Roger Ebert’s “Death to Film Critics!”
Roger Ebert’s "Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult!" at the Chicago Sun-Times:
"A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip.
"The crowning blow came this week when the once-magisterial Associated Press imposed a 500-word limit on all of its entertainment writers. The 500-word limit applies to reviews, interviews, news stories, trend pieces and ‘thinkers.’ Oh, it can be done. But with Synecdoche, New York?
"Worse, the AP wants its writers on the entertainment beat to focus more on the kind of brief celebrity items its clients apparently hunger for. The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been ’seen with’ somebody, who has been ’spotted with’ somebody, and ‘top ten’ lists of the above. (Celebs ’seen with’ desire to be seen, celebs ’spotted with’ do not desire to be seen.)"
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Ironically, Ebert, a writer I usually enjoy reading even if I hardly ever agree with his film commentaries, has always been criticized for schmoozing with assorted film personalities whose work he is supposed to impartially critique and for helping to popularize dumbed-down film criticism with the "two thumbs up" nonsense of his former television show.
More recently, Ebert became embroiled in an ugly controversy after writing a (scathing) review of Stewart Wade’s gay teen comedy-drama Tru Loved (top photo) despite having left the screening only eight minutes into the film. At the time, Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch blog writer Gary Susman remarked, "No other movie critic in America could have pulled off such a stunt without getting fired. I fear that, even though he corrected his mistake, he’s still set a bad example. At a time when film critics all over America are losing their jobs, it can’t be good for readers, editors, or filmmakers to think that what he did passes for professional, acceptable behavior among film critics and the outlets that publish their work, even for a moment."
As for Ebert’s piece on The Death Bell Ringeth for US Print Film Critics, although I don’t disagree with what he has to say I believe that
- he simplified things quite a bit (e.g., the media’s — and the public’s — obsession with celebrity gossip has been around for as long as celebrities have been around; just think of the complicity of the American press in the "scandalous" Fatty Arbuckle [right] trial way back in 1921 or the Liz & Dick media circus of the 1960s),
- he fully ignored the role of the Internet in the downsizing of newspapers, and he should have mentioned that online you can find quite a bit of thoughtful and thought-provoking film commentary,
- he ignored the fact that the vast majority of movies shown on American screens are geared to mentally retarded pre-adolescents who can’t read sentences with more than three words in them; i.e., generally speaking, audiences that can’t — and don’t — read movie reviews or newspapers,
- and he failed to mention the fact that people today — as always — have never really cared about "serious" news, film-related or otherwise, unless the news is "entertaining" (say, a war full of bright lights in the sky) or the subject in question either affects or may come to affect them personally. For instance, nearly 15 years ago the Rwandan genocide went underreported in the world media (there were no bright lights in the sky; just people being hacked to death in a very small and very poor country), and that’s the way it’s been for as long as there have been news sources anywhere in the world.
Now, one thing I couldn’t figure out is why Ebert is so shocked by the decline and fall of the Associated Press. That organization — which might as well be known as the "Associated Trash" — has much too frequently been a purveyor of biased and dishonest (or merely superficial and inane) reporting for a very, very long time.
TAPESTRIES OF HOPE: Q&A with Michealene Cristini Risley
UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US: Q&A with Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell
ANTARCTICA: Q&A with Yair Hochner
Gina Lollobrigida in the NEW YORK TIMES
I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG: Philippe Claudel Interviewed at indieWIRE
Tilda Swinton, Danny Boyle Tributes: AFI FEST 2008
SAVING MARRIAGE: Q&A with Mike Roth
Douglas Fairbanks in THE GAUCHO Academy Screening
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I’ve never been able to get over the fact that Roger Ebert wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Not only that he wrote that film but the fact that he still defends it as a success financially and as a work of art.
That’s pretty scary.
What surprises me the most is why anybody would even want to go see a contemporary film today. But that doesn’t excuse critics, I guess. They HAVE to see them.