backless chair is to sit in”: John Simon, New York (November 15, 1976).
239 “a marvelous toy”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 18, 1976).
239 “shameless, and that’s why—on a certain level—it works”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 29, 1976).
239 “Stallone has the gift of direct communication with the audience”: Ibid.
239 “She screamed at me for doing that”: Author interview with Carrie Rickey, May 9, 2009.
239 “I had proposed back then that the women who directed movies”: Ibid.
239 “Stay away from that feministic stuff ”: Ibid.
240 “a beautiful plot”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 22, 1976).
240 “the wickedest baroque sensibility at large in American movies”: Ibid.
240 “He’s uncommitted to anything except successful manipulation . . . when his camera conveys the motion of dreams”: Ibid.
240 “I think that Brian was just thrilled”: Author interview with Nancy Allen, May 30, 2010.
240 “She liked Brian a lot and there I was, the girlfriend”: Ibid.
241 “a fantasy burlesque”: Women’s Wear Daily, November 12, 1976.
241 “incompetent”: Ibid.
241 “like a Village crazy”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 6, 1976).
241 “is turning us into morons and humanoids”: Ibid.
241 “TV may have altered family life and social intercourse”: Ibid.
241 “directly to the audience—he soapboxes”: Ibid.
241 “the soliloquies going at a machine-gun pace”: Ibid.
241 “I’m as mad as hell”: Paddy Chayevsky, screenplay of Network, 1976.
241 “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse”: Francis Ford Coppola, screenplay of The Godfather, 1972.
242 “I’m not going to write about this one, darling”: Author interview with Lamont Johnson, April 26, 2009.
242 “she acts a virtuous person”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 10, 1977).
242 “a drippy love story about two people who love each other selflessly”: Ibid.
242 “fake gospel”: Ibid.
242 “Streisand has more talent than she knows what to do with”: Ibid.
242 “Yours was the only notice I saw”: Letter from John Gregory Dunne to Pauline Kael, January 24, 1977.
243 “I will remember all my life”: Author interview with Marthe Keller, November 8, 2010.
243 “We had, in private”: Ibid.
243 “Before it started”: Ibid.
243 “a horrible experience”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
243 “She was not comfortable in Europe”: Author interview with Marthe Keller, November 8, 2010.
244 “I
was at Cannes”: Author interview with Robert Altman, June 19, 2004.
244 “You have one person who loves you forever”: Author interview with Marthe Keller, November 8, 2010.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
245 “She respected me because I didn’t lie”: Author interview with Marion Billings, October 23, 2008.
245 “For Marion”: Inscription to Marion Billings from Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
246 “The movie studios aren’t putting up a fight”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (February 28, 1977).
246 “There’s no breather in the picture, no lyricism”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 26, 1977).
246 “no emotional grip”: Ibid.
247 “I told her from the beginning”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
247 “She was quite obsessed with the fact that Hellman was a liar”: Author interview with Richard Albarino, November 9, 2010.
247 “She thought it was ridiculous”: Author interview with Patricia Bosworth, June 28, 2010.
248 “classical humorist”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 10, 1977).
248 “not neurotic or sexually aberrant”: The New York Times, October 31, 1976.
248 “Women in movies have always been defined in terms of men”: The New York Times, October 31, 1976.
248 “pulpy morbidity”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 24, 1977).
248 “erotic, modern-Gothic compulsiveness”: Ibid.
248 “windy jeremiad”: Ibid.
248 “an illustrated lecture on how nice girls go wrong”: Ibid.
248 “It’s what nice people do”: Ibid.
248 “a powerful enough personality”: Ibid.
249 “a child’s playfulness and love of surprises”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 28, 1977).
249 “one of the peerless moments in movie history”: Ibid.
249 “probably the most gifted American director who’s dedicated to sheer entertainment”: Ibid.
249 “how the financially pinched seventies generation ”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 26, 1977).
249 “a TV-commercial version of Art Deco”: Ibid.
249 “There is a thick, raw sensuality that some adolescents have which seems almost preconscious”: Ibid.
250 “a mixture of undeveloped themes”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 20, 1978).
250 “evocative of that messy time”: Ibid.
251 “trying to act without her usual snap”: Ibid.
251 “There’s a strong enough element of self-admiration”: Ibid.
251 “We started before we were ready”: The New York Times, February 19, 1978.
251 “Blue Collar says the system grinds all workers down”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 27, 1978).
252 “It was so much easier in the ‘60s”: Paul Mazurky’s screenplay of An Unmarried Woman, 1978.
252 “PATTI: I mean, everybody I know is either miserable or divorced”: Ibid.
252 “We thought that Martin pissing Erica off”: Author interview with Michael Murphy, October 15, 2009.
252 “There’s this line, and they’re mostly women”: Ibid.
253 “funny and buoyant besides”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 6, 1978).
253 “floating, not-quite-sure not-quite-here quality is just right”: Ibid.
253 “a superb shaggy screenwriter and rarely less than deft”: Ibid.
253 “whether she’s struggling toward independence”: Ibid.
253 “She at that point in her movie criticism was becoming a kineticist”: Author interview with Richard Albarino, November 23, 2009.
254 “Jimmy needs to be an exciting, violent, emotional man”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 13, 1978).
254 “still locked up in the writer-director’s head”: Ibid.
254 “The shock is in the speed of Dreems’s action”: Ibid.
254 “The only time I ever felt Pauline levitate”: Author interview with George Malko, April 15, 2009.
254 “Normality doesn’t interest Toback”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 20, 1978).
254 “You refer to the literary adolescent’s way”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
254 “so far beyond anything in his last film, Carrie”: Ibid.
255 “No Hitchcock thriller was ever so intense”: Ibid.
255 “What she lost was her taste”: Author interview with Joe Regan, November 10, 2010.
CHAPTER TWENTY
256 “Discriminating moviegoers want the placidity of nice art”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker, September 25, 1978.
256 “no desire but to please”: Ibid.
257 “The trucks give the performances in this movie”: Ibid.
257 “took risks”: Author interview with Jeanine Basinger, November 19, 2010.
258 “How can Woody Allen present”: Ibid.
258 “Surely at root the family problem is Jewish”: Ibid.
258 “This droll piece of work is his most majestic so far”: Penelope Gilliatt, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (August 7, 1978).
258 “A wedding. . . . I’m taking this crew, and we’ll be doing weddings”: Author interview with Robert Altman, June 19, 2004.
258 “like a busted bag of marbles”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 25, 1978).
258 “doesn’t like the characters on the screen”: Ibid.
259 “began tuning out on Eva’s tirade”: The Village Voice, November 6, 1978.
259 “as the truth”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 6, 1978).
259 “It’s like the grievances of someone who has just gone into therapy”: Ibid.
260 “He was always pushing her to get out ”: Author interview with Richard Albarino, November 23, 2009.
260 “was cast out in no uncertain terms”: Ibid.
260 “I can remember a couple of times, at least, seeing him turn so red when they would start arguing”: Author interview with William Whitworth, November 30, 2009.
260 “The problem Shawn had with her over and over”: Ibid.
261 “. . . he bats his eyelids”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 27, 1978), galley proof courtesy of William Whitworth.
261 “This piece pushes her earthiness at us”: Ibid.
261 “He’s like a young kid pretending to be an old coot”: Ibid.
261 “Her earthiness, her focus on body functions”: Ibid.
261 “a commercial for cunnilingus”: Ibid.
261 “This has to come out”: Ibid.
261 “long takes and sweeping, panning movements”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 18, 1978).
261 “an astonishing piece of work”: Ibid.
261 “his xenophobic yellow-peril imagination”: Ibid.
262 “traditional isolationist message: Asia should be left to the Asians”: Ibid.
262 “We have come to expect a lot from De Niro: miracles”: Ibid.
262 “Pardon me—he’s someone you babysat!”: Author interview with Daryl Chin, November 16, 2010.
262 “When I see something as huge, as rich”: Letter from Owen Gleiberman to Pauline Kael, March 13, 1979.
262 “the American movie of the year—a new classic”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 15, 1976).
262 “the San Francisco brand of humanity”: Ibid.
263 “a grown-up, quicksilver talent”: Ibid.
263 “such instinct for the camera that even when she isn’t doing anything special”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 13, 1979).
263 “Sweetie, you need a publicist—nobody knows you”: Author interview with Philip Kaufman, May 7, 2009.
263 “She recognized that Body Snatchers was in large part a comedy”: Ibid.
263 “She was obsessed with James Toback”: Author interview with Veronica Cartwright, April 26, 2009.
263 “I had the weirdest feeling she was offended”: Ibid.
264 “Danny Melnick didn’t want to fuck her”: Author interview with Paul Schrader, August 31, 2009.
<
br /> 264 “powerful raw ideas for movies”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 19, 1979).
264 “Schrader doesn’t enter the world of porno”: Ibid.
264 “cautious and maddeningly opaque”: Ibid.
264 “The possibility also comes to mind”: Ibid.
265 “like visual rock”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 5, 1979).
265 “mesmerizing in its intensity”: Ibid.
266 “the risk factor out of financing movies”: In These Times (May 1980).
267 “Now we can be friends again”: Letter from Ray Stark to Pauline Kael, March 29, 1979.
267 “He wanted to hunt her down, and get her”: Author interview with Paul Schrader, August 31, 2009.
267 “There was a fine writer named Pauline”: Undated poem from various staff members of The New Yorker.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
269 “So. . . . Tell me”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
269 “Now I know what Warren meant”: Letter from Kenneth Ziffren to Pauline Kael, 1979.
269 “probably take the whole weekend”: Ibid.
270 “She was keen to break loose from what she had been doing”: Author interview with Kenneth Ziffren, June 19, 2009.
270 “He never wrote or made anything that he hadn’t experienced first”: Author interview with Richard Albarino, November 23, 2009.
270 “I typed about four words”: Ibid.
271 “a blueprint which may or may not work”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
271 “I found it impossible to work with her”: Ibid.
272 “I feel very badly”: Ibid.
272 “He was confused”: Ibid.
273 “You have to let me go back to Las Vegas”: Ibid.
273 “did a masterful job of alienating”: The New York Times, May 15, 1979.
273 “a supercharged, simpleminded creature”: Charles Fleming, High Concept: Donald Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 14.
274 “It was a cake put in my lap”: Author interview with James Toback, May 21, 2009.
274 “Dear Pauline . . . as we discussed last Friday night”: Memo from Don Simpson to Pauline Kael, July 25, 1979.
274 “Eisner and I have reviewed one more time”: Memo from Don Simpson to Pauline Kael, undated.
274 “Warren’s power to charm cannot be overestimated”: Author interview with Buck Henry, April 29, 2009.