"Critics generally come to be critics not by reason of their fitness for this, but of their unfitness for anything else."
Ouch!
That was just plain mean, Sammy.
Yeah, we know what you're thinking: How's it feel with the snotty review on the other foot?
Well, in the witty language of the sophisticated critic ... it sucks.
Yet we're willing to endure the sticks and stones tossed our way in exchange for the privilege of throwing molotov cocktails and live grenades right back.
Talk about a bully pulpit.
Critics are often an enigmatic lot to their audience, which is why the Weekly recently gathered five practioners of the craft to weigh the challenges, pitfalls, ethics and rewards of what we do, as well as our responsibilities to the artists/entertainers we cover and our relationship with you, our readers, love us or loathe us.
That's us over there, tucked into the corner of a lounge lit like the Batcave, lubricated by beers, Cokes and coffee at the PT's Pub just off Decatur and I-215 (try noshing on their beef nachos—delish).
C'mon over and meet the crew:
• Mike Weatherford, 44, Review-Journal entertainment columnist.
• Josh Bell, 25, Weekly film, music and TV critic.
• Anthony Del Valle, 52, R-J theater critic; Mercury film critic.
• Jeannette Catsoulis, "older than Kate Winslet but definitely younger than Susan Sarandon," Mercury film critic.
• Steve Bornfeld, 47, Weekly theater/film critic, ex-TV critic (and discussion moderator).
Grab a beer and lend an ear. We make more sense the longer you drink.
Steve: Two criticisms of critics I hear all the time are 1) We're just failed, frustrated, mean-spirited people who couldn't be artists, actors or musicians ourselves, and 2) We don't know shit from shinola, and our opinions aren't any more valid than anyone else's just because they're published.
Anthony: I wrote a play that was done locally, and it got really good reviews. I knew it was a lousy play. One day, I was sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the theater. There was a girl there with her parents who'd come in for the weekend, and they were talking about what a rotten play they had just seen. They critiqued it for like 10 minutes, not knowing I was in the booth right next to them. And I learned a lot, I was excited, agreeing with what they were saying. And I said to myself, this is what local criticism ought to be like. The idea that you don't have any consideration for that person's feelings, but you're dealing with the product.
I always thought in this town—I'm talking just about plays—there was this small-town "nice" quality to every review I read, and it wasn't helping anyone. I don't think the public was believing the critics, and it wasn't helping the people involved in the theater.
Josh: I feel like I'm playing catch-up, that I'm not as knowledgeable as a film critic should be. I always feel like I'm not quite there yet, but I'm doing my best to get there.
Steve: Some of us, when we first got into the newspaper business, we covered cops or the courts—the standard journalistic stuff. Does having that information-gathering background matter when it comes to being a critic?
Jeannette: There's something I want to say up front about that. It's really important to define what we're talking about. There's a huge difference between a film critic and a film reviewer. Ninety-eight percent of what we read is film reviewing, not film criticism. Anyone can review films. All reviewing is, is: Here's a bit of the story, here's a little bit about the actors, and you sum it up. That's a film review. But having a journalism background to be a film critic is irrelevant. What you have to have is a knowledge of film, and you have to be a good writer. Not all journalists are good writers.
Steve: Mike, you need to constantly gather information about what's going on along the Strip to make your columns informational, and well as containing criticism. How important is it to you?
Mike: It's like wearing two hats. If you break out the reviews, or whatever you want to call the criticism, it's the writing that counts, and there's that indefinable thing that makes it shine more than the person who gets on the Internet the next morning. That's the elusive question of, what makes you better at it than someone else?
I guess because I'm the only person here who is in the mainstream daily part of the business, versus the weekly side of it, maybe because of the Internet, the actual reviews are getting de-emphasized a little bit. Our paper and others tend to make it more like a beat, the beat of entertainment, and that's where the basic reporting skills come in.
On the rare occasion when you do both, it puts you in the very weird position of reviewing these people, then you call them the next day, like, "Hey, can you tell me some proprietary information that you don't necessarily have to tell me?" But in a way, that's good too, because it lets everybody know that it's not a personal thing. You write what you have to write and you move on.
Jeannette: That's a difficult position. I'd hate to be in that position. You have to be able to say when things are really, really bad.
Josh: Maybe I haven't been in the business long enough, but I don't understand why you have to have been a reporter to be a critic. It seems to me you could be a much better critic if you don't have to be a reporter. I definitely see criticism as more of an intellectual pursuit. I never feel I have to play catch-up as a journalist, but in learning about film.
Mike: I'm glad every other outlet does treat it more that way. I think you see it broken out as a more separate, self-contained thing. Daily newspapers still have it be this kind of incestuous thing. It's a practical thing in that they want the people they trust to be the critics, the people who cut their teeth on the basics.
Steve: Are your editors sympathetic of that line you have to walk?
Mike: Yeah, I think so.
"Criticism is the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste."
Steve: Josh, you watch a lot of movies you've never seen before on Netflix just to gain that knowledge, right? I think that's admirable.
Josh: Yeah, I try to watch five or six movies a week, older classics and things that I missed, smaller movies. I always feel like I haven't seen enough movies.
Anthony: I remember a few weeks ago, an older critic said to you at Flight of the Phoenix, "Oh, you're too young to have seen the original." And you said, "Uh, I've seen it."
Josh: I had seen it three days before, specifically because I was going to the remake.
Anthony: One of the things he's doing is recognizing that when you review a film, part of your job is to put that film into the perspective of the history of film, so you have to have a very broad knowledge.
Mike: Like the remake of Assault on Precinct 13. If there's a review that says, "Not having seen the original ..." you go, "Well, why not? Everything's on video now, why haven't you seen the original?"
Jeannette: That's why I think a review of Assault on Precinct 13, if you've never even heard the name John Carpenter, is perfectly acceptable because 90 percent of the audience has no idea who John Carpenter is. But if you want to criticize and analyze that new film, then you shouldn't even be putting pen to paper if you haven't seen the original.
Anthony: Unless your editor told you that morning, "Go there, now. I need it in a couple of hours!"
[Knowing laughs all around.]
Jeannette: You can't write good criticism quickly. You just can't. It has to roll around your head for awhile. A lot of times I have to see it more than once.
Steve: That's the reason why, when studio publicists stand there with clipboards after a screening, polling people for instant reactions, I'm loathe to give them anything. A lot of times, I simply don't know what I think yet.
Jeannette: I know. I always distrust people who say right away, "Oh, wonderful," or "Terrible," because you have to let it percolate. Deadlines make that impossible when a screening [arranged and controlled by the studios] is Tuesday night [with stories due Wednesday morning for publication in the weeklies]. It's embarrassing. You know that you're not doing good work. You're under terrible constraints. But you also know that it's perfectly acceptable for some people. It's troubling.
Steve: Tony, you and me, as local theater critics, have a different situation. We often encounter the people we write about LIVE, right in front of our faces, when we go to a show. That's a different kind of discomfort. I think we take great pains to physically and socially distance ourselves from them for that reason. But frankly, I find it difficult to maintain that separation, to avoid becoming part of the theatrical community, rather than solely critiquing it.
Anthony: Yes. They all want to "do lunch." And when I first started, I said yes to be polite, and all it was was a con job. It's understandable, I'm not putting them down for that. But it's like they all feel like, "If you could just understand what I'm trying to do, you'd see how brilliant I am." That sounds sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way. But I found it was better to just let the work speak for itself and avoid, as much as I could, the social end of it.
The problem I have, on the other side, is that it's always nice to be aware of what's going on in the theater community, to be one step ahead of ...
Steve: Me ...
Anthony: [Laughs] ... And that requires having some relationship with these people. I can imagine what Mike goes through.
Mike: When [ex-R-J entertainment columnist] Mike Paskevich did the casino shows, we sort of did a good cop/bad cop thing, where I would often go in and do the advance story, then he could walk in cold and just see it as a patron without knowing, "Oh, they wanted to afford this piece of scenery and the subcontractor screwed it up and they sent it back, so they opened the show without it." When you know these things, you feel kind of sorry for them. Paskevich had it better than I ever realized.
Steve: Let's turn to something that often comes up in local criticism, which is: Is it our primary responsibility to "support the community"? Many times we get local artists yelping, "Why aren't you supporting our efforts?" as if that's our main purpose.
Jeannette
[to Anthony]: Didn't you just have a big argument with someone who accused you of not supporting local theater?
Anthony: Yeah. I think we support it by calling attention to it. The worst thing we can do, just like movies, is to ignore them. Readers quickly find out whether they agree with you or not. A lot of times, you might write a scathing review, a reader might say, "Well, I know this idiot doesn't know what he's talking about, so I'm going to go to the show." A lot of theater people tell me that the worst kind of review is a lukewarm review, but if they're extremely positive or extremely negative, it sells tickets.
Steve: That's probably not true most of the time in film, about selling tickets with extremely negative reviews. I'm guessing half-star reviews don't get a lot of asses in the seats.
Josh: But it's relevant to local music, which I also write about. At the Weekly, we're doing local CD reviews all the time, and I wrote a really quite negative review of this local singer-songwriter guy's CD. He sent me an e-mail and accused me of essentially not supporting the local scene. But, like Tony says, you support it by acknowledging that it's there.
I think it's unfair to local musicians, as well as people who are interested in music, to hold local people to a different standard than you would hold a national release or production. Was it good music? Was it a good play? Is it worth going to see no matter who's in it?
Steve: You really think you shouldn't hold less experienced performers to a different standard?
Josh: I really don't think you should.
Anthony: A local band you would hold to the same standard as a national act?
Josh: If a local band is really good, then they're probably really good stacked up against national bands. Just because they're not really successful, there are a lot of reasons why bands may not be successful. It's not always because they're not good. If they suck, I don't want to listen to their CD no matter who they are.
Anthony: If I see a really good community theater actor, I would not necessarily give them the same review I would a Broadway actor.
Josh: I guess so, and maybe it's not the same for theater. I shouldn't generalize that way. For music, it's not exactly the same standard, but you shouldn't be too charitable, because it's unfair.
Steve: You realize, Josh, that's a giant pull-out quote right there.
Josh: Yeah, I know. But if I had written that that CD was good when it was not, and someone had bought it or gone to the guy's show and they thought it was crap, that's not fair.
Anthony: But if this local band is not necessarily the same as a good national band ...
Josh: But they can be! You take The Killers. They were a good band when they were a local band and they had 20 people coming to their shows. They're exactly the same band now, sound exactly the same, with the same songs. They were good then. They're good now. There's no difference.
Anthony: But if there's a band playing here tonight—they're not the Beatles. Are you going to give them a bad review?
Josh: No. I'm not going to give anyone a negative review for not being the Beatles.
Steve: Isn't that discerning gradations in the performing?
Josh: Of course. The Beatles might get five and a half stars. The band that's good might get three stars, but that doesn't mean they're not good. You can define standards however you want, but you have to have consistent standards.
Mike: Anything, I think, that's asking for your time or your money, which either way is an investment, is subject to ... it would be unrealistic not to expect some consumer information out there. Time is the most valuable thing people have now. If they're picking up the publication, they want to get an idea: Is this is worth buying and spending two hours on seeing? That said—that's the delicate part of the job we don't get credit for, which is how you account for what you guys were talking about. Like when you [theater critics] go to Seussical, and it's kids [performing], it takes a little bit more finesse. Yeah, they're charging money ...
Steve: Places like the Las Vegas Academy.
Mike: Yeah, that's a kind of discretion involved that people just have to trust the way we write it or take that into account.
"Critics ... Are only observers of an event and they bring to the task their own taste. Anytime someone does something new, he's in danger from a critic because we have only lived with the past, and now he's confronted with the future."
Steve: Mike, are you fighting an attitude that says people don't expect much beyond being marginally entertained in Vegas?
Mike: I actually think it's the opposite, and that's one thing I like about the job. There's so few people reviewing the Las Vegas shows [nationally] as a credible thing as opposed to the tourist publications that are advertorial or travel websites. I think people are really hungry for something that comes from the posturing of being objective. Tickets aren't cheap now. How many of them are more than $100?
You know how people like consistency in a movie reviewer? They say like, "I always read Roger Ebert because I don't care if he likes the movie—because I've read him so long, I know at what point he turns left and I turn right."
I think it's the same with what I'm doing with these shows, where they're thinking, "Maybe I'm not ultimately going to agree with what this guy is saying, but he's putting enough information in about the show to cut through the smoke screen of all the advertorials that are out there, and press releases."
Anthony: On the subject of different standards for different venues, I would think if that if you were going to a UNLV short film festival, and it was all made by students, I have a feeling that without us even speaking about it—what we're looking for is potential, promise ...
Jeannette: Yes, yes, absolutely.
Anthony: When we go to a regular movie, we're looking for perfection. I think our readers know that as well. If you go to a children's theater show, you don't have to say it, there's a different standard. Now, there is bad children's theater and there are bad UNLV short films, but a different standard is implied.
The criticism you always get is, "Look, it's just community theater, why give it a bad review?" But the fact is there's good community theater and bad community theater.
Jeannette: I think the most troubling thing to ever happen to me was, I had a student once who said, "I read you all the time and I love your stuff, and I always know if you really hate a film, I'm really going to enjoy it!" But that's part of it. People really do read you a lot and they know your bias. You reach readers because of the way you express yourself, not because they agree with your opinion.
Steve: Hopefully, they'll find you an interesting read and be able to extract information either way that will help them decide.
Josh: You'll illuminate something about whatever, the movie, the music, the show that they hadn't thought about, whether they agree or not. That's why I read certain critics, especially ones I don't agree with.
Anthony: I always compare it to a brilliant defense attorney, and after you hear him speaking, you think, "Well, the guy could never had done this, the argument is so brilliant." And then comes the prosecutor with an equally brilliant argument. Whether a critic is somebody I like has nothing to do with their conclusions; it's their arguments.
And that frustrates me because we so often write only 300 words [an allotment dictated by editors] and it seems like even the big magazines like Newsweek are doing away with space. And you need space to make your argument.
Jeannette: That's why I'm so against stars systems and ratings that sum up something. I am SOOO against that. What means more to me than anything is when someone says, "I really liked your review, but I didn't know whether you liked the film or not." I love that.
If you think about it, 90 percent of the films we see we neither love nor hate. Most of the time you're writing a mixed review. It kills me having to give stars because I might give it two and a half stars if I hated the direction, and people might think, "Well, I'm not going to go see that." But at the same time, I think the cinematography is stunning. So the star ratings really tie me up in knots sometimes.
The other thing I think a good critic does is admit when they've changed their minds.
Josh: I remember doing that with The Matrix. Reviewing the third Matrix, I did open up by saying, I was way too nice to the second Matrix.
Steve: Mike, you admitted that you weren't nice enough, right?
Mike: It took seeing We Will Rock You to make me appreciate how well-done Mamma Mia was.
[Laughs all around.]
Anthony: Boy, when your review [of Rock You] came out, you were on the radio and a whole bunch of those guys called.
Mike: Yeah, that's what we were talking about earlier. It's awkward, and in a way it makes you have to walk the walk. When I'm doing the concert reviews, Aerosmith really didn't care what I wrote, they weren't going to be in town to read it the next day—that was pre-Internet. It doesn't make you rein it in, but it makes you think, "Boy, if I'm going to write this, I'd better be prepared to run into this person somewhere."
"One of the difficulties of criticism is that you are remote from the people you're criticizing for. You are probably more sophisticated than your average reader, just the same as the ballet master or the choreographer doesn't represent the audience anymore. So you have to be very careful that you're not adapting too elitist a view."
Steve: Tony, you and I have a different situation which is frustrating to both of us. In film or music reviewing, you're mostly evaluating a finished product. But we'll see something the first weekend for a show that only runs two or three weekends, a work in progress. And we'll point out problems and actually get feedback from the director or actors ...
Anthony: Or a letter from their attorney. [laughs]
Steve: Or a letter from their attorney ... that says, "We think we fixed that and it's a better show now—will you come back and review it again?" And it's hard enough to get theater some attention at all in the paper, never mind getting editors to agree to let us go back for a second shot. We only get to give it one shot, unlike critics on Broadway or in LA, who can go back months or even a year later.
Mike: But I can do that on the longer-running shows on the Strip.
Anthony: What I hate, too, is, if the show is only two weekends, we've got to be there opening night, when they've had no time in front of an audience, and a lot of times you don't know what you've got until you're in front of an audience. But it's the nature of the beast of what we do.
Steve: We're various ages and levels of experience here—what role, if any, does age play in being a critic?
Jeannette: Josh and I might be at opposite ends of the spectrum here, because you just look so young! But I don't think you can be a good film critic if your film knowledge begins and ends with Star Wars.
I think, to be a good film critic, if you're young, you have to do what he's doing. You have to be prepared not only to see the classics, but read the old journals and reviews and learn about cinematography and filmmaking. It is a lifetime's work. I think older critics have the huge advantage of all that time to study. But I think you can be a good young writer as long as you're prepared to do the work.
Steve: Beyond the scholarly aspect of it, how important is age in simply having lived a good deal of life? Of having experienced the kind of love or loss that a filmmaker is trying to express, and being able to relate to that?
Jeannette: It will certainly help films resonate with you. I think films, by definition, can resonate with you emotionally far more if you've had a particular experience.
I think a film like Million Dollar Baby, for instance, will resonate profoundly with people who have had a similar experience or connected to the same type of situation. But I don't think you necessarily need to have had that experience ... Josh's reaction to it, though, is equally valid [Josh gave it a lukewarm review]. Any kind of art that affects you, I think a young person's perspective is equally as valid as someone who has had tons of life experience. But the appreciation will be different because of that.
Josh: There's another side to that coin. So many times a movie comes out that specifically is meant to speak to the teenage culture, and an older reviewer so obviously does not understand what that movie is about.
Jeannette: Every so often, I'll say to an editor there are certain films that I cannot cover. I don't do children's films because I can't stand them, so the only children's films I'll do are by Japanese animators, because I happen to like Japanese animators. And films specifically for African-Americans, I can't review them because I grew up in an all-white area. Those films are for a market that I am very ignorant of.
Mike: It's an interesting double standard this brings to mind. Who they [R-J editors] usually send to do the concerts and the music beat tend to be a younger person. When I got here, I was 27, and too old for a lot of the concerts already, and too old for nearly all of them by the time I quit doing them and we hired [Doug] Elfman.
But it's generally accepted that film and theater beats are something you can age gracefully in. And yet Hollywood is becoming so marketed to teens and early-20s audiences, so is it then different to send an older film critic to see an L.L. Cool J movie than to send me to *N SYNC? It's an interesting double standard.
Josh: At the same time, though, you can. I don't see any reason why not. Even as you get older, especially as a music critic, you have to do the work, just like I have to go back and see the classics. If you're a music critic in your 50s, you can still be watching TRL and listening to the current music. [Weekly music critic Richard] Abowitz, even being someone slightly older, is well in touch with music that is popular right now, and has a good appreciation of it. I would certainly trust Richard's review of some sort of pop music or hip-hop that is marketed to young people. Will he have exactly the same perspective? No. But no one has exactly the same perspective as anyone else, and it's still a valid review.
Jeannette may be anxious about reviewing children's movies or movies about African-Americans, but I would still trust her review because I trust her opinions on film and that she's knowledgeable about it.
Anthony: Well, I'm going to be the bad guy here. I think, with some exceptions, and there are some great exceptions, I don't think you can be a good critic if you're under 40. I don't know enough about the Strip to have an opinion about that. But I think the problem is that there's so much knowledge that you have to have, which is unbelievable.
This shouldn't be an insult to Josh because all I'm saying is I bet he'll just get better as he gets older. But you also have to have life experiences. I think you need to have broken up with your lover a couple of times. I remember reading Medea when I was in college. I read it again when I was 40. You don't really understand the greatness of Medea until you know what it's like to want to kill somebody.
And the opposite side, where you've got a stuffy 50-year-old who doesn't understand why Hilary Duff is a great actress ...
Josh: I didn't say Hilary Duff was a great actress!
Anthony: Seriously, I don't mean this toward Josh, because I really enjoy Josh's work. But an older person can make it part of his job to stay in tune with the popular culture. I used to teach class, teenagers, twice a week, and it's only because I wanted to hear what words were coming out. I worked for CityLife for awhile, which was great for me. If I really was a good person, I would watch more TV because I never watch shows that are popular. There are exceptions, but a younger person cannot do anything to get that hard experience that they'll have when they're 40.
I think it's the one profession where, as long as you make sure you don't get crusty and become an old fogey—like Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. ...
Jeannette: Yes!
Anthony: There was a time, around 1956, if a film had the word "damn" in it, it got a bad review from him. He gave Bonnie & Clyde a scathing review. He was too old for his job. But it wasn't because of his age, it's because he allowed himself to just get out of it. He wouldn't grow, and that's a tough thing about being a critic.
You have to be arrogant because you have to have a lot of confidence in your opinion—you have to believe it's good enough to be published. But you also have to be very humble because you have to let life keep soaking into you.
"Those who patronize 'lowbrow' art—stand-up comedy, cabaret, movies and popular music—do not heed critical opinions nearly as much as do those who patronize 'highbrow' art—theater, opera and classical music."
Steve: Can a critic have an objective view, put emotional distance between themselves and the art or product being reviewed?
Anthony: I don't think I've ever felt an objective view.
Jeannette: I don't think anyone is capable of being objective about any kind of art. I absolutely agree with Tony that you are always subjective. That's what you're paid to be. The worst kind of film writing, or any kind of art or culture writing is bland, dispassionate, uninvolved.
Vera Drake left me floored because I grew up in houses like that. I knew women who did what she did [perform abortions].
Josh: That movie also left me floored, a great movie. And I didn't have any of those experiences at all. There will always be niches and people who will like some things more than other people, but a really good movie, or music or play is universal.
Anthony: If you're a Jewish, white, rich woman living in Manhattan, that's going to color what you write, and I think that's perfectly OK. I don't think we look to any reviewer to be objective. If you're a black female living in the ghetto and you're a film reviewer, I expect a slightly different viewpoint, at the least. But who's wrong, who's right? They both enrich it.
Mike: I don't know what the median age of a film director is now, but with both film and music, I think there's an ageism in the industry and a prejudice against older people. That would be my argument against having to be an older person evaluating the work of a younger person.
Steve: Josh, you've told me there are some things you're just apathetic about, like politics. Does that play any part if you see, say, the last movie John Sayles made [the political satire Silver City, actually reviewed for the Weekly by Bornfeld]?
Josh: Actually, it probably does. Not so much for that Sayles movie, which was just lame overall. But I went to see Hotel Rwanda, and that is meant to be a very affecting movie, an indictment of people who didn't care. I was sitting next to my friend's girlfriend, who bawled during the entire movie. And I was bored. I don't know if it's great to go on record as not caring about the Rwanda genocide ...
Anthony: I gotta tell you, I kept up on Rwanda a lot, loved the PBS documentary, and I was also bored by the movie.
Josh: Yeah. I was worried about that. When I was thinking about my reaction to the movie, I was thinking, "Do I think this is a bad movie because it's a bad movie, or do I think it's a bad movie because I couldn't care less about the subject matter?" Ultimately, I agree with Tony that it's not a great film. But I did kind of wonder about that. Like Jeannette said, you can't leave that out, you can't be objective.
The movie Before Sunset was for me very affecting, but might not necessarily be for older people. But in reading [Internet reviews], one of the younger critics felt he was too close to that movie to review it. And one of the older critics jumped on that, saying it was silly—be up front and say, "I felt really close to this movie, and it really affected me," as part of the review. And I think that's good reviewing too.
Anthony: We bring everything we are to what we write. That means there's no right or wrong answer, all our prejudices are OK. That's why the more critics there are, the better. It's telling people that my opinion is not necessarily the gospel. That's why brilliant critics can disagree with one another. We shouldn't even try to be objective.
Jeannette: I didn't like Hotel Rwanda very much. If someone says, "You didn't care about the Rwanda genocide," well, that's ridiculous. It's like, if you didn't like The Passion of the Christ, you're a heathen and you hate God. This kind of public reaction is something you get a lot. People say, "Well, you have to be careful what you say," but you don't! You should just say whatever it is you want to say and let people react, let them respond.
I love getting hate mail. It's my favorite thing. The most hate mail I ever got was when I attacked Tom Hanks.
Steve: You ever get hate mail, Mike?
Mike: Every now and then, not a lot of it. It's weird, because there's not a lot of other people out there reviewing magic shows or topless girlie shows. My thing is more of a consumer thing, whereas movies—that's why there's rottentomatoes.com. There's so many opinions that you can actually have a composite score.
Anthony: Mike, there was a time several years ago when I thought you were giving a free pass to any theater production that appeared on the Strip. I just thought your standards changed all of a sudden. I remember, you gave Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus a B-plus. And it could just be a difference of opinion. Lately you've been pretty tough on theater productions. I wonder if sometimes on the Strip, is it frustrating where there's a certain level of quality that seems to be stagnant?
Mike: You're right. I guess it's what I was talking about earlier about the good cop/bad cop, and Men Are From Mars may have been one when it would have been better if somebody could have just gone in and seen it cold. Whereas I had done the preview story about, here they're trying to create this original production on the Strip, so I was probably in their corner a little bit more.
But if you just lifted that production and put it down in any kind of regional theater in Chicago or something, it would have been like, "Ah, it's just another thing that comes and goes." So I put more gravity on it.
Anthony: Frankly, if I was a Strip reviewer—I don't see a lot of them, but I see enough of them to think I'd go crazy.
Steve: He may have the hardest job of all of us.
Mike: It's the hardest in that sense that most of these shows aren't meant to be seen more than once. It's easier in that you go see Lance Burton and just write about it for what it is, not in the context of what everybody else wrote about it, or what all these other magic shows are, because there's not much of a context for it. It's just its own animal.
With a movie review, the line between professionals and the amateurs is so thin because, as Al Franken says about Ann Coulter, her column appears on "The Prestigious Internet."
"The right condition for a healthy community is that the people and the critics should have the same basic joy in beautiful and comic things, but that the people should not know why they feel the joy, while the critics should tell them."
Steve: Has the Internet made our lives more difficult? While being "democratic" and allowing virtually anyone's opinion to gain mass distribution, has it diluted the quality of film criticism and distorted what people expect from traditional film critics?
Jeannette: Most of it is dreadful, but I don't think it's made my life any more difficult. I just ignore them. I wouldn't care what my readers expect. I write how I want to write. I'm thinking, "What do I feel about the film?" I have no illusions that anyone is going to a film based on what I say. Most of the rubbish that Hollywood turns out has a built-in audience anyway, no matter what anyone says about a terrible film. If you're looking for the "low," you'll find it on the Internet. If you're looking for the "high," you'll find it on the Internet.
Anthony: I was in a third-year filmmaking class at UNLV. Juniors, not too far from graduation. And they were asked, "What film critics do you read?" Outside of, of course, Ebert, they couldn't name one. The teacher said, "Well, has anyone heard of Pauline Kael or Stanley Kaufman?" Ebert—that was it. Or Internet sites.
Josh: But that's one of the reasons I always watch Ebert. Whether I agree with him or not, whether I think he's smart or not, whether I think he knows what he's talking about or not, he's the one that everybody knows. He is the standard by which they're being judged.
Anthony: He makes me puke! It's not film criticism; it's, "Well, I didn't like it, and what was she doing with that red dress," and on and on. One of the things—sorry, if I talk too much, just tell me. I never get to talk about this, do you? It's great.
I always used to read Pauline Kael and John Simon. They never agreed and they hated each other, but I loved reading them because they were so detailed in what they wrote about.
I'll never forget, there's a review of Dressed to Kill, the Brian DePalma film—Pauline loved it, John Simon thought it was trash. And they are both brilliant pieces of writing. I find my work frustrating [at newspapers] because in a 300-word review, first off, you have to say something about the plot, you have to tell people what it's about.
You talk about the difference between a film reviewer and a film critic—sometimes at 300 words, it's pretty tough. You've got to talk about the cast, the acting, the directing, and you've got 300 words. How can you possibly say what your arguments for liking or not liking Million Dollar Baby are?
Josh: If you read Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, who I think is terrible ...
Jeannette: Terrible! Oh, thank you! I hate him!
Josh: But whether he's terrible or not, he writes one sentence! ONE SENTENCE! How can you do that? It scares me to think that if this is what I'm going to make my career out of, will I get to the point where I only get to write one sentence?
Jeannette: I've written for the Weekly, for CityLife, and for the Mercury, and I have to say that the editors have treated me so well. So open to anything I wanted to write. Only twice in 10 years has anyone said, "I want you to change that word because readers won't understand it." But writing is a discipline. If you're forced to write in fewer words, I think you learn as a writer, even if it's not pleasant.
Josh: That's true. You learn how to distill what you thought into that one paragraph. But at the same time, especially if you're trying to be a film critic, making that distinction, trying to parse the meaning of something or look into history or analyze something below the surface, you can't do that in 300 words.
Usually, when I write those longer reviews, I try to do that; to say something beyond—was the acting good, was the directing good?
Anthony: I think it's important to point out that this is a national trend of critics not getting space anymore. I remember every week I used to read Newsweek's Broadway reviews, and they don't have a full-time theater critic anymore.
Steve: Why is it happening?
Anthony: In theater, it's getting less and less. When I was a kid, you went to the theater because it was something to do on a Saturday night. Now, it's a cultural thing, like what the high-toned people do.
Jeannette: I think editors want a different tone for different times because they think their readers have a shorter attention span.
Steve: I think the fuse was lit on that by USA Today, and it filtered down through daily newspapers, and at weekly newspapers, the style was supposed to be punchy anyway. It's an industry [print publications] trying to hang onto a very slick pole.
Anthony: In plays, too. Older plays might have 60 pages that take place in one room. Today, you'll have 15, 20 scenes in the first act, because every scene has gotta move, so maybe that's all part of that pattern.
Steve: You're certainly seeing less productions of Eugene O'Neill and plays of that ilk.
Josh, having grown up in a quicker culture, what do you think?
Josh: It's a consumer choice. They want to know if the thumb is up or the thumb is down. As much as Jeannette may hate star ratings, all that certain people look at are the star ratings. If I just try to make a snap decision about whether or not to see a movie, I can go to rottentomatoes, look at the percentage rating and not read anything. But usually after I've seen a movie, then I'm going to want to read a long examination of the film. But that's because I'm really interested in film. People who aren't, they aren't going to get to that point.
"A performer is always at risk being at the mercy of those creatures [film critics] out to protect the public from bad books, movies, music, et al. The public doesn't need this kind of protection; they can take care of themselves."
Steve: How much of our job should be pure recommendation, and how much should be dedicated to the art itself?
Anthony: I don't think we should ever think about that, about whether to recommend. What we should think about is deepening the understanding of the reader.
As an example: I know that if a four-hour play came to Vegas, and it was brilliant, 90 percent of the typical Vegas audience is going to hate it. But I'm not going to say that in a review. What I'm going to say is, "Here's why it's great!" Hopefully, they go and see it, and maybe they're bored, but then they'll read it and go, "Oh, I never thought about that."
We can't get into the business of recommending stuff. Everybody has their own taste. And they have audience polling now, but critics are not audience pollers. I've been in the audience of a show I hated, and all my friends hated it, and then I'll read the review and it'll say the audience loved it.
Jeannette: I think part of our responsibility is to educate. You remember a few years ago, John Sayles made a film called Limbo? I thought it was a masterpiece. I see it as a huge part of my responsibility to drag up these little films by the scruff of the neck and say, "This is only going to be here for five days, so you'd better go see it."
Josh: That's one thing that Ebert does really well. He uses that national forum he has, the only movie criticism that many people are paying attention to, to point out, "Hey, this foreign film is really good, you should go see it."
Jeannette: For some films, you're not going to see an ad every five minutes. If it weren't for people like us, and editors who give us space to write about these films, you wouldn't be able to see these films. There wouldn't be any word of mouth.
Anthony: You ever notice Newsweek, whenever they do a cover story on a movie, it's never some obscure, brilliant film, it's always the latest blockbuster?
But, about blockbusters, I thought it was fun to write about Spider-Man 2 and say to the reader, "Here's why this particular blockbuster is really good."
Jeannette: People often think critics are elitist or they only like to go to art films, but some blockbusters are amazingly well-done.
Josh: A lot of film critics or film fans, they may be really dedicated to foreign and art films now, but usually the point of entry is a blockbuster, something you saw as a kid and thought, "Wow, movies are amazing."
Anthony: I remember when I was 12, 13 years old, and I saw my first Akira Kurosawa movie, I hated it. I had no point of reference for it. But then I read reviews of it and I went back to see it again, and that's exactly what I think a critic ought to be doing, which is: Notice this, notice that, here's what separates this movie from a bad movie, and that's what builds your standards.
I don't think we can sit there and say, "I think you're going to like this, I don't think you're going to like this," because we don't know who you are. The reader learns how to read you. The reader knows, "I usually agree with this person, or I don't."