September 24, 2024 • 49 mins
Meet A.O. Scott, a critic at large for The New York Times Book Review. In the mid-90s, he abandoned academia for journalism, writing mostly about books for The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Newsday, Slate and The New York Times, which hired him as a film critic at the beginning of 2000. A.O. Scott spent more than 23 years in that job, reviewing thousands of movies, attending film festivals, making Oscar predictions and interviewing the likes of Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez and the Coen Brothers. in 2023 he joined the Book Review — a homecoming of sorts, and also a new adventure. Like every other journalist at the Times, He's committed to upholding the standards outlined in Ethical Journalism Handbook. EnJOY!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They are
available at the Craig Ferguson show dot Com slash tour
or at your local outlet in your region. My name
(00:44):
is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy.
I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
On the podcast Today EO Scott, Anthony Oliver Scott, or
Tony Scott to his friends, of which there are many.
(01:05):
Tony was one of the chief movie critics in the
New York Times for about twenty years and now is
a literary critic on the New York Times Book Review
or New York Times Review of Books. I think it
is Actually he's very clever, he's very informed, and he's
just a very interesting man. I hope you enjoy this
conversation as much as I do. Tony. I didn't know
(01:30):
until right now that you called yourself Tony. I was
going to call you AO all day. That's okay. Does
anybody ever call you AO?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, good. I don't think they should. I don't know
they should call you. Why did you start using your initials?
Because because of the filmmaker Tony.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Scott a little bit, although I wasn't a film critic
at the time, but it was I was run by
Tony Scott. And there were actually a few Tony Scott's.
There was the filmmaker, there was a baseball player when
I was growing up. There's a jazz saxophonist. So the
world seemed to be full of Tony Scott's and AO.
(02:09):
The initials were had been used in my family. My
great grandfather was also AO, and he had a company
in the little town in Ohio where my grandfather and
father grew up. That was called AO Scott and Sons,
And when I was a kid, this was the family
business and they were like I had little pencils that
(02:29):
said AO Scott on them and like little stationary So
it was it was. I had some association with it. It
didn't just come out of nowhere. So I thought that'd
be an interesting tribute to the ancestors.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I think it's delightful now until well last year, you
were the chief film critic of the New York Times, right.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yes, I was. I was eight chief film Creig when
all the Dargas was was the other one. We kind
of did it together.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But here's the thing, though, I before we started this,
I thought what kind of reviews AO Scott gave any
movie I was in? So I looked up. You know what.
You gave me good reviews for a couple of movies
that I did back in the day. You gave me
a good review for a movie called Saving Grace, which
(03:17):
I had written and I was in, and you were
very nice about it, I think, very fair about it.
And then you had made because it was all in
the New York Times app and the other one was
a movie I'm very proud of called The Big Teas,
which is a hairdressing competitive hairdressing movie that completely tanked. Yes,
(03:40):
but it was. It was and is I think a
fabulous film that is sadly no one's ever seen except you.
But you probably can't remember it because you've seen so many.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
I vaguely remember it now that you've said the title,
I don't think I'll tell you. I haven't thought about
it in don't know what is it twenty years?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, well I haven't either, and I made it. But
it's funny though, because I guess you get a similar
thing to me, like I I get people like once
I saw a documentary about Leonard Nimoy right, and it
was a beautiful documentary. I don't know if you've seen it,
called Becoming Spoke. His son made it. It's a real
(04:23):
kind of love letter to his father's and I watched
it was very emotional and I said to my wife
at the time of coursh that was lovely. I really
wish i'd had him on the late night show. And
then she googled it and he'd be on twice. I
was like a new recollection on it. Does that happen
to you as well? Like you get movies, you've you've
(04:43):
reviewed them, you thought about them, and then they go away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
It happens all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
People will say, you know, I saw this movie, you know,
the other night, and they'll they'll they'll, you know, say
the title and I'll be like, oh, that sounds interesting.
I've never seen it, and they were like, well, yeah,
because you're you know.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
The DVD.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yes, I read it, because you reviewed it. It's it's
it's very kind of humbling in a way because you,
you know, you you you you put this work into
this thing. You think, you think hard about it, you know,
and and I always trying to do to do my
best and not phone it in and and and take
the movie seriously and think about it. But just you know,
(05:23):
the the human brain and the passage of time, and
you just kind of you lose it.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
But it's very interesting though, you, you and I my friend,
we are dinosaurs. We are we are the last of
a generation whose our memories will not be digitized from now.
It's true, you know, my children, your children, their children,
everybody will have a digital record of nearly everything they
did and where they were. And I think that's kind
(05:52):
of sad, because you you lose although I mean, and
in one way it's good, I guess, because you can
remember a lot more. But in a way it's because
I think you lose. Memory does play some lovely tricks.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It helps you deal with stuff. It's a very clever
thing it does. And and and forgetting is part of it.
Forgetting and then you know, remembering what you've forgotten. So
I have you know, I have all these books on
my shelves, and and and I picked them up sometimes
and I find, you know, I I I find things I.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Wrote in them, notes I made and I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
You know, yeah, but but but it does come back.
The thing is that you know your your your can
reawaken in your brain and I think there's something. I
think you're yeah, there is something lost. If the idea
is just that there is a digital record that says,
you know, this is everything you've read, this is everything
you've watched, this is how long I mean, now you
know you you you go to to UH to read
(06:49):
an article in the New York Times online, and it
will tell you how long readers spent on it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I know that's right. Yeah, that must be unnerving. If
you're writing for the New York Times and you say, wow,
that's this one held people for two minutes.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well exactly, it's a little it's a little unnerving when
you you know, you look, you look at the data
and it says, you know, readers spend one one minute
and thirty seven seconds on on this on this piece,
it would have taken you know, three and a half
minutes to read the whole thing. And you think, wow,
they couldn't even they couldn't even give me three and
a half.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
No, they couldn't. I wonder is that connected to your
departure from film criticism and moving into because you're in
the review of books now, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, yeah, I went. I mean it was it was
a few things. I had started out as a as
as a book critic before, before I before I went
into movies. So in some ways it was something that
I had always thought I would get back to. I
thought when I was hired to be a film critic,
I thought, well, this would be an interesting thing to.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Do for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
But really, you know, I'm this is this is a sideline,
and I'm really a literary critic. And then that lasted
twenty five years, and and uh so I wanted to
get to get back, you know, back to that while
there was still time in in my in my productive years,
and and also to get just sort of off of
(08:12):
the treadmill of the of the weekly review. I mean,
the thing about being a film critic is that there
is just it's it's kind of relentless. So you're seeing
five or six movies a week, you're reviewing two or
three of them, you know, week in and week out,
year in, year out, and at a certain point you
you kind of feel like you've I felt like I was,
I was starting to run out of ideas and.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Of of of moves.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And does a row view of the does a row
view of the love of the of the genre itself?
Does it? Does it demystify it to any extent where
you can connect to it in the same way?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think it does by repetition because you've seen, you know,
the same thing, like there there are there are so
many movies are you know, movies belong to two different
genres and styles and schools. And in a way it's
not their fault that they have so much in common
that they're so you know that they follow certain formulas
and patterns. But when you've seen hundreds that are sort
(09:12):
of doing this, whether it's whether it's art films or
commercial movies or whatever, when you think to yourself, oh, yeah,
I know this one, I've seen this one before. That
in a way that is a disservice to the individual
movie you're looking at, because most viewers don't see it
that way. They're seeing this movie and they're not thinking
of sort of the hundreds more like it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
But I also thought, you know that.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
One thing that I always worried about, and I always
thought about, and as I would kind of read other
critics would think about, is that I would always worry
about getting to a point where I would be mostly
looking backwards, where I would think, oh, you know, they
don't make them like they used to, or the great
movies I've all been made, and not being receptive to
(10:00):
was new.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And what was interesting and what was happening in the present.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
And I was thought, if I felt like I was
getting there, that would be the time to stop, because art,
did you get there?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Not quite? I stopped before I got there. It's weird
because you know, I haven't made a bunch of independent
films when I was I don't know, in my thirties
early forties, before I started Late Night, I did a
lot of that and that was a lot of how
I earned my living. And yeah, and I loved it.
But I look at film now because it was my
(10:32):
life and I was making them. They I look at
film now and I think it's harder and harder to
find in the film business. Uh, I kind of the
idea that films are art. They are they are worthy
of academic examination in the form of the kind of
criticism you do. It's no, I don't I don't see.
(10:55):
Maybe I'm not looking. But is it still there?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Well, I think it's still there, but I think that
it's it's gotten smaller and more marginal in a way.
I mean, I think that there were always, you know,
there were always bad movies and good movies. They're always
sure commercial movies, right, and some of those bad movies
are kind of good. But I do feel like, and
(11:18):
I don't know, you know, if it's because of streaming
or because of other changes in the in the in
the business, or other kind of generational shifts, but I
do find something similar that that that you have to
look much harder, and that the movies that are ambitious
(11:38):
in that way, or creative in that way, or or
artistic in that way, are being made at a smaller
and smaller scale and for a smaller and smaller audience.
So it's a little bit sometimes I feel like.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I think it's I think it's economics in America particularly,
I was I worked with an Italian film director ones
called Roberto Faienza, who who said, we were making a
film in Italy, and it was like it was a
lot of money again, spending those things I mean, and
it was it's not really a very good script, but
(12:12):
there were like you know, panzer divisions and like loads
of cameras and stuff. And I was like, wow, you
guys are I said to Robert, you know in the
day of some enormous set up. You guys are spending
a lot of money on this picture. And they said, Greg,
the difference between Italy and America is this. In America
(12:33):
you make movies to make money. In Italy, we use
money to make movies, a different idea. And I thought
it kind of is that the because Italians something even
now of recent times, oh god, what's his name again?
They have fabulous Italian director like Randi Blitza.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, Sorrentinoo.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, these movies are amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Exactly right, and they're they're at a kind of scale
that unbelievable, even even the ones like that, the one,
what was it called the Hand of God?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Did you see that one?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That is a fabulous film, unbelievable, It's incredible, and it's
but it's a very like, you know, in a way,
it's a small personal movie in terms of history. It's
a story. It's his story, it's his life.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's about his his you know, his youth and growing
up in the terrible tragedy that happens in his family.
But the scale of it and just the the technique
of it is so is so big and so extravagant,
and you you, you couldn't imagine that in in you know,
in in an equivalent movie in America would be like
would be shot on an iPhone in somebody's apartment with
(13:47):
their friends.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I wonder for me, anyway, it's kind of like the
same thing with music. I wonder if it's just because
getting older and I'm like, our music is rubbish now
and it's too you know, digitized and film is the same.
And I wonder if that's one of the products of aging,
is that all art becomes awful? But I don't think so,
simply because there are guys like Sorrentino who exists, you know.
(14:18):
So I think it's a And I wonder if if
you go from I mean, first of all, the idea
that you, as you know, as a young man, would
want to get into criticism, is that even a is
that even a thing now with someone is academic criticism?
Even it's kind of grandfather then of the New York Times.
(14:41):
But I don't know if it's anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I think it's I mean, I I do meet young people,
and I do sometimes teach young people who are interested
in it, you know, who want who want to write
about film or want to write about the arts in
in in you know, in a way that's that's serious
and creative and and and literary. And I think, uh,
there just are so few outlets. I mean, I don't
(15:05):
think it's it's it's not like it's ever been an
advisable way to make a living. It's not as if
anyone would ever say to you, oh, if you have
to go into film criticism, and you'll be you know,
that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
That's where the money is. Even even enough to pay
your rent. On the other hand, there there there were.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I'm old enough to remember, you know, there were magazines,
and there were newspapers, and every city had them, and
they all employed film critics. And they were alternative weeklies,
which were hugely important in critism.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I mean they mad, they marred to get a decent review,
and those really marred.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Yeah, they mattered a lot. They mattered in the local markets.
And they were also great schools for writers to to,
you know, to to to to come up and young
people or people from from different kinds of backgrounds could
have a chance to learn the craft and to learn
something about about about writing and about criticism, and and
that what I worry is that that doesn't exist. I mean,
(15:59):
you can, you know, you can write a sub stack,
you can write a newsletter. You can you can go
online and and say what you have to say. You
can post it on on social media on letterboxed or
on you know, on on x or Facebook or wherever.
But the the the sense of it as a as
a craft, as a discipline, as as as a way
(16:23):
of of of of being serious and and and of
writing as well as you can I don't know how
you I don't know how you learn that now, I
don't know how you where where the the the the
institutions or the or the outlets are that can teach
you that.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And what about the idea of uh of creating the
because you write very well, did you ever write phelt No?
Were you never tempted to do that?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Not?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Really?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You know, I'm I uh, you know it works clearly, yes,
And and every once in a while I've sort of
thought about it, and like you know, you'd be sitting
around with some phrase, oh, we should write it, but yeah,
let's write a screenplay.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Let's write a screenplay about to this. But it never
you must never do that. Yes, no.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And and having you know, having been asked by enough people,
would you read my screenplay? I never want to be
in the position to be the person, you know, saying, hey,
I wrote this screen would you read it?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So I think if you wrote a screenplay, though, it
would garner some interest that someone go, you know, I'd
be quite interested in reading that, especially if you put
a superhero in it or someone with magical powers. Because that,
I wonder is because Scorsese took a law of flat
for saying these these wearing movies. Are you sympathetic to
(17:41):
his take on it? I?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I am, actually, I mean I I I spend a
lot of time, as as one has to, you know,
thinking about and writing about and trying to figure out
what to do with as a critic these the superhero
movies and the franchise movies, and how in a way
to give them the you know, to take them seriously
(18:05):
and give them a benefit of the doubt and not
not rejudge them, because you never wanted to be a
snob and say, well, you know, I hate all of
these kinds of movies. But but I do think that
they imposed a lot of limitations on the creativity of
the people who were making them, just simply partly by
virtue of being franchised, of being you know, here's a
(18:26):
pre existing intellectual property. You have to tell the story
a certain way according to to you know, to certain
conventions and procedures, and it has to be part of
this bigger thing, which is not I think, a big
a bigger imaginative thing so much as it's a bigger
commercial thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
R So, So I mean I saw that. I'm sure
you saw you see the movie Wolverine, the kind of
or the story about which I was surprised by because
I was like, that's actually a really good movie. That's
a good one. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really kind of
it's poetic and emotional and in and and dramatic and fabulous.
(19:05):
And but I've watched a lot of the other ones
because I have you know, I have young kids and
or they were young at a point, and some of
these movies are just dreadful. And they're dreadful because they're
a franchise. I think. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Well, I think that's right, because they just exist in
a way to get you to the next one, to
keep to keep the fans engaged, and not necessarily to
provide in a way I think that some of them do.
I think well, Wolverring is a good example to provide
a sort of a complete experience in and of themselves.
(19:44):
And uh and I think that that that it's sort
of run certainly in the Marvel universe, I think has
has has run into real into a real dry period.
I mean, I don't think those.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Well, it's it's it's interesting because to even talk about
these things, and you I've read some stuff you wrote
about this about the fandom in these things is actually
for a very overused word, but I can't think of
any word. One off the top of my head right
now is the word that there's a toxic nature to
(20:21):
this kind of allegiance to franchises and movies, the kind
of comic con warriors who will defend their their franchises
that basically they're just customers of with some wild loyalty.
Do you think that, I mean, I don't remember that
(20:44):
existing before maybe Star Wars and stuff, but not really.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think I
think it grew out of I think it, you know, fandom.
It's an interesting history because I think it went from
being a kind of subcultural thing among young people right
that who who you know, who felt like they were
(21:09):
maybe outsiders or misunderstood or nerds, and and here was
a thing that that that they could connect to and
and connect with each other through their through their mutual
interest in and at a certain point that became a
form of that became a dominant form in the culture
(21:31):
and in the way the culture is consumed with I
think exactly. I think toxic is the word, and I
think that I've always felt like a lot of what
is most kind of uh uncivil, let's say, in our politics,
in our political discourse, not to get too much into
(21:51):
that came from or has a sort of analogy with fandom,
that is that it's this thing. You know, you you're part
of this collective thing and nobody can criticize it, and
and you will take it personally. You know, if if
if I, as a reviewer for the New York Times
say well, this movie is not so good, you know,
(22:13):
I have I've insulted you, right, I've I've you know.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And I've had those exact things happened to me in
my life short of the New York Times, where not
that nearly from you, but from from critics have said
this movie is no good and I've spent you know,
two years of my life making it happen. And you know,
you get this much column space to dismiss it. But
and I used to get mad at that, but now
you don't even get that, no get you know, I see,
(22:39):
I think it's even worse. I think it's it's when
people not in show business start looking at the top
ten grossing films. That's crazy. What is that going to
do with anything? Unless you have money in the game.
Unless you have skin in the game, why are you involved.
You know, like the movie Twister made more money than
Finnie an Alexander. There for the movie Twister is a
(23:01):
bear movie then, or the movie Twister makes more than Ladolchivita. Therefore,
the movie Twister is a bear movie and the Ladolchivita
that's insane.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, yeah, And and I think that that it's become
because also people people didn't necessarily know or care I
mean just sort of ordinary let's say, newspaper readers right
in in in in previous decades, you know, didn't necessarily
know about or care about box office figures. But that's
(23:29):
that's become a way I think of a kind of
fake insiderness, you know, that that that everyone can feel like, well,
I know what's really going on and I and I
think that that that that Hollywood and and television kind
of and and you know, and and the Internet and
other parts of the culture too like to to to
(23:50):
sell that it's like you're you know, it's a it's
a kind of cynicism, but it makes you feel as
as just the ordinary person, as the ordinary family, like
you you know what going on? You know, you know
what the real you're part of it, the real story is,
and what the real value is.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
What about I mean you talk about the streaming and
the you know, the way that movies are consumed now
are probably you know, i'd say what ninety percent on
screens the size of the ones we're talking on right now.
I mean the idea of going into a giant movie
theater with you know, a thousand other people and watching
a movie. Does that in and I guess it does
(24:33):
exist if if you go to you know, a retrospective,
you know, Angelica screening of old Woody Allen movies or something,
maybe not Woody Allen movies, but you know, whatever it is,
there's well, there's that Woody Allen Actually a good example.
There's someone who is you know, very out of favor. Yeah,
(24:54):
and therefore his movies are seen through Do you look
at movies through and lens? If you learn something about
the filmmaker you didn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Before, well, I mean i've I've I've struggled with this
a lot, in particular about about woodall and I I
wrote some some things because he's someone whose movies I
would not be the person I am without, you know,
without without Annie Hall, without without the early one sleeper Manhattan,
(25:24):
and and and I just grew up. I'm of the
sort of generation and background where he was was one
of the main cultural figures of my life. I had
all his books, I had seen his movies, you know,
many times. And uh, I had to struggle with how
I felt about him as as as as a person,
(25:46):
and and and and and things that I that I,
you know, under understood him to have done. And and
I wrote a few pieces about that about my own
struggle with it, because it was that where I was
trying to just be kind of honest and transparent about
it like that. This is you know, I can't honestly
just say just wipe this person's work out of my
(26:07):
life and say it doesn't matter to me, and it's
not important to me. I can't reject him and his
work that way. On the other hand, I don't feel
great about it, and I'm I'm troubled by some of
the implications in the work and in my appreciation of
the work in terms of of you know, especially the
(26:27):
let's say, the treatment of women and of of of
young women in that work. But so I was but
one of the results of that was was was that
people who were much more on his side and very
partisan kind of uh came.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Down very hard on me.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I got I got a lot of talking about, you know,
sort of angry fandoms uh right, a lot of people
who sort of said I was basically you know, a Nazi.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
For for for for doing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
This and it.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And it's a hard one and I'm I'm not going
to say, you know, I was, I was right in
every nuance, and I'm not going to get mad at
at at at anyone who thinks about it differently. But
I do think that young people, let us say, are
not going near it. You know.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I I've I've taught a lot of film students over
the last ten years, and you know, I would I
would ask.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Like, how sometimes how you know, how many Woody Allen's
movies have you have you seen?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And and and they just hadn't it, just like they weren't.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
They weren't going there, which I think is a loss.
And I think but I think also it has a
kind of thing about it because you know, it's the
separated in the art from the artist. I mean, how
many young people know about Eric von Stroheim and boys, right,
like you know, the or Man Ray or you know,
there there's some very strange dudes around or or where
(27:56):
for sure. I mean, even even the history of Hollywood,
guys like Jack Warner, who would probably be in a
lot of trouble if he.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Or Louis mayor or you know, and and for sure,
I mean, but that's as as I believe a character
in which Helen Movie once said, you know, comedy is
tragedy plus time, and the passage of time is does
have something to do with it. And so I do
think that you know, in in you know, twenty or
thirty or however many years, if we're still you know,
(28:26):
around and watching things that aren't just fed to us
by by AI and and and algorithms, people will find
those movies again, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And and well that's true. I think it's like history.
Neil Ferguson says that history doesn't begin until one hundred
years after the event. Until that point, it's it's just
you know, because once everybody's dead, then you can start
to get say, it's a perspective on things.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And I've always felt that about about movies and literature too,
And it's it's it's it's one of the interesting things
about being a critic and writing just at the moment,
when something is brand new, right in a way, that's
the worst time to try to understand what it is.
I mean, people aren't going to understand what it is
until or people are gonna, you know, critics included, are
(29:08):
gonna misunderstand it or get it wrong as likely as
not in the moment, and then subsequent generations will figure
out what it is and why it matters, and and
and what value it has at least I.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Mean, I really, I really hope that happens to my
competitive hairdressing movie that's Stiffed in the year two thousand.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Will I'm I'm confident, you know, And and they'll and
they'll dig out the review and say, but you see
one person understood.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Well, somebody understood. But here's It's an interesting thing because
I want to take you from uh, from the years
as the film criticism and New York Times to going
or returning to literary criticism.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
And I'm kind of fascinated by it because I I
I'm not I'm not trying to you know, claim on
on your you know, hanging tales. But I wrote my
first book after making a movie which I wrote and
directed and starred in, and it's garbage. I don't like it,
(30:12):
and I still don't understand why I don't like. Some
other people like it, but I don't like it, and
it wasn't what I set out to make, And so
I went to I started writing a book because I
didn't have to talk to anyone, I didn't have to
deal with anyone. I just had to write a story,
which was something that I would do. And I wonder
if there's a similar connection to leaving film criticism behind
(30:37):
and going to literary criticism like the way I mean
it is that people who read books participate, right people
who who watch movies. You know, Top Gun is a movie.
It's a great movie. I love that movie. You know.
I also love like Grandi, Beliza, and The Hand of God.
They're very, very different things, but it's easy for me
(30:58):
to watch them. They just I turn it on in
there right there. With a book, you have to get involved,
and therefore you're more invested. And therefore, I think what
I'm trying to say is that people who who read
books may be more inclined to at this course rather
than fandom. Is that true or not? I think it's true.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I mean, my my feeling about being a film criticism,
a film critic is that there have been you know,
throughout the history of movies most of the people who
went to movies had no use for criticism, you know,
didn't read the reviews right, and just that was just
you know, I could complain about that or feel ignored
(31:40):
or heard about it.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
But it was just true.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
And it's just you know, you go to the movies,
you don't necessarily need anyone to help you out, and
you don't necessarily want someone to analyze it for you afterwards.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Some people do.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Some people always have A minority of the audience always had,
you know, been more curious, more inclined to want to
talk about it, to want to argue about it, to
want to think about it, and critics right for that
sector of the audience and in movies, which means which
is one of the reasons that critics always are a
(32:18):
little bit movie critics are always a little bit out
of touch with the mass audience. So you know, there's
always the thing that that someone will do someone on
a podcast or on a broadcast or somewhere, we'll say,
you know, oh see this movie had made one hundred
million dollars at the box office, but it got you know,
rotten tomatoes. It was it was a fifty four and
it was rot What's wrong with these critics? They don't
(32:39):
understand these movies. But it's just it's just a different
way of experiencing it and of thinking about it, and
and it's it's something else that you want from it.
And the people who read critics are are the people
who are interested in that. I think you're right that
people who read books are more likely. I don't have
(32:59):
any statistics about this or any any data, but it
seems intuitively that people who read books are perhaps more
interested in criticism, partly because of the kind of commitment
that reading a book is, and uh that it's it's
it's a kind of experience that you might want to,
(33:20):
uh to keep going with or keep or keep engaging with.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I mean, I was really yeah, good.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
No, no, no, I'm interested because I think that, you know,
the the book is always better than the movie. I
can can I can't think of any time, perhaps maybe
to kill a Mockingburg, the moking bird, they kind of
get it even but to my mind, the book is
always better than the movie.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
People say The Godfather, the Godfather.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Maybe, yeah, you know, you're right, you know, I never
read The Godfather.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
It's not that it's not that good because which is why,
But which is why I think it could be a
great movie because it's a very I mean, it's not
a terrible book, but it's a it's a it's a
it's a sort of a trashy, pulpy book that you know,
a couple of made into something transcendent that's beyond what
what the book was actually doing.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
But that's it's it's a pretty good movie. I will
agree that the interesting thing coupla is a fascinating subject actually,
because I remember once talking to Quentin Tarantino on the
old Late Night Show and he was telling me a
story about, hey, you'll make ten movies and he's going
to stop and that's no more than ten and he'll
(34:33):
be lucky if he gets, you know that done and
feel like he's done it. And I think he's done
very well. But the I'm a big fan, but the
but Coppola made you know, a popa lips now The
Godfather and then and you see this with a lot
of great directors that like and then it starts to
(34:58):
kind of creak a little bit. I almost it almost
feels heretical to see anything negative about Fransis Ford Cobla
because of his you know, the wide work. But he's
made some real stakers.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It's I yeah, I mean because he's.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
He's such a sort of a sympathetic and and heroic
and semi tragic figure and and such. I I interviewed
him once a long long time ago, and he was
just such a wonderful person to talk to because he
just has all kinds of stories and wisdom and very
kind of warm.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
But it's true, and and it's interesting because I think
it happens in some other art forms too, Like he right,
he made you know, the two Godfather movies, and he
made the Conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Don't forget that one. I mean, right, that's my God
and uh, you.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Know, and he made Apocalypse Now, which is has its
has its problems, but is pretty mighty.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I think in the end it's a yeah, it's it's
a flood masterpiece is exactly same.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
But but then whatever happens, you know, I think the
analogy there that I think about it's almost like what
happens sometimes with musicians.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You know where like.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Bruce Springsteen made you know a handful of really great
albums and you know, kept making music and some of
those albums are really good, but it's not you know,
none of them will ever be.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Darkenest on Me inter Town. Right.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So well, yeah, maybe, and maybe that's the that but
maybe that's familiarity as an audience when it comes to
you know, particularly with musicians, as you bring up just similarly,
because the idea of Mick Jagger at eighty years old
is still saying the songs that he wrote when he
was twenty years old, right, you.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Know, which are the ones that people want to hear.
I mean, they don't necessarily want to hear the more
recent ones, but.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
That I think. I mean, but if we're talking about
what people want to hear VESU is a serious look
at what in our forum is that It's like you
were saying that they're kind of two separate things. You know.
I remember I was a big fan of and I
had him on the Late night show a lot, was
the late Dennis Harper. It was Dennis was very funny
(37:14):
and very clever and very talented about art. And I
used to needle them all the time because I thought
that Rothkoe was a Charlatan, and I would say, I
think Rothkeolle is a Charlatan. And what the hell is
that these big things the usual I don't know about art,
but I know what I like charlatan. And at one
point he said to me, either because I loved it,
he said, he said, yes, yes, yes, we've all heard
(37:36):
that Roscoe is a Charlatan thing Craig, but he's important,
so let's move on. And I loved it, but I
still don't really understand. Are there movies that you look
at and go, well, that actually is not a movie
that I connect with, but I can see why it's
(37:58):
important and it brought us to something.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Now, Oh yeah, I mean I I think I think
there are there are I think there are many and
and and there there are films that I don't particularly
you know, like or or or want to see again
that I that I have to acknowledge the the the
importance of or the just you know that that that
(38:21):
they that they matter in some way.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I mean I I I feel that way.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
You know this this if I, if I hadn't quit already,
this would have gett me kicked out of the film
Critics Club. But I feel that way, you know, about
a lot of Godard movies. I mean I I I
quite some of them. I quite like I I you know, masculine,
feminine and uh and and Band of Outsiders. But but
I look at a lot of them and I think, Okay,
(38:48):
this is this is important to what film had to become,
and this is an important kind of link between the
classical Hollywood cinema and European art film and then kind
of American new wave, you know movies. But these movies
as themselves, I find he's there's something very kind of
(39:13):
a cold and a little bullying about his his his
his films, and and kind of aloof from from the
the the experiences of the audience.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And so I don't I don't like, I don't love.
I can't say that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
That's it. That's it's a very interesting thing because these
are very esoteric terms, you know, jullying and you know,
and aloof and I love that. And I think that's
the absorbing it, the way that that even Godard would
be flattered by, you know what I mean, like you're
taking it seriously. But what's interesting is whenever, like when
(39:51):
it's particularly around young filmmakers. I don't know what it's
like now, but whenever you I'm sure you've done this
whenever I was making films. Part of what you do
in the publicity's things, you have to go and talk
to film students about the you know, the qu and
a's with film students, and there's always a lot of
talk about tracking shots and close ups and the use
(40:15):
of wide shots. And I think it's that fake inside.
I think is trying to sound smarter than you are
about it. But I don't know, in in real cinematic
or any artistic term, if the technique is ever even
nearly as important as the as the emotion that it
(40:37):
brings up, even if that emotion is negative.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I think I think that's right, And I think that
in a way. I mean, movies are such an interesting
example because as a critic, you don't I mean, you
may know something about the technique, right, you know, I know,
you know what a what a tracking shot is, right,
whatever stuff is, or what you know. I can tell
(41:01):
if a if a filter has been whatever. But but
I don't know in a particular movie what you know,
I don't know what what take this was, how many
takes it was.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I don't know what you know.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
I don't know in a way what I'm looking at
from a technical standpoint as a critic, which is a
little different than if you're writing. If I'm writing about
a book, even though I wouldn't necessarily know how to
write a novel, I know what writing is, right, I know,
I know what the technique that that that's that's that's
being put to use theories. But but a movie, in
(41:35):
a way, when when you're thinking about it and when
you're responding to it, all you have that you kind
of are sure of is the experience that you had
watching it, the the uh, the emotion or the or
the or the the boredom or the enjoyment or the horror,
whatever it was. You know that it was working on you.
(41:56):
And you don't necessarily know and you may never know
as a critic what it is that's worrying, like what
made it work that way?
Speaker 1 (42:04):
You know?
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I I I think about this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
I had.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I can't remember who I was talking about. I was
once interviewing a filmmaker.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Who who had I don't remember who it was, but
who had who had done a film with it with
a child actor, a very young child actor, you know,
like six or seven, younger than than to and and
I said, you know, there's this this scene which is
so full of of kind of emotion where these these
things have happened with the child parents and she's absorbing
(42:33):
all this feeling. And I was like, how did you
get that performance out of out of out of this
young child? And she was like, she said, well, I
just said look up that way, you know, yeah, and
I pointed the camera this way and then and then
you know, I mixed in the soundtrack. So it's it's
so I thought I was looking at. What I'm saying
is I thought I was looking at a piece of acting.
(42:54):
I was not looking at a piece of acting. I
was looking at, you know, a way of manipulating the
person on the screen in such a way that I
imagined that they were that they were acting. So you
know what I'm saying is you never know, right.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I mean, that's a great example of it is actually
you really don't know what's going is what's put together
in posts that makes it work. It's a fascinating thing
though that you should. I mean, you know about writing,
and you know, but there are so many different ways
to go a book, and also the idea that you
(43:33):
can change your mind. Like me reading nineteen eighty four
when I was at school at thirteen years old, I
think was the first time that we were given nineteen
eighty four, and then me reading it when I'm forty,
and then me reading it when I'm sixty, it's a
different book. And I wonder, do you do you ever
do you ever review something you've reviewed before? Like would
(43:54):
you ever go back to a book that you reviewed
before you became a film critic and review it again.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm trying to think if that's happened.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
I mean, I've gone back and written about I don't know,
I don't know if I've done it sort of in
that way, but I've I've gone back and and reread
and and and written about certainly about about writers that
I that I that I wrote about before and and
revisited their work, and and I've I've kind of I haven't.
(44:26):
I would love to do that with movies too. I mean,
in a way, just because of the sheer volume and
pace of it. It was pretty rare that I got
to go back and write again about things that I
wrote about as a critic. I went, you know, I
I I wrote about movies that I'd seen before I
was a critic. I wrote a piece, one that's very
(44:48):
close to my heart, about going to see E. T
with my son when he was you know, seven or eight,
and they'd re released it with a friend of his,
not having seen it since since it came out when
I was a teenager. And when I saw it as
a teenager, I didn't like it because I was very
you know, I was a very snotty, cynical kind of
you know, punk rock art cinema and I was like.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
What is this fi rufic condition?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah? I know so, And then of course, you know,
watching it again in however old I was, you know,
forty with with my kids, I was just like a
puddle of tears, you know, I just I was. I
was thought, this is this is the most beautiful, moving, sad,
you know, wonderful movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Steel said an interesting thing actually, but it wasn't about
ET but it was about he said a lot of
interesting things. But he said something about Close Encounters. That
he said that he had, you know, made the movie
before he had children, right, and that you know, when
Richard Drafis leaves, he said I've been that would never
have even do that. You know, once you have kids,
you would, yeah, go to another planet and see things like, nah,
(45:55):
you got to be here with the kids. But as
an entering the thing about the like we're talking about
the idea that art change. People find art over time,
they come back to it and they look at it.
But I wonder if that's a personal thing too, and
that you know, it does change for the book. You know,
(46:16):
if I read On Them with the Winds when I'm twenty,
and I read it when I'm sixty, I'm I'm a
different character in the book, you know. And I I
wonder if if when you write things, because I know
I've written stuff, I've made stuff, I've told jokes even
that I thought, oh god, I would I would never
(46:37):
say that now that's a horrible thing to say. I've
done that quite a lot actually, like this week. But
the but the idea of is that something like have
you ever looked at a movie review and you go,
I got that completely wrong? Oh?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Often, you know, completely wrong or some percentage wrong, you know,
some some I I I I was I was too enthusiastic,
or I was too critical, or I just I I
I missed it, and and it's it's part of I mean,
I came to think that it's it's kind of part
of the the job to be to be wrong. It
(47:14):
was partly partly because of what I was saying before
that you're you're, you know, you're, you're, you're looking at
this thing when this thing is brand new and the
world might not be ready for it, and you might
not be ready for it. And also you're you're, you're
a person, you know, at whatever point in your life
you are so so I I think, I think it's
(47:37):
generally true of of of of critics when when we're
when we're young, are much more much more aggressive, much
more much more hostile, much more and more likely in
a way to be offended to think I I I
remember thinking this that you know that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
That's that thing that's just critics. I don't think. I
think I think everywhere. I mean, if you look at
the kind of the fractious nature of the relationship between
older people and younger people like now, and I know
Socrates who are going on about the world is going
to Helena and Basket because of the young people, and
they're writing things down, you know, I mean, it's like
(48:16):
I think it's true. Is a is a bit of
a product of age that on each end of it,
I think you are a little more aggressive. Our person
is a little more aggressive and self righteous when you're young.
And I think when you're older, you get you get
a little kind of well, maybe I should lighten up.
If you're lucky, if you if you're in the right way,
you should lighten up a little, right, you should.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
You become more more more tolerant, a little more a
little more philosophical, because I do remember feeling like, you know,
taking it, taking it personally, that every every bad movie
was was a sort of, you know, a.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Crime that I had to avenge.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Right, And how what we've established in the nature of
our conversation here today is that older people our age
are much cooler than younger people their age, And that
is the truth of what we've arrived at.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
I think, yes, that's that's that's the hard, the hard
wisdom of the years. That's how we that's how we
earned these these gray hairs on our on our heads.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Exactly. It's an absolute joy talking to you, Tony. I
I really really enjoyed it, and I I was very
pleased before had I looked on and you were actually
kind to me about some pretty movies that I was
involved in. It made me very happy, Thank goodness.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I had no idea at the time that it would,
you know, come back to to pay such a good dividend,
but this has really been my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
It's been well. Thanks for coming. Lovely told you
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They are
available at the Craig Ferguson show dot Com slash tour
or at your local outlet in your region. My name
(00:44):
is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy.
I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
On the podcast Today EO Scott, Anthony Oliver Scott, or
Tony Scott to his friends, of which there are many.
(01:05):
Tony was one of the chief movie critics in the
New York Times for about twenty years and now is
a literary critic on the New York Times Book Review
or New York Times Review of Books. I think it
is Actually he's very clever, he's very informed, and he's
just a very interesting man. I hope you enjoy this
conversation as much as I do. Tony. I didn't know
(01:30):
until right now that you called yourself Tony. I was
going to call you AO all day. That's okay. Does
anybody ever call you AO?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, good. I don't think they should. I don't know
they should call you. Why did you start using your initials?
Because because of the filmmaker Tony.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Scott a little bit, although I wasn't a film critic
at the time, but it was I was run by
Tony Scott. And there were actually a few Tony Scott's.
There was the filmmaker, there was a baseball player when
I was growing up. There's a jazz saxophonist. So the
world seemed to be full of Tony Scott's and AO.
(02:09):
The initials were had been used in my family. My
great grandfather was also AO, and he had a company
in the little town in Ohio where my grandfather and
father grew up. That was called AO Scott and Sons,
And when I was a kid, this was the family
business and they were like I had little pencils that
(02:29):
said AO Scott on them and like little stationary So
it was it was. I had some association with it. It
didn't just come out of nowhere. So I thought that'd
be an interesting tribute to the ancestors.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I think it's delightful now until well last year, you
were the chief film critic of the New York Times, right.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yes, I was. I was eight chief film Creig when
all the Dargas was was the other one. We kind
of did it together.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But here's the thing, though, I before we started this,
I thought what kind of reviews AO Scott gave any
movie I was in? So I looked up. You know what.
You gave me good reviews for a couple of movies
that I did back in the day. You gave me
a good review for a movie called Saving Grace, which
(03:17):
I had written and I was in, and you were
very nice about it, I think, very fair about it.
And then you had made because it was all in
the New York Times app and the other one was
a movie I'm very proud of called The Big Teas,
which is a hairdressing competitive hairdressing movie that completely tanked. Yes,
(03:40):
but it was. It was and is I think a
fabulous film that is sadly no one's ever seen except you.
But you probably can't remember it because you've seen so many.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
I vaguely remember it now that you've said the title,
I don't think I'll tell you. I haven't thought about
it in don't know what is it twenty years?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, well I haven't either, and I made it. But
it's funny though, because I guess you get a similar
thing to me, like I I get people like once
I saw a documentary about Leonard Nimoy right, and it
was a beautiful documentary. I don't know if you've seen it,
called Becoming Spoke. His son made it. It's a real
(04:23):
kind of love letter to his father's and I watched
it was very emotional and I said to my wife
at the time of coursh that was lovely. I really
wish i'd had him on the late night show. And
then she googled it and he'd be on twice. I
was like a new recollection on it. Does that happen
to you as well? Like you get movies, you've you've
(04:43):
reviewed them, you thought about them, and then they go away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
It happens all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
People will say, you know, I saw this movie, you know,
the other night, and they'll they'll they'll, you know, say
the title and I'll be like, oh, that sounds interesting.
I've never seen it, and they were like, well, yeah,
because you're you know.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
The DVD.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yes, I read it, because you reviewed it. It's it's
it's very kind of humbling in a way because you,
you know, you you you you put this work into
this thing. You think, you think hard about it, you know,
and and I always trying to do to do my
best and not phone it in and and and take
the movie seriously and think about it. But just you know,
(05:23):
the the human brain and the passage of time, and
you just kind of you lose it.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
But it's very interesting though, you, you and I my friend,
we are dinosaurs. We are we are the last of
a generation whose our memories will not be digitized from now.
It's true, you know, my children, your children, their children,
everybody will have a digital record of nearly everything they
did and where they were. And I think that's kind
(05:52):
of sad, because you you lose although I mean, and
in one way it's good, I guess, because you can
remember a lot more. But in a way it's because
I think you lose. Memory does play some lovely tricks.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It helps you deal with stuff. It's a very clever
thing it does. And and and forgetting is part of it.
Forgetting and then you know, remembering what you've forgotten. So
I have you know, I have all these books on
my shelves, and and and I picked them up sometimes
and I find, you know, I I I find things I.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Wrote in them, notes I made and I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
You know, yeah, but but but it does come back.
The thing is that you know your your your can
reawaken in your brain and I think there's something. I
think you're yeah, there is something lost. If the idea
is just that there is a digital record that says,
you know, this is everything you've read, this is everything
you've watched, this is how long I mean, now you
know you you you go to to UH to read
(06:49):
an article in the New York Times online, and it
will tell you how long readers spent on it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I know that's right. Yeah, that must be unnerving. If
you're writing for the New York Times and you say, wow,
that's this one held people for two minutes.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well exactly, it's a little it's a little unnerving when
you you know, you look, you look at the data
and it says, you know, readers spend one one minute
and thirty seven seconds on on this on this piece,
it would have taken you know, three and a half
minutes to read the whole thing. And you think, wow,
they couldn't even they couldn't even give me three and
a half.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
No, they couldn't. I wonder is that connected to your
departure from film criticism and moving into because you're in
the review of books now, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, yeah, I went. I mean it was it was
a few things. I had started out as a as
as a book critic before, before I before I went
into movies. So in some ways it was something that
I had always thought I would get back to. I
thought when I was hired to be a film critic,
I thought, well, this would be an interesting thing to.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Do for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
But really, you know, I'm this is this is a sideline,
and I'm really a literary critic. And then that lasted
twenty five years, and and uh so I wanted to
get to get back, you know, back to that while
there was still time in in my in my productive years,
and and also to get just sort of off of
(08:12):
the treadmill of the of the weekly review. I mean,
the thing about being a film critic is that there
is just it's it's kind of relentless. So you're seeing
five or six movies a week, you're reviewing two or
three of them, you know, week in and week out,
year in, year out, and at a certain point you
you kind of feel like you've I felt like I was,
I was starting to run out of ideas and.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Of of of moves.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And does a row view of the does a row
view of the love of the of the genre itself?
Does it? Does it demystify it to any extent where
you can connect to it in the same way?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think it does by repetition because you've seen, you know,
the same thing, like there there are there are so
many movies are you know, movies belong to two different
genres and styles and schools. And in a way it's
not their fault that they have so much in common
that they're so you know that they follow certain formulas
and patterns. But when you've seen hundreds that are sort
(09:12):
of doing this, whether it's whether it's art films or
commercial movies or whatever, when you think to yourself, oh, yeah,
I know this one, I've seen this one before. That
in a way that is a disservice to the individual
movie you're looking at, because most viewers don't see it
that way. They're seeing this movie and they're not thinking
of sort of the hundreds more like it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
But I also thought, you know that.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
One thing that I always worried about, and I always
thought about, and as I would kind of read other
critics would think about, is that I would always worry
about getting to a point where I would be mostly
looking backwards, where I would think, oh, you know, they
don't make them like they used to, or the great
movies I've all been made, and not being receptive to
(10:00):
was new.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And what was interesting and what was happening in the present.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
And I was thought, if I felt like I was
getting there, that would be the time to stop, because art,
did you get there?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Not quite? I stopped before I got there. It's weird
because you know, I haven't made a bunch of independent
films when I was I don't know, in my thirties
early forties, before I started Late Night, I did a
lot of that and that was a lot of how
I earned my living. And yeah, and I loved it.
But I look at film now because it was my
(10:32):
life and I was making them. They I look at
film now and I think it's harder and harder to
find in the film business. Uh, I kind of the
idea that films are art. They are they are worthy
of academic examination in the form of the kind of
criticism you do. It's no, I don't I don't see.
(10:55):
Maybe I'm not looking. But is it still there?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Well, I think it's still there, but I think that
it's it's gotten smaller and more marginal in a way.
I mean, I think that there were always, you know,
there were always bad movies and good movies. They're always
sure commercial movies, right, and some of those bad movies
are kind of good. But I do feel like, and
(11:18):
I don't know, you know, if it's because of streaming
or because of other changes in the in the in
the business, or other kind of generational shifts, but I
do find something similar that that that you have to
look much harder, and that the movies that are ambitious
(11:38):
in that way, or creative in that way, or or
artistic in that way, are being made at a smaller
and smaller scale and for a smaller and smaller audience.
So it's a little bit sometimes I feel like.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I think it's I think it's economics in America particularly,
I was I worked with an Italian film director ones
called Roberto Faienza, who who said, we were making a
film in Italy, and it was like it was a
lot of money again, spending those things I mean, and
it was it's not really a very good script, but
(12:12):
there were like you know, panzer divisions and like loads
of cameras and stuff. And I was like, wow, you
guys are I said to Robert, you know in the
day of some enormous set up. You guys are spending
a lot of money on this picture. And they said, Greg,
the difference between Italy and America is this. In America
(12:33):
you make movies to make money. In Italy, we use
money to make movies, a different idea. And I thought
it kind of is that the because Italians something even
now of recent times, oh god, what's his name again?
They have fabulous Italian director like Randi Blitza.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, Sorrentinoo.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, these movies are amazing.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Exactly right, and they're they're at a kind of scale
that unbelievable, even even the ones like that, the one,
what was it called the Hand of God?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Did you see that one?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That is a fabulous film, unbelievable, It's incredible, and it's
but it's a very like, you know, in a way,
it's a small personal movie in terms of history. It's
a story. It's his story, it's his life.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's about his his you know, his youth and growing
up in the terrible tragedy that happens in his family.
But the scale of it and just the the technique
of it is so is so big and so extravagant,
and you you, you couldn't imagine that in in you know,
in in an equivalent movie in America would be like
would be shot on an iPhone in somebody's apartment with
(13:47):
their friends.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I wonder for me, anyway, it's kind of like the
same thing with music. I wonder if it's just because
getting older and I'm like, our music is rubbish now
and it's too you know, digitized and film is the same.
And I wonder if that's one of the products of aging,
is that all art becomes awful? But I don't think so,
simply because there are guys like Sorrentino who exists, you know.
(14:18):
So I think it's a And I wonder if if
you go from I mean, first of all, the idea
that you, as you know, as a young man, would
want to get into criticism, is that even a is
that even a thing now with someone is academic criticism?
Even it's kind of grandfather then of the New York Times.
(14:41):
But I don't know if it's anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
I think it's I mean, I I do meet young people,
and I do sometimes teach young people who are interested
in it, you know, who want who want to write
about film or want to write about the arts in
in in you know, in a way that's that's serious
and creative and and and literary. And I think, uh,
there just are so few outlets. I mean, I don't
(15:05):
think it's it's it's not like it's ever been an
advisable way to make a living. It's not as if
anyone would ever say to you, oh, if you have
to go into film criticism, and you'll be you know,
that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
That's where the money is. Even even enough to pay
your rent. On the other hand, there there there were.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I'm old enough to remember, you know, there were magazines,
and there were newspapers, and every city had them, and
they all employed film critics. And they were alternative weeklies,
which were hugely important in critism.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I mean they mad, they marred to get a decent review,
and those really marred.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Yeah, they mattered a lot. They mattered in the local markets.
And they were also great schools for writers to to,
you know, to to to to come up and young
people or people from from different kinds of backgrounds could
have a chance to learn the craft and to learn
something about about about writing and about criticism, and and
that what I worry is that that doesn't exist. I mean,
(15:59):
you can, you know, you can write a sub stack,
you can write a newsletter. You can you can go
online and and say what you have to say. You
can post it on on social media on letterboxed or
on you know, on on x or Facebook or wherever.
But the the the sense of it as a as
a craft, as a discipline, as as as a way
(16:23):
of of of of being serious and and and of
writing as well as you can I don't know how
you I don't know how you learn that now, I
don't know how you where where the the the the
institutions or the or the outlets are that can teach
you that.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And what about the idea of uh of creating the
because you write very well, did you ever write phelt No?
Were you never tempted to do that?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Not?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Really?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
You know, I'm I uh, you know it works clearly, yes,
And and every once in a while I've sort of
thought about it, and like you know, you'd be sitting
around with some phrase, oh, we should write it, but yeah,
let's write a screenplay.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Let's write a screenplay about to this. But it never
you must never do that. Yes, no.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And and having you know, having been asked by enough people,
would you read my screenplay? I never want to be
in the position to be the person, you know, saying, hey,
I wrote this screen would you read it?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So I think if you wrote a screenplay, though, it
would garner some interest that someone go, you know, I'd
be quite interested in reading that, especially if you put
a superhero in it or someone with magical powers. Because that,
I wonder is because Scorsese took a law of flat
for saying these these wearing movies. Are you sympathetic to
(17:41):
his take on it? I?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I am, actually, I mean I I I spend a
lot of time, as as one has to, you know,
thinking about and writing about and trying to figure out
what to do with as a critic these the superhero
movies and the franchise movies, and how in a way
to give them the you know, to take them seriously
(18:05):
and give them a benefit of the doubt and not
not rejudge them, because you never wanted to be a
snob and say, well, you know, I hate all of
these kinds of movies. But but I do think that
they imposed a lot of limitations on the creativity of
the people who were making them, just simply partly by
virtue of being franchised, of being you know, here's a
(18:26):
pre existing intellectual property. You have to tell the story
a certain way according to to you know, to certain
conventions and procedures, and it has to be part of
this bigger thing, which is not I think, a big
a bigger imaginative thing so much as it's a bigger
commercial thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
R So, So I mean I saw that. I'm sure
you saw you see the movie Wolverine, the kind of
or the story about which I was surprised by because
I was like, that's actually a really good movie. That's
a good one. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really kind of
it's poetic and emotional and in and and dramatic and fabulous.
(19:05):
And but I've watched a lot of the other ones
because I have you know, I have young kids and
or they were young at a point, and some of
these movies are just dreadful. And they're dreadful because they're
a franchise. I think. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Well, I think that's right, because they just exist in
a way to get you to the next one, to
keep to keep the fans engaged, and not necessarily to
provide in a way I think that some of them do.
I think well, Wolverring is a good example to provide
a sort of a complete experience in and of themselves.
(19:44):
And uh and I think that that that it's sort
of run certainly in the Marvel universe, I think has
has has run into real into a real dry period.
I mean, I don't think those.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Well, it's it's it's interesting because to even talk about
these things, and you I've read some stuff you wrote
about this about the fandom in these things is actually
for a very overused word, but I can't think of
any word. One off the top of my head right
now is the word that there's a toxic nature to
(20:21):
this kind of allegiance to franchises and movies, the kind
of comic con warriors who will defend their their franchises
that basically they're just customers of with some wild loyalty.
Do you think that, I mean, I don't remember that
(20:44):
existing before maybe Star Wars and stuff, but not really.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think I
think it grew out of I think it, you know, fandom.
It's an interesting history because I think it went from
being a kind of subcultural thing among young people right
that who who you know, who felt like they were
(21:09):
maybe outsiders or misunderstood or nerds, and and here was
a thing that that that they could connect to and
and connect with each other through their through their mutual
interest in and at a certain point that became a
form of that became a dominant form in the culture
(21:31):
and in the way the culture is consumed with I
think exactly. I think toxic is the word, and I
think that I've always felt like a lot of what
is most kind of uh uncivil, let's say, in our politics,
in our political discourse, not to get too much into
(21:51):
that came from or has a sort of analogy with fandom,
that is that it's this thing. You know, you you're part
of this collective thing and nobody can criticize it, and
and you will take it personally. You know, if if
if I, as a reviewer for the New York Times
say well, this movie is not so good, you know,
(22:13):
I have I've insulted you, right, I've I've you know.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And I've had those exact things happened to me in
my life short of the New York Times, where not
that nearly from you, but from from critics have said
this movie is no good and I've spent you know,
two years of my life making it happen. And you know,
you get this much column space to dismiss it. But
and I used to get mad at that, but now
you don't even get that, no get you know, I see,
(22:39):
I think it's even worse. I think it's it's when
people not in show business start looking at the top
ten grossing films. That's crazy. What is that going to
do with anything? Unless you have money in the game.
Unless you have skin in the game, why are you involved.
You know, like the movie Twister made more money than
Finnie an Alexander. There for the movie Twister is a
(23:01):
bear movie then, or the movie Twister makes more than Ladolchivita. Therefore,
the movie Twister is a bear movie and the Ladolchivita
that's insane.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, yeah, And and I think that that it's become
because also people people didn't necessarily know or care I
mean just sort of ordinary let's say, newspaper readers right
in in in in previous decades, you know, didn't necessarily
know about or care about box office figures. But that's
(23:29):
that's become a way I think of a kind of
fake insiderness, you know, that that that everyone can feel like, well,
I know what's really going on and I and I
think that that that that Hollywood and and television kind
of and and you know, and and the Internet and
other parts of the culture too like to to to
(23:50):
sell that it's like you're you know, it's a it's
a kind of cynicism, but it makes you feel as
as just the ordinary person, as the ordinary family, like
you you know what going on? You know, you know
what the real you're part of it, the real story is,
and what the real value is.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
What about I mean you talk about the streaming and
the you know, the way that movies are consumed now
are probably you know, i'd say what ninety percent on
screens the size of the ones we're talking on right now.
I mean the idea of going into a giant movie
theater with you know, a thousand other people and watching
a movie. Does that in and I guess it does
(24:33):
exist if if you go to you know, a retrospective,
you know, Angelica screening of old Woody Allen movies or something,
maybe not Woody Allen movies, but you know, whatever it is,
there's well, there's that Woody Allen Actually a good example.
There's someone who is you know, very out of favor. Yeah,
(24:54):
and therefore his movies are seen through Do you look
at movies through and lens? If you learn something about
the filmmaker you didn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Before, well, I mean i've I've I've struggled with this
a lot, in particular about about woodall and I I
wrote some some things because he's someone whose movies I
would not be the person I am without, you know,
without without Annie Hall, without without the early one sleeper Manhattan,
(25:24):
and and and I just grew up. I'm of the
sort of generation and background where he was was one
of the main cultural figures of my life. I had
all his books, I had seen his movies, you know,
many times. And uh, I had to struggle with how
I felt about him as as as as a person,
(25:46):
and and and and and things that I that I,
you know, under understood him to have done. And and
I wrote a few pieces about that about my own
struggle with it, because it was that where I was
trying to just be kind of honest and transparent about
it like that. This is you know, I can't honestly
just say just wipe this person's work out of my
(26:07):
life and say it doesn't matter to me, and it's
not important to me. I can't reject him and his
work that way. On the other hand, I don't feel
great about it, and I'm I'm troubled by some of
the implications in the work and in my appreciation of
the work in terms of of you know, especially the
(26:27):
let's say, the treatment of women and of of of
young women in that work. But so I was but
one of the results of that was was was that
people who were much more on his side and very
partisan kind of uh came.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Down very hard on me.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I got I got a lot of talking about, you know,
sort of angry fandoms uh right, a lot of people
who sort of said I was basically you know, a Nazi.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
For for for for doing.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
This and it.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And it's a hard one and I'm I'm not going
to say, you know, I was, I was right in
every nuance, and I'm not going to get mad at
at at at anyone who thinks about it differently. But
I do think that young people, let us say, are
not going near it. You know.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I I've I've taught a lot of film students over
the last ten years, and you know, I would I
would ask.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Like, how sometimes how you know, how many Woody Allen's
movies have you have you seen?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And and and they just hadn't it, just like they weren't.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
They weren't going there, which I think is a loss.
And I think but I think also it has a
kind of thing about it because you know, it's the
separated in the art from the artist. I mean, how
many young people know about Eric von Stroheim and boys, right,
like you know, the or Man Ray or you know,
there there's some very strange dudes around or or where
(27:56):
for sure. I mean, even even the history of Hollywood,
guys like Jack Warner, who would probably be in a
lot of trouble if he.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Or Louis mayor or you know, and and for sure,
I mean, but that's as as I believe a character
in which Helen Movie once said, you know, comedy is
tragedy plus time, and the passage of time is does
have something to do with it. And so I do
think that you know, in in you know, twenty or
thirty or however many years, if we're still you know,
(28:26):
around and watching things that aren't just fed to us
by by AI and and and algorithms, people will find
those movies again, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And and well that's true. I think it's like history.
Neil Ferguson says that history doesn't begin until one hundred
years after the event. Until that point, it's it's just
you know, because once everybody's dead, then you can start
to get say, it's a perspective on things.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And I've always felt that about about movies and literature too,
And it's it's it's it's one of the interesting things
about being a critic and writing just at the moment,
when something is brand new, right in a way, that's
the worst time to try to understand what it is.
I mean, people aren't going to understand what it is
until or people are gonna, you know, critics included, are
(29:08):
gonna misunderstand it or get it wrong as likely as
not in the moment, and then subsequent generations will figure
out what it is and why it matters, and and
and what value it has at least I.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Mean, I really, I really hope that happens to my
competitive hairdressing movie that's Stiffed in the year two thousand.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Will I'm I'm confident, you know, And and they'll and
they'll dig out the review and say, but you see
one person understood.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Well, somebody understood. But here's It's an interesting thing because
I want to take you from uh, from the years
as the film criticism and New York Times to going
or returning to literary criticism.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
And I'm kind of fascinated by it because I I
I'm not I'm not trying to you know, claim on
on your you know, hanging tales. But I wrote my
first book after making a movie which I wrote and
directed and starred in, and it's garbage. I don't like it,
(30:12):
and I still don't understand why I don't like. Some
other people like it, but I don't like it, and
it wasn't what I set out to make, And so
I went to I started writing a book because I
didn't have to talk to anyone, I didn't have to
deal with anyone. I just had to write a story,
which was something that I would do. And I wonder
if there's a similar connection to leaving film criticism behind
(30:37):
and going to literary criticism like the way I mean
it is that people who read books participate, right people
who who watch movies. You know, Top Gun is a movie.
It's a great movie. I love that movie. You know.
I also love like Grandi, Beliza, and The Hand of God.
They're very, very different things, but it's easy for me
(30:58):
to watch them. They just I turn it on in
there right there. With a book, you have to get involved,
and therefore you're more invested. And therefore, I think what
I'm trying to say is that people who who read
books may be more inclined to at this course rather
than fandom. Is that true or not? I think it's true.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I mean, my my feeling about being a film criticism,
a film critic is that there have been you know,
throughout the history of movies most of the people who
went to movies had no use for criticism, you know,
didn't read the reviews right, and just that was just
you know, I could complain about that or feel ignored
(31:40):
or heard about it.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
But it was just true.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
And it's just you know, you go to the movies,
you don't necessarily need anyone to help you out, and
you don't necessarily want someone to analyze it for you afterwards.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Some people do.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Some people always have A minority of the audience always had,
you know, been more curious, more inclined to want to
talk about it, to want to argue about it, to
want to think about it, and critics right for that
sector of the audience and in movies, which means which
is one of the reasons that critics always are a
(32:18):
little bit movie critics are always a little bit out
of touch with the mass audience. So you know, there's
always the thing that that someone will do someone on
a podcast or on a broadcast or somewhere, we'll say,
you know, oh see this movie had made one hundred
million dollars at the box office, but it got you know,
rotten tomatoes. It was it was a fifty four and
it was rot What's wrong with these critics? They don't
(32:39):
understand these movies. But it's just it's just a different
way of experiencing it and of thinking about it, and
and it's it's something else that you want from it.
And the people who read critics are are the people
who are interested in that. I think you're right that
people who read books are more likely. I don't have
(32:59):
any statistics about this or any any data, but it
seems intuitively that people who read books are perhaps more
interested in criticism, partly because of the kind of commitment
that reading a book is, and uh that it's it's
it's a kind of experience that you might want to,
(33:20):
uh to keep going with or keep or keep engaging with.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I mean, I was really yeah, good.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
No, no, no, I'm interested because I think that, you know,
the the book is always better than the movie. I
can can I can't think of any time, perhaps maybe
to kill a Mockingburg, the moking bird, they kind of
get it even but to my mind, the book is
always better than the movie.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
People say The Godfather, the Godfather.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Maybe, yeah, you know, you're right, you know, I never
read The Godfather.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
It's not that it's not that good because which is why,
But which is why I think it could be a
great movie because it's a very I mean, it's not
a terrible book, but it's a it's a it's a
it's a sort of a trashy, pulpy book that you know,
a couple of made into something transcendent that's beyond what
what the book was actually doing.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
But that's it's it's a pretty good movie. I will
agree that the interesting thing coupla is a fascinating subject actually,
because I remember once talking to Quentin Tarantino on the
old Late Night Show and he was telling me a
story about, hey, you'll make ten movies and he's going
to stop and that's no more than ten and he'll
(34:33):
be lucky if he gets, you know that done and
feel like he's done it. And I think he's done
very well. But the I'm a big fan, but the
but Coppola made you know, a popa lips now The
Godfather and then and you see this with a lot
of great directors that like and then it starts to
(34:58):
kind of creak a little bit. I almost it almost
feels heretical to see anything negative about Fransis Ford Cobla
because of his you know, the wide work. But he's
made some real stakers.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It's I yeah, I mean because he's.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
He's such a sort of a sympathetic and and heroic
and semi tragic figure and and such. I I interviewed
him once a long long time ago, and he was
just such a wonderful person to talk to because he
just has all kinds of stories and wisdom and very
kind of warm.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
But it's true, and and it's interesting because I think
it happens in some other art forms too, Like he right,
he made you know, the two Godfather movies, and he
made the Conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Don't forget that one. I mean, right, that's my God
and uh, you.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Know, and he made Apocalypse Now, which is has its
has its problems, but is pretty mighty.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I think in the end it's a yeah, it's it's
a flood masterpiece is exactly same.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
But but then whatever happens, you know, I think the
analogy there that I think about it's almost like what
happens sometimes with musicians.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
You know where like.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Bruce Springsteen made you know a handful of really great
albums and you know, kept making music and some of
those albums are really good, but it's not you know,
none of them will ever be.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Darkenest on Me inter Town. Right.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So well, yeah, maybe, and maybe that's the that but
maybe that's familiarity as an audience when it comes to
you know, particularly with musicians, as you bring up just similarly,
because the idea of Mick Jagger at eighty years old
is still saying the songs that he wrote when he
was twenty years old, right, you.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Know, which are the ones that people want to hear.
I mean, they don't necessarily want to hear the more
recent ones, but.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
That I think. I mean, but if we're talking about
what people want to hear VESU is a serious look
at what in our forum is that It's like you
were saying that they're kind of two separate things. You know.
I remember I was a big fan of and I
had him on the Late night show a lot, was
the late Dennis Harper. It was Dennis was very funny
(37:14):
and very clever and very talented about art. And I
used to needle them all the time because I thought
that Rothkoe was a Charlatan, and I would say, I
think Rothkeolle is a Charlatan. And what the hell is
that these big things the usual I don't know about art,
but I know what I like charlatan. And at one
point he said to me, either because I loved it,
he said, he said, yes, yes, yes, we've all heard
(37:36):
that Roscoe is a Charlatan thing Craig, but he's important,
so let's move on. And I loved it, but I
still don't really understand. Are there movies that you look
at and go, well, that actually is not a movie
that I connect with, but I can see why it's
(37:58):
important and it brought us to something.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Now, Oh yeah, I mean I I think I think
there are there are I think there are many and
and and there there are films that I don't particularly
you know, like or or or want to see again
that I that I have to acknowledge the the the
importance of or the just you know that that that
(38:21):
they that they matter in some way.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I mean I I I feel that way.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
You know this this if I, if I hadn't quit already,
this would have gett me kicked out of the film
Critics Club. But I feel that way, you know, about
a lot of Godard movies. I mean I I I
quite some of them. I quite like I I you know, masculine,
feminine and uh and and Band of Outsiders. But but
I look at a lot of them and I think, Okay,
(38:48):
this is this is important to what film had to become,
and this is an important kind of link between the
classical Hollywood cinema and European art film and then kind
of American new wave, you know movies. But these movies
as themselves, I find he's there's something very kind of
(39:13):
a cold and a little bullying about his his his
his films, and and kind of aloof from from the
the the experiences of the audience.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And so I don't I don't like, I don't love.
I can't say that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
That's it. That's it's a very interesting thing because these
are very esoteric terms, you know, jullying and you know,
and aloof and I love that. And I think that's
the absorbing it, the way that that even Godard would
be flattered by, you know what I mean, like you're
taking it seriously. But what's interesting is whenever, like when
(39:51):
it's particularly around young filmmakers. I don't know what it's
like now, but whenever you I'm sure you've done this
whenever I was making films. Part of what you do
in the publicity's things, you have to go and talk
to film students about the you know, the qu and
a's with film students, and there's always a lot of
talk about tracking shots and close ups and the use
(40:15):
of wide shots. And I think it's that fake inside.
I think is trying to sound smarter than you are
about it. But I don't know, in in real cinematic
or any artistic term, if the technique is ever even
nearly as important as the as the emotion that it
(40:37):
brings up, even if that emotion is negative.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I think I think that's right, And I think that
in a way. I mean, movies are such an interesting
example because as a critic, you don't I mean, you
may know something about the technique, right, you know, I know,
you know what a what a tracking shot is, right,
whatever stuff is, or what you know. I can tell
(41:01):
if a if a filter has been whatever. But but
I don't know in a particular movie what you know,
I don't know what what take this was, how many
takes it was.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I don't know what you know.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
I don't know in a way what I'm looking at
from a technical standpoint as a critic, which is a
little different than if you're writing. If I'm writing about
a book, even though I wouldn't necessarily know how to
write a novel, I know what writing is, right, I know,
I know what the technique that that that's that's that's
being put to use theories. But but a movie, in
(41:35):
a way, when when you're thinking about it and when
you're responding to it, all you have that you kind
of are sure of is the experience that you had
watching it, the the uh, the emotion or the or
the or the the boredom or the enjoyment or the horror,
whatever it was. You know that it was working on you.
(41:56):
And you don't necessarily know and you may never know
as a critic what it is that's worrying, like what
made it work that way?
Speaker 1 (42:04):
You know?
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I I I think about this.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
I had.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I can't remember who I was talking about. I was
once interviewing a filmmaker.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Who who had I don't remember who it was, but
who had who had done a film with it with
a child actor, a very young child actor, you know,
like six or seven, younger than than to and and
I said, you know, there's this this scene which is
so full of of kind of emotion where these these
things have happened with the child parents and she's absorbing
(42:33):
all this feeling. And I was like, how did you
get that performance out of out of out of this
young child? And she was like, she said, well, I
just said look up that way, you know, yeah, and
I pointed the camera this way and then and then
you know, I mixed in the soundtrack. So it's it's
so I thought I was looking at. What I'm saying
is I thought I was looking at a piece of acting.
(42:54):
I was not looking at a piece of acting. I
was looking at, you know, a way of manipulating the
person on the screen in such a way that I
imagined that they were that they were acting. So you
know what I'm saying is you never know, right.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I mean, that's a great example of it is actually
you really don't know what's going is what's put together
in posts that makes it work. It's a fascinating thing
though that you should. I mean, you know about writing,
and you know, but there are so many different ways
to go a book, and also the idea that you
(43:33):
can change your mind. Like me reading nineteen eighty four
when I was at school at thirteen years old, I
think was the first time that we were given nineteen
eighty four, and then me reading it when I'm forty,
and then me reading it when I'm sixty, it's a
different book. And I wonder, do you do you ever
do you ever review something you've reviewed before? Like would
(43:54):
you ever go back to a book that you reviewed
before you became a film critic and review it again.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm trying to think if that's happened.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
I mean, I've gone back and written about I don't know,
I don't know if I've done it sort of in
that way, but I've I've gone back and and reread
and and and written about certainly about about writers that
I that I that I wrote about before and and
revisited their work, and and I've I've kind of I haven't.
(44:26):
I would love to do that with movies too. I mean,
in a way, just because of the sheer volume and
pace of it. It was pretty rare that I got
to go back and write again about things that I
wrote about as a critic. I went, you know, I
I I wrote about movies that I'd seen before I
was a critic. I wrote a piece, one that's very
(44:48):
close to my heart, about going to see E. T
with my son when he was you know, seven or eight,
and they'd re released it with a friend of his,
not having seen it since since it came out when
I was a teenager. And when I saw it as
a teenager, I didn't like it because I was very
you know, I was a very snotty, cynical kind of
you know, punk rock art cinema and I was like.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
What is this fi rufic condition?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah? I know so, And then of course, you know,
watching it again in however old I was, you know,
forty with with my kids, I was just like a
puddle of tears, you know, I just I was. I
was thought, this is this is the most beautiful, moving, sad,
you know, wonderful movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Steel said an interesting thing actually, but it wasn't about
ET but it was about he said a lot of
interesting things. But he said something about Close Encounters. That
he said that he had, you know, made the movie
before he had children, right, and that you know, when
Richard Drafis leaves, he said I've been that would never
have even do that. You know, once you have kids,
you would, yeah, go to another planet and see things like, nah,
(45:55):
you got to be here with the kids. But as
an entering the thing about the like we're talking about
the idea that art change. People find art over time,
they come back to it and they look at it.
But I wonder if that's a personal thing too, and
that you know, it does change for the book. You know,
(46:16):
if I read On Them with the Winds when I'm twenty,
and I read it when I'm sixty, I'm I'm a
different character in the book, you know. And I I
wonder if if when you write things, because I know
I've written stuff, I've made stuff, I've told jokes even
that I thought, oh god, I would I would never
(46:37):
say that now that's a horrible thing to say. I've
done that quite a lot actually, like this week. But
the but the idea of is that something like have
you ever looked at a movie review and you go,
I got that completely wrong? Oh?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Often, you know, completely wrong or some percentage wrong, you know,
some some I I I I was I was too enthusiastic,
or I was too critical, or I just I I
I missed it, and and it's it's part of I mean,
I came to think that it's it's kind of part
of the the job to be to be wrong. It
(47:14):
was partly partly because of what I was saying before
that you're you're, you know, you're, you're, you're looking at
this thing when this thing is brand new and the
world might not be ready for it, and you might
not be ready for it. And also you're you're, you're
a person, you know, at whatever point in your life
you are so so I I think, I think it's
(47:37):
generally true of of of of critics when when we're
when we're young, are much more much more aggressive, much
more much more hostile, much more and more likely in
a way to be offended to think I I I
remember thinking this that you know that.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
That's that thing that's just critics. I don't think. I
think I think everywhere. I mean, if you look at
the kind of the fractious nature of the relationship between
older people and younger people like now, and I know
Socrates who are going on about the world is going
to Helena and Basket because of the young people, and
they're writing things down, you know, I mean, it's like
(48:16):
I think it's true. Is a is a bit of
a product of age that on each end of it,
I think you are a little more aggressive. Our person
is a little more aggressive and self righteous when you're young.
And I think when you're older, you get you get
a little kind of well, maybe I should lighten up.
If you're lucky, if you if you're in the right way,
you should lighten up a little, right, you should.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
You become more more more tolerant, a little more a
little more philosophical, because I do remember feeling like, you know,
taking it, taking it personally, that every every bad movie
was was a sort of, you know, a.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Crime that I had to avenge.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Right, And how what we've established in the nature of
our conversation here today is that older people our age
are much cooler than younger people their age, And that
is the truth of what we've arrived at.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
I think, yes, that's that's that's the hard, the hard
wisdom of the years. That's how we that's how we
earned these these gray hairs on our on our heads.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Exactly. It's an absolute joy talking to you, Tony. I
I really really enjoyed it, and I I was very
pleased before had I looked on and you were actually
kind to me about some pretty movies that I was
involved in. It made me very happy, Thank goodness.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I had no idea at the time that it would,
you know, come back to to pay such a good dividend,
but this has really been my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
It's been well. Thanks for coming. Lovely told you
Host
Craig Ferguson
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