Personal Creation in Hollywood: Can It Be Done?

[ToddBaesen]

Thanks Peter -

That's quite a fascinating forum. One can only imagine what would have happened if Welles were on that panel with Ms. Kael. He would have probably ended up throwing a whole table full of flaming sternos in her direction! I bet even John Houseman would have been defending Orson against Pauline's attacks.

Kael certainly likes to provoke and be critical, so she goes after the biggest name in the room, Fred Zinemann, who she claims is being a little disingenuous... here's what Zinemann SHOULD have replied to her:

KAEL: Is this not just a little disingenuous? I happen to think that you [Zinnemann] are the greatest director in Hollywood, but I have very little interest in seeing your next picture (BEHOLD A PALE HORSE).

ZINNEMAN: Miss Kael, when you say something like that, who is really being disingenuous? I am telling you exactly how I feel.


*******

Then Kael berates Cassavetes and Kubrick. Presumably Cassavetes for making A CHILD IS WAITING and Kubrick for making SPARTACUS, and predicts Kubrick is all through - he'll probably never make anything unusual or interesting again!:


LAMBERT: It is not a question of closed doors - it is that they ask people to work on terms that they don't like, which is a very different thing.

ZINNEMAN: John Cassavetes is another example fairly recently.

KAEL: Yes, but he's an example in the great tradition of being swallowed up very fast, isn't he like Kubrick and so many others. The distance between The Killing and Spartacus is enormous. It means that you've made it, but it also means that you're through.


*******

Hilariously, Kael misreports what she thought she read from a Saturday Review symposium, and calls it being "blind." Fred Zinnemann points out that Kael is actually the blind one, as she has misrepresented what actually occurred:


KAEL: I was struck by the symposium published recently by the Saturday Review, in which it was said that the public's interest in the foreign film is largely snobbish. This is being blind. People are interested in these films because they are fresh and new and different and they object to the same old stale American movies. Of course it is snobbish on certain occasions, but there is a genuine interest.

ZINNEMAN: Miss Kael, I was there at that symposium and only two people in the group thought that foreign-film interest was snobbish. Three out of the six felt that foreign films on the whole were very, very good, and said so.

[Glenn Anders]

[First of all: Thank you, Peter, for giving us the words of this creative cross section of Hollywood in 1962.]

Todd: Though you have a point, I find your commentary illustrative of Zinneman's retort.

Ms. Kael, like most of us, was finding in that Saturday Review Symposium what supported her overall position [in this case, a negative illustration]: enthusiasm and proselitizing for the Foreign Directors, and independent mavericks in general, who were becoming known at the time.

Overall, Kael's viewpoint would seem to me helpful to a director like Welles. She is arguing here consistently that it is hard to "cooperate" with the Big Studios and Madison Avenue TV. She is certainly passionate in arguing that by independent action she was able to give a successful Art House run to TOUCH OF EVIL at her Berkeley Cinema Guild Theater. [She calls for a revolution in favor of independent and foreign pictures by small theater owners, who were being run out of business in 1962, an admirable cri de coeur, if not a very realistic one. These businessmen were probably more preoccupied with the rising cost of fake popcorn butter.]

Note, Todd, that Zinneman is not countering Ms. Kael's major assertion in that exchange you choose to highlight. They are in agreement that the appeal of foreign films for American audiences in 1962 was not a matter of "snobbishness" but of "genuine interest." They disagree over how many supported the alternative position to theirs.

No, Ms. Kael, possibly in her unpleasantly abrasive way (which made her collected reviews such best sellers), is saying that "bigness" was the enemy, and the Studios were its agent.

What she missed was that the Big Studios would soon retreat even further from maintaining stables of stars and technicians, from leading expensive in-house domestic film production. That allowed Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes more easily to use the system to make maverick productions, as Zinneman and Houseman had more cautiously done.

On the other hand, Fred Zinneman and John Houseman do come across as the two artists in the room who had used, and would continue to use, the system most successfully. Irvin Kershner, an anomaly in his remarks here, made only a couple of other films of note (THE LUCK OF GINGER COFFEY, A FINE MADNESS, THE FLIM-FLAM MAN) before going into big franchises, and descending into 1970's TV.

The others, the would-be mavericks, are pretty much forgotten, too, after promising starts. The Sanders' Brothers, for instance, following A TIME OUT OF WAR and WAR HUNT, quickly became mediocre makers of TV properties. They and the others proved how difficult it was in "the new freedom" to lie down with the corporate lion.

Overall, Zinneman and Houseman dominate the conversation, saying that cooperation and diplomacy in Studio negotiation are the ways to succeed. But Pauline Kael's position was the more realistic on that point, that most "independents" who cooperated in order to gain greater freedom were "selling out," a term quaint even at the time.

She is basically acting as a surrogate for Orson Welles in this discussion. He went his own way, right down the middle. He would have loved Big Studio support, but he was not going "to sell out" in order to get it.

Glenn

[Tony]

I think it's important to note that in the Kane essay Kael was attacking her nemesis, Andrew Sarris, who was the most famous American critic then supporting and espousing the 'auteur' theory (this was the 'Big Debate' in the 60's and early 70's). So she fashioned her rhetoric regarding the Kane script to fit her preconceived ideas about what she perceived as the under-appreciation of scriptwriters and the over-emphasis of directors, the latter especially in the 'auteur theory (She was, after all, herself a writer, and later she did some script-writing). She never asked Welles for his input because she knew what he would say, and she was attacking him as a liar: she believed he had nothing to do with the script. As Welles himself later said, for her to have to say "On the other hand, Welles maintains that he did write parts of the script" would screw up her rhetorical thrust.

There are two ironies: one, that Kael had been a strong supporter of Welles prior to the book intro, which is one of the reasons why she was chosen; the second, that she was given permission by Welles to write the intro, and then she attacked him.

Still, I always read her religiously in the New Yorker, as she was one of the great films critics; the Kane incident is an unforunate episode in an otherwise brilliant career. I would never describe her as "odious", except in regards to the Kane book intro which I think was dishonest writing.

It was Charles's Higham's "fear of completion" theory published in 1970, Kael's essay published in '71, and Houseman's book published in '72 that together were a hat trick: Welles was royally screwed again, even worse that in 1942.

[Tony]

Here's a couple of excerpts from Wikepedia:

"Pauline Kael (June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused"[1] movie reviews. She approached movies emotionally, with a strongly colloquial writing style. She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day[2][3] and left a lasting impression on many major critics including Armond White[4] and Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades."[5]

"Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence include, among many, A. O. Scott of The New York Times,[39] David Denby and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker,[40][41] David Edelstein of New York Magazine,[42] Greil Marcus,[42] Elvis Mitchell,[43] Michael Sragow,[42] Armond White, and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com.[44] It was repeatedly alleged that, after her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate[d] with each other [to] forge a common School of Pauline position" before their reviews were written.[45] When confronted with the rumor that she ran "a conspiratorial network of young critics," Kael said she believed that critics imitated her style rather than her actual opinions, stating, "A number of critics take phrases and attitudes from me, and those takings stick out—they’re not integral to the writer’s temperament or approach."[46]"

Though she made many enemies, she had her fans: "Though he began directing movies after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic."[29] Wes Anderson recounted his efforts to screen his film Rushmore for Kael in a 1999 The New York Times article titled "My Private Screening With Pauline Kael". He later wrote Kael that "your thoughts and writing about the movies [have] been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that."[5]

Whatever your personal feelings, Peter, you cannot deny that Ms. Kael was quite possibly the leading American film critic of her day. You may also love the Kane book and the Houseman book, but both of them left Welles traumatized, and he considered both of the authors as enemies.

[tonyw]

Here's a couple of excerpts from Wikepedia:

Though she made many enemies, she had her fans: "Though he began directing movies after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic."[29] .

This is something else that I will eternally curse the memory of Pauline Kael for inflicting on the world!

[Tony]

tonyw: you don't like Tarentino? I consider 'PulpFiction' the best American movie after Kane. I like all his pictures, but I particularily enjoy Jackie Brown and the Kill Bill films. Tarentino is as American as apple pie, and I salute him for never stooping to sensationalizing violence: he only uses it if its part of the character's lives. 'Pulp' for me is his masterpiece, and I often think that Tarentino has been caught in the same trap that bedeviled Welles: what do do after your first film is a masterpiece, and when you have created it so young?

Those are the Great American Dyptich for me: Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction: the American century in two films.

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, gang.

I can slash away a lot of my potential verbiage.

Tony, tonyw, Peter, you offer the corrective to Todd Baesen's cherry-picking that I was tempted to post in riposte. [Cue Toddy's maniacal laughter as he sits down at his console. "Bring me more bodies, Mr. Grey! A few more minutes, Mr. French!"]

All of us, I assume, are of an age that we were influenced positively by the writings of Pauline Kael. She was substantially responsible for advancing Orson Welles' forgotten reputation, and illuminating the work of many other directors she had come across in Berkeley, when she came out of the West, at age 50, to become the most influential film critic of her time.

The reputations she made or preserved, the great films she lit up for the public, her loyalties and dismissals, were legion. It is sad, perhaps truly tragic, that almost as soon as her New York position was established, she was diagnosed with early Parkinson's. Her bitterness toward that cosmic judgment against her no doubt contributed to the mood swings, sometimes plain nastiness, of her later writings, not to mention the hauteur of her public appearances. [No one, so far as I remember, explained on TV that this seventy year-old woman was suffering from a wasting disease little understood in, say, 1980, regarded as "The Palsy," and confused with Siphilis or God knows what.] But when Pauline Kael was right, mostly early on, she was brilliantly and entertainingly right.

It is easy to look at the past of someone's life, our own or Pauline Kael's, and expose certain dunderheaded remarks, crazy acts, or foolish judgments. We all have them.

[Mr. French may, one day, allow you all to look at Glenn Anders/Todd Baesen dossiers in the subcellar of the Wellesnet Archives.]

Meanwhile, I think that Tony gives a balanced and fair assessment of Pauline Kael's strengths and weaknesses.

And I certainly agree with tonyw, that if Pauline Kael is damned to the place Baesen and I are going, her influence on Quentin Tarantino's bizarre career is certainly a fiery sendoff. I would go so far as to say that her devilish hold on young Tarantino's imagination probably almost cancels the value of her sterling championing of Welles, and dwarfs her later determination to take our man down a peg or two.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Thanks, gang.


And I certainly agree with tonyw, that if Pauline Kael is damned to the place Baesen and I are going, her influence on Quentin Tarantino's bizarre career is certainly a fiery sendoff. I would go so far as to say that her devilish hold on young Tarantino's imagination probably almost cancels the value of her sterling championing of Welles, and dwarfs her later determination to take our man down a peg or two. Glenn

Good one, Glenn. And Tony, now is the time to start your crusade to persuade the world that PULP FICTION is "the greatest film ever made" and worthy enough (along with RESERVOIR DOGS and KILL BILL) to dethrone CITIZEN KANE from the top of the SIGHT AND SOUND list.

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: I think you are quite right about Quentin Tarantino. If there was ever "an unreliable narrator," he's the guy.

In regard to this ongoing contention about the merits of Pauline Kael as a critic, and why someone who I know for a fact advanced innovative directors such as Orson Welles in the 1950's and 1960's, turned on them them when she became a full-time New York critic, at the age of 50 -- that is a mystery. Perhaps, in spite of herself, she became caught up in the New Journalism, which has led to the present multiplicitous cults of personality. She may have felt it necessary to adopt a contrarian stance, at the cost of her intellectual honesty.

One cannot be a fair critic, if one does not read the book, or (in the case of Ms. Kael) makes snap judgments of all films on the basis of a single viewing. [Over the years, many films, such as MULHOLLAND DRIVE, I had to see several times before I reasonably understood them in order to write a fair review.]

All I can say is that the Pauline Kael who used to speak of films with such passion, enthusiasm, and accuracy on Station KPFA (Berkeley, CA) was not the vinegary critic I came across occasionally toward the end of her life.

It happens.

Glenn

[Tony]

Let's try to keep it simple: I keep telling you guys (and this is not the first thread dealing with this) that Kael hated the 'auteur ' theory, and hated Andrew Sarris's support of it; Throughout the sixties she and Sarris had a series of articles and reviews attacking eachother's position- it was a real war. She believed that Hollywood magic is the result of a series of collaborations, i.e. a team effort (the 'system') and that the script/screenplay is the most important element, and also the most underrated. Thus her attacking Welles, who by 1971 was THE director's director, THE auteur in English language films, was completely logical; Sarris, of course, supported Welles. For anyone who might not know, the auteur theory sees a movie as completety the work of the director, as it is the director's vision which controls the whole process: the whole undertaking, while allowing for individual great talents, is all bent to the director's vision: this was precisely Welles's view. Now, as I mentioned, it was Kael's NOT interviewing Welles which gave her account a biased character, and it is this I find unforgivable, as it damaged his career.

On the other point, she was without a doubt if not the greatest then in the top three of influential and excellent American film critics during her time at the New yorker, from 1968-1991. Personally, I would say she was tied with John Simon.

[ToddBaesen]

Tony:

You make an excellent point about the Sarris - Kael feud. Which is why I never bothered reading Pauline Kael very much during her heyday, because I didn't like her anti-auteurist approach to movies. But it also spoke more about the publications I liked to read when I lived in Manhattan in the seventies. I always read Andrew Sarris because he wrote for the Village Voice, while Kael wrote for the New Yorker, which I never bought, because I liked New York Magazine better... which by the way, had at the time as it's theater critic, John Simon. (I also quite agree with Peter about John Simon's worth as a critic).

Anyway, here's a typical Pauline Kael story which I think further illustrates Peter's point about Pauline Kael, written by (who else) Andrew Sarris:

SARRIS: I have sat on panels at Lincoln Center and elsewhere with film directors raging from Jean Luc-Godard, who is not very lovable, to Milos Forman, who is, as well as with various other critics and filmmakers. Every time I have seen a critic - whoever he is - make a jibe at a filmmaker - whoever he is - I have felt a kind of hostility well up from the audience. The feeling is that the fimmakers are artists and you are only a critic.

Any yet the artist is often fearful of the critic. I remember an exchange when Pauline Kael and myself were on a panel at Lincoln Center with Ernie Pintoff. He started to say, "One of the problems we poets face..." and Pauline bristled. "I wish you people wouldn't call yourselves poets until we critics call you poets." Poor Ernie Pintoff, about six foot three, wilted. And everyone hated Pauline for crushing this poor artist. I thought about that later. A poet doesn't have to wait until someone calls him a poet. All he has to do is write a poem. That's enough to make him a poet. He may be a bad poet or a good poet, but he is still a poet.

[The Night Man]

A very interesting talk by Pauline Kael, from 1968, can be heard here in its entirety: http://illusionstreetcar.blogspot.com/2008/08/pauline-factor-68.html

Welles is mentioned briefly at the 25-minute mark. Later, at around the 44-minute mark, one gets a whiff of her anti-auteurist viewpoint when she disses Arthur Penn.

[Tony]

Peter: Strangely, your tone reminds me strongly of John Simon at his most intolerant and dismissive. It's an irony, isn't it?

[Tony]

Peter: I searched, but couldn't find, a Simon piece on Welles (I'm sure several exist). But here's a nice little article on Simon which goes against the broad strokes you have brushed:

May 11, 2005
By John Clark

John Simon, Theatre Critic, still alive

One reads today with shock that theatre critic John Simon has been "offed" by New York Magazine, a publication for which he helped get recognition when it was launched back in 1968. Apparently his marching orders came without any warning with no good reason, and I can identify with what that feels like.

What can Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss, who looks to be less than half Simon's age, be thinking of? He's why I subscribed, and now I shall have to cancel as my small protest!

I do believe that John Simon, an icon among reviewers, represents what theatre criticism is and should be about; the theatre's values and standards, and the two should not be confused.

"Values" has dollar signs attached to it, and relates to the present. "Standards" does not, it goes back forever, and requires knowledge, integrity, culture and a long memory.

Simon did not compromise his measure of what constitutes good theatre, and one always had the feeling that if the show lacked standards, he got angry, and said so in a way that hurt the offender by letting the air out of inflated egos as a form of contempt. I see little wrong with that. Actors are supposed to have thick skins, and anyway, it made for must reading, and did get everyone's attention.

I don't think he cares about values, because they have their own upholders.

I have never met Simon, but I have a very special reason to remember him.

If you look at my posting on the left about Lynn Redgrave's CBS television series "House Calls", you will see where Alan Schwartz's bankrupt lawfirm Finley Kumble & Associates came after us for three quarters of a million dollars in courtroom sanctions payable to themselves, because we refused to open up our books to those figurative bastards. Well there's a story attached to this event, which I will tell here for the first time.

Instead of throwing what assets we had at a bankuptcy court to give to a bunch of shady bankrupt lawyers, I mounted Lynn's one woman show "Shakespeare For My Father" on Broadway. It had been on the college circuit, and Columbia Artist's Management, the sponsors, when asked, said they had no stomach to underwrite it for Broadway.

That's why I decided to do what only a fool would do. It was a gesture of contempt for the American legal system, and a lesser contempt for the values of Broadway. I booked the show into a little theatre next to Sardi's restaurant, the Helen Hayes, on West 44th Street, squeezed between the hit musical "The Who's Tommy" at the St. James's, and the hit musical "Kiss of the Spider Woman", playing opposite at the Shubert.

And I put up all and only our money.

People laughed at us. People said "Who cares about your feelings of rejection from your father, Shakespeare not withstanding?".

I personally expected that we might be laughed off the stage by critics likening us to "Springtime for Hitler", at best a tax write-off, at worst, thrown out after a week by the theatre owner for lack of business.

After a few previews, opening night came and went, and we adjourned next door to Sardi's, and waited for the reviews. Which weren't bad, considering, but they would not sell many tickets.

Then came Simon in New York Magazine a couple of days later.

An extraordinary dream of a review. He praised the show to the sky, he praised Lynn to the sky, but most of all, he used our downright chutzpa as a cudgel to beat on the commercial theatre. Wow. (Footnote, he didn't say much about me. These things don't just happen, I directed, co-wrote, and produced it, but I don't hold that against him, Lynn's successes were mine too.)

Afterwards, we became a big hit. We ran for almost a year, 266 performances, a record, then, and a Tony nomination. I think that we were kept going by women theatre-goers who, while the rest of their families took in a musical, sneaked in to see our little show.

I attribute our success on Broadway to John Simon. And I think he did it by noticing what we were trying to do, believed in it, and championed it. And as a result, we went on to play Canada, Australia, and the Haymarket in London, to wondrous reviews.

So to John Simon, who is a little older than me but occupies the same decade of life, I say don't go away, the theatre needs you more than ever. You, it is obvious, were never bought. It needs your education, your humor, and your fearlessness of crazy mad actresses like Sylvia Miles, who threw a cheap plate of spaghetti on your head. You might want to consider the same treatment for editor Moss, along with a glass of good Chianti.

Your next job is just around the corner, so take a cue from Clive and hang in.

[ToddBaesen]

Here's a nice friendly chat from San Francisco in 1963 between Pauline Kael, John Simon, and just for fun, Dwight Mcdonald, who idiotically attacks Andrew Sarris because he liked THE BIRDS!

Of course the three can't agree on anything, much less whether even a film like 8 1/2 is good or bad. Quite a hilarious forum!


http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2006/05/whe ... ather.html