Personal Creation in Hollywood: Can It Be Done?

[Tony]

Todd: thanks for posting that, and apended to it are some listener's comment's; in my on-going defense of John Simon as an abrasive but major American film critic, here is one of those comments:

"N.P. Thompson said...
Thanks for posting these historic meetings between three great writers – I can’t wait until I’m in a time and place when/where I can listen to them at my leisure. But until then, I felt compelled to comment on the misleading, out of context quote from Simon, the bit about “I can’t wait until AIDS kills them all!” Simon’s detractors, including that old fuddy dud radio interviewer Leonard Lopate, nearly always resuscitate that line when they feel the need to paint Simon as homophobic. What happened was: In 1985, on leaving a production of a play wherein the director had particularly compromised the playwright’s intentions, Simon, as we’re all wont to do in private moments of political incorrectness, mentioned to a friend the above salvo. Unfortunately, the gossip columnist (and professional hatemonger) Liz Smith overheard the remark, and she created the resulting fracas. To me, it’s Smith who deserves the comparisons to Miloševic. What people rarely mention is that soon thereafter, Simon granted a lengthy interview to the gay newspaper New York Native, in which he and composer Ned Rorem addressed what led up to that “kills them all” statement and in general put to rest the issue of Simon’s supposed homophobia. A decade or so later, Rorem republished this interview in his book Other Entertainment – it makes for informative reading."

[Glenn Anders]

Here's to Toddy Baesen for finding this recording!

As I was lying on my couch this afternoon, rather desperately nursing my sore back, I listened to the forum.

It was recorded for KPFA, I should think, and the undertaking has the awkward charm of their public service productions which still works for me.

John Simon could come across as a bit of a snob, and Pauline Kael might be a bit testy when she felt herself regarded as "a girly" critic, but I found their judgments, for the time, fair enough.

Fellini may have been juvenile in his development, as Welles maintained. And THE BIRDS remains, in my opinion, the last of those exaggerated, elephantine symbolic blowouts, such as NORTH BY NORTHWEST and THE REAR WINDOW, which Hitchcock indulged himself in, once he had made his perfect American picture, SHADOW OF A DOUBT; capped by his final great piece of tragic autobiographical romanticism, VERTIGO, his apotheosis.

And does anyone pay much attention to MURIEL OU LE TEMPS D'UN RETOUR any longer, or for that matter, most of Ray's films?

Seems to me that the three, Dwight MacDonald being the most reasonable, did pretty well.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Just saw THE NEW YORK TIMES profile on Andrew Sarris which covers his run-ins with fellow critics Pauline Kael and John Simon.

When Sarris invited Kael to his marriage to Molly Haskell, Pauline wrote back and said, "That's O.K. I'll go to Molly's next wedding."

And Sarris on John Simon: “Simon is the greatest film critic of the 19th century.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/movie ... =cse&scp=1

[Glenn Anders]

Oh, my aching back, Toddy: It is even more difficult to generate "personal creation in Holllywood" today than it was back in the 1970's, the 1960's -- for sure! Critics are seldom creative. Sarris had the best overall judgment. Pauline Kael, the only really best seller in the crowd, was creative early in her late-blooming career -- and James Agee was probably the most creative of all, both as a critic and otherwise.

I would not expect that either John Simon or Ms. Kael would have been pleasant guests at a cocktail party of their time, even if they liked you, especially if Norman Mailer was there.

Can we agree that we really established these facts nearly a year ago?

Glenn