by Brian Kellow
275 “You are trying to destroy my career from the inside”: Author interview with Paul Schrader, August 31, 2009.
276 “I suppose, Professor Berwind”: Author interview with Sandra Berwind, February 21, 2009.
277 “Frankly, many producers aren’t doing the job that they should”: The Hollywood Reporter, May 16, 1980.
277 “You work for a long time to become a writer”: Remarks by Pauline Kael at Visiting Writers Symposium at Vanderbilt University, March 26, 1980.
278 “He went into a long explanation”: Author interview with William Whitworth, November 30, 2009.
278 “I had the feeling that what had happened to her there shocked her”: Author interview with Jeanine Basinger, November 19, 2010.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
279 “What has happened, I think”: The New York Times Book Review, April 6, 1980.
279 “Whatever mellowness has crept into her writing”: Ibid.
279 “When Pauline scolds the industry”: The Village Voice, July 2–8, 1980.
279 “a more candid critic than Pauline”: Ibid.
280 “Why are you shaking?”: Audio interview between Pauline Kael and Ray Sawhill, 2000.
280 “He has a way of making us feel that we’re in on a joke”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (June 9, 1980).
280 “His performance begins to seem cramped, slightly robotized”: Ibid.
281 “Very soon they’re likely to be summoning ”: Kael, The New Yorker (June 23, 1980).
281 “discovered how to take the risk out of moviemaking”: Ibid.
282 “readiness for a visionary, climactic, summing-up movie”: Ibid.
282 “an incoherent mess”: Television interview with Pauline Kael, Live at Five, fall 1982.
282 “a quality of flushed transparency”: Kael, The New Yorker (July 21, 1980).
282 “perfected a near-surreal poetic voyeurism—the stylized expression of a blissfully dirty mind”: Kael, The New Yorker (August 4, 1980).
283 “continued to believe that movie criticism”: The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
283 “jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless”: Ibid.
283 “an entirely new style of ad hominem brutality and intimidation”: Ibid.
284 “She is a lively writer with a lot of common sense”: The New Leader (March 30, 1973).
284 “lost any notion of the legitimate borders of polemic”: The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
284 “sexual conduct, deviance”: Ibid.
284 “just a belch from the Nixon era”: Ibid.
284 “you can’t cut through the crap in her”: Ibid.
284 “plastic turds”: Ibid.
284 “tumescent filmmaking”: Ibid.
284 “the mock rhetorical question”: Ibid.
284 “Were these 435 prints processed in a sewer?”: Ibid.
284 “Where was the director?”: Ibid.
284 “How can you have any feelings”: Ibid.
284 “rarely saying anything”: Ibid.
284 “a new breakthrough in vulgarity”: Ibid.
284 “free to write what”: Ibid.
284 “to accommodate her work”: Ibid.
285 “It is difficult, with these reviews”: Ibid.
285 “Princess Renata”: The Village Voice, August 6–12, 1980.
285 “when not dusting off her diplomas”: Ibid.
285 “Renata Adler should see a psychiatrist”: Letter from Michael Sragow to Pauline Kael, July 28, 1980.
285 “one of the dunces of the profession”: New York, August 11, 1980.
285 “That’s just how Renata reacts to Pauline”: Ibid.
285 “shouldn’t happen to anyone”: Letter from Penelope Gilliatt to Pauline Kael, July 30, 1980.
286 “I’m sorry that Ms. Adler doesn’t respond to my writing”: Time (July 27, 1980).
286 “a kinetic-action director to the bone”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 29, 1980).
286 “a furious aliveness in this picture”: Ibid.
286 “a comedy without a speck of sitcom aggression”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 13, 1980).
286 “The Elephant Man has the power and some of the dream logic of a silent film”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1980).
287 “He only shows you what you see anyway”: Pauline Kael, undated notes taken after a screening of Annie Hall, 1977.
287 “What man in his forties”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1980).
287 “Throughout Stardust Memories . . . Sandy is superior to all those who talk about his work”: Ibid.
287 “When you do comedy”: Ibid.
287 “a new national hero”: Ibid.
287 “a horrible betrayal”: Ibid.
287 “If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting”: Ibid.
288 “a biography of the genre of prizefight films”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 8, 1980).
288 “it’s also about movies and about violence”: Ibid.
288 “You can feel the director sweating for greatness”: Ibid.
288 “What De Niro does in this picture isn’t acting”: Ibid.
289 “I would say that of all the nonfiction writers”: Author interview with Daniel Menaker, April 1, 2009.
289 “She wanted someone to help make sure”: Ibid.
289 “I don’t think she had a snobby bone in her body”: Ibid.
289 “She loved to provoke Shawn”: Ibid.
289 “I think they really got off”: Ibid.
290 “Painting, painting, painting!” Author interview with Warner Friedman, August 12, 2009.
290 “Here comes Ma Barker and her gang”: Vanity Fair, April 1997.
291 “You make me so mad!”: Author interview with Polly Frost, March 20, 2009.
291 “Most of her criticism was not that hard”: Author interview with Michael Sragow, September 12, 2008.
292 “Pauline had enormous insight into people”: Author interview with David Edelstein, July 31, 2009.
292 “She was watching them, like a movie”: Author interview with Linda Allen, November 14, 2009.
292 “Well”: Author interview with Carrie Rickey, May 9, 2009.
293 “The conversation was over”: Ibid.
293 “I thought . . . I was fine when I was an acolyte”: Ibid.
293 “It’s a movie you want to deface”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 22, 1980).
293 “Little Sheba might not Come Back but don’t worry”: John Guare, The War Against the Kitchen Sink (Smith & Kraus: Lyme, New Hampshire, 1996), x, xi.
294 “You’re not stuck with the usual dramatic apparatus”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 23, 1980).
294 “Though I have a better time”: Ibid.
294 “using their power in the same direction that the businessmen of the movies are”: Debate between Jean-Luc Godard and Pauline Kael, reprinted in Camera Obscura, 1982.
294 “It has a lot of magnificent things”: Ibid.
294 “It was a chilling ride back to the city”: Author interview with Sydney Goldstein, February 20, 2009.
295 “could become commonplace”: Kael, The New Yorker (June 25, 1981).
295 “time to breathe”: Ibid.
295 “weren’t hooked on the crap of his childhood”: Ibid.
295 “the first movie in which De Palma”: Kael, The New Yorker (July 27, 1981).
295 “hallucinatory”: Ibid.
295 “I think De Palma has sprung to the place ”: Ibid.
296 “We never really get into the movie because, as Sarah”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
297 “almost as if she were a big, goosey female impersonator”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (October 26, 1981).
297 “She begins to kiss his abdomen passionately, gratefully”: Ibid.
297 “It’s gruesomely silly.” Ibid.
298 “The reason the Voice hated her”: Author int
erview with David Edelstein, July 31, 2009.
298 “Pauline was so advanced on gay things in her sensibility”: Author interview with James Wolcott, August 3, 2010.
298 “fag phantom of the opera”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 30, 1968).
298 “a soft creature, flamingly nelly”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 9, 1981).
299 “If I make these jokes”: Author interview with Daryl Chin, November 16, 2010.
299 “Forman appears to see Evelyn as some sort of open-mouthed retard”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 23, 1981).
300 “the most emotional movie musical”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 21, 1981).
300 “Despite its use of Brechtian devices”: Ibid.
300 “There’s something new going on—something thrilling”: Ibid.
300 “an enormous amount of dedication and intelligence”: Ibid.
300 “all much peppier and more vital than the actors”: Ibid.
300 “a tiresome, pettishly hostile woman”: Ibid.
301 “It takes Keaton a long time to get any kind of bearings”: Ibid.
301 “pussywhipped”: Author interview with Ray Sawhill, March 20, 2009.
301 “henpecked”: Ibid.
301 “There was no way that she was going to be able to see Reds with an open mind”: Author interview with James Toback, May 2009.
301 “Oh, God, they were so damned nervous”: Author interview with Roy Blount, Jr., September 15, 2008.
302 “I’m a little afraid to say how good”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 18, 1982).
302 “just about marriage”: Ibid.
302 “the kind of performances that in the theater become legendary”: Ibid.
302 “who understands the pleasures to be had”: Kael, The New Yorker (April 19, 1982).
302 “a dream of a movie—a bliss-out”: Kael, The New Yorker (June 14, 1982).
302 “He’s like a boy soprano lilting with joy all through E.T.”: Ibid.
303 “fake-poetic, fake magical way”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 15, 1982).
303 “If the roles made better sense”: Ibid.
303 “a genuine oddity”: Ibid.
303 “Altman keeps looking at the world”: Ibid.
304 “resemble a living person”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 13, 1982).
304 “encrusted with the weighty culture of big themes: evil, tortured souls, guilt”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 27, 1982).
304 “Streep is very beautiful at times”: Ibid.
304 “I’m incapable of not thinking about what Pauline wrote”: The Guardian, Apirl 18, 1997.
305 “anti-acting”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 7, 1983).
305 “Performers such as John Barrymore and Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier”: Ibid.
306 “Oh, shit”: Author interview with Warner Friedman, August 12, 2009.
306 “Movies are not art”: Ibid.
306 “a distant closeness”: Ibid.
306 “Pauline sort of showed a little affection”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
307 “an incomparable dip-in book”: The Boston Globe, October 29, 1982.
307 “a browser’s delight”: The Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1982.
307 “one of the most profound emotional experience in the history of film”: Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Boston: Little Brown, 1968), 259.
307 “dying with the priest”: Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 189.
307 “I don’t want you to take this personally”: Author interview with Daniel Menaker, April 1, 2009.
308 “Whenever she came across something that she felt didn’t sound like her”: Ibid.
308 “lulling, narcotizing musical”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (June 27, 1983).
308 “The film has a real shine”: Kael, The New Yorker (August 8, 1983).
309 “a pleasurable hum”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 17, 1983).
309 “like Tom Wolfe”: Ibid.
309 “far more of an anti-establishmentarian than Tom Wolfe”: Ibid.
309 “reactionary cornerstone”: Ibid.
309 “Someone told me she saw it with a group of her followers”: Author interview with Philip Kaufman, May 7, 2009.
309 “rhapsodic”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 28, 1983).
309 “Her singing voice takes you farther”: Ibid.
309 “And now that she has made her formal debut as a director”: Ibid.
310 “the actors with both eyes on the audience”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 12, 1983).
310 “incredibly vivid”: Ibid.
310 “If Terms had stayed a comedy . . . it might have been innocuous”: Ibid.
310 “There wasn’t a lot of room for bombast”: Author interview with David Edelstein, July 31, 2009.
310 “Shaffer has Salieri declaring war on heaven for gypping him”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 29, 1984).
311 “by showing you Mozart as a rubber-faced grinning buffoon”: Ibid.
311 “a wizard at eager, manic, full-of-life roles”: Ibid.
311 “I was sitting next to her”: Author interview with Judy Karasik, April 8, 2009.
311 “fiercely impressionistic and aggressively untheoretical”: The New York Times Book Review, April 15, 1984.
311 “powerful perceptions and terrific writing”: Ibid.
311 “No auteurist critic”: Ibid.
312 “[Pauline’s] archenemy, Richard Schickel, was there”: Author interview with David Ansen, December 23, 2008.
313 “suggestive and dazzingly empathic”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 14, 1985).
313 “a kind of benign precision”: Ibid.
313 “intelligent and enjoyable”: Ibid.
313 “informed by a spirit of magisterial self-hatred”: Ibid.
313 “What’s remarkable about the film is how two such different temperaments”: Ibid.
313 “If John Huston’s name were not on Prizzi’s Honor”: Kael, The New Yorker, (July 1, 1985).
314 “do anything for the role he’s playing”: Ibid.
314 “a Borgia princess”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
315 “This tall, gaunt-faced Strange”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” The New Yorker (August 12, 1985).
315 “a career out of his terror of expressiveness”: Ibid.
315 “A lot of people thought she was really turned on by Clint Eastwood”: Author interview with Ray Sawhill, April 11, 2009.
316 “His work here is livelier and more companionable than it has been in recent years”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 23, 1985).
316 “using his skills”: Ibid.
316 “I liked the movie’s unimportance”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 4, 1985).
316 “Meryl Streep has used too many foreign accents on us”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 30, 1985).
316 “Spielberg’s The Color Purple is probably the least authentic in feeling”: Ibid.
317 “I can’t eat that!”: Author interview with Charles Simmons, June 29, 2009.
317 “Oh, for Chrissake”: Ibid.
317 “I hated it”: Author interview with Jane Kramer, February 24, 2009.
318 “Probably everyone will agree that the subject of a movie should not place it beyond criticism”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 30, 1985).
318 “We watch him putting pressure on people”: Ibid.
318 “so many widely differing instances of collaboration and resistance”: Ibid.
318 “It’s not just the exact procedures”: Ibid.
318 “appears to be to show you”: Ibid.
318 “The film is diffuse”: Ibid.
318 “The Shoah reaction was especially peculiar”: Author interview with Lillian Ross, August 1, 2009.
319 “I’m upset about how unmoved you represent yourself”: Letter from Dan Talbot to Pauline Kael, January 3, 1986.
320 “
You’re often on target”: Ibid.
320 “She had so little use for doctrine”: Author interview with David Edelstein, July 31, 2009.
320 “a Holocaust movie should not be sacrosanct”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 30, 1985).
321 “never before been this seductive on the screen”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 10, 1986).
321 “Allen’s idea of movie acting is the reading of lines”: Notes from Pauline Kael’s screening of Hannah and Her Sisters.
321 “It doesn’t just repeat his work, it repeats itself ”: Ibid.
321 “The movie is a little stale”: Kael, The New Yorker (February 24, 1986).
322 “I don’t want to hurt him. . . . I just want to squirt him”: Author interview with Allen Barra, July 16, 2009.
322 “It seemed time for a change”: Pauline Kael, introduction, State of the Art (New York: Dutton, 1985).
322 “This bum ticker of mine”: Author interview with Trent Duffy, February 17, 2009.
323 “Frears is responsive to grubby desperation”: Kael, The New Yorker (March 10, 1986).
323 “Frears’s editing rhythms that seem so right are actually very odd”: Ibid.
323 “This Johnny wants to make something of himself ”: Ibid.
323 “Selling is what they think moviemaking is about”: Kael, The New Yorker (June 16, 1986).
324 “a phenomenal performance”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 22, 1986).
324 “the work of a genius naïf”: Ibid.
324 “what for want of a better word is called a ‘film sense,’”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 6, 1986).
324 “a true gift for informality”: Kael, The New Yorker (November 17, 1986).
325 “We can surmise”: Kael, The New Yorker (January 12, 1987).
325 “The results are overwrought”: Ibid.
325 “I’ll watch him with my own life”: Author interview with Warner Friedman, August 12, 2009.
325 “I can do better than this myself ”: Author interview with Polly Frost, April 10, 2009.
325 “Because you look like you’re a mother or a grandmother”: Author interview with Warner Friedman, August 12, 2009.
325 “Fuck you, Charlie”: Ibid.
326 “She was about to go back to San Francisco”: Author interview with Ray Sawhill, March 20, 2009.
326 “She would be let down if I would say”: Ibid.