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!
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. 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 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. 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 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?
No?
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.
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. 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 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.
I think it's delightful now until well last year, you were the chief film critic of the New York Times, right.
Yes, I was. I was eight chief film Creig when all the Dargas was was the other one. We kind of did it together.
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 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, 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.
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?
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 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 reviewed them, you thought about them, and then they go away.
It happens all the time.
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.
The DVD.
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, the the human brain and the passage of time, and you just kind of you lose it.
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 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.
You know.
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.
Wrote in them, notes I made and I don't remember.
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 an article in the New York Times online, and it will tell you how long readers spent on it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do for a while.
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 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.
Of of of moves.
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?
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 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.
But I also thought, you know that.
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 was new.
And what was interesting and what was happening in the present.
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?
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 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. Maybe I'm not looking. But is it still there?
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
Yeah, Sorrentinoo.
Yeah, these movies are amazing.
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?
Did you see that one?
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.
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 their friends.
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. 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. But I don't know if it's anywhere else.
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 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.
That's where the money is. Even even enough to pay your rent. On the other hand, there there there were.
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.
I mean they mad, they marred to get a decent review, and those really marred.
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, 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 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.
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?
Not?
Really?
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.
Let's write a screenplay about to this. But it never you must never do that. Yes, no.
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?
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 his take on it? I?
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 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 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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 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 existing before maybe Star Wars and stuff, but not really.
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 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 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 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, I have I've insulted you, right, I've I've you know.
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, 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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, 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.
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, 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, 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 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 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.
Down very hard on me.
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.
For for for for doing.
This and it.
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.
I I've I've taught a lot of film students over the last ten years, and you know, I would I would ask.
Like, how sometimes how you know, how many Woody Allen's movies have you have you seen?
You know?
And and and they just hadn't it, just like they weren't.
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 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.
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, 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.
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.
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 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.
Mean, I really, I really hope that happens to my competitive hairdressing movie that's Stiffed in the year two thousand.
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.
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.
Yeah.
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, 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 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 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.
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 or heard about it.
But it was just true.
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.
Some people do.
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 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 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 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, uh to keep going with or keep or keep engaging with.
I mean, I was really yeah, good.
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.
People say The Godfather, the Godfather.
Maybe, yeah, you know, you're right, you know, I never read The Godfather.
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.
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 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 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.
It's I yeah, I mean because he's.
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.
Uh.
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.
Don't forget that one. I mean, right, that's my God and uh, you.
Know, and he made Apocalypse Now, which is has its has its problems, but is pretty mighty.
I think in the end it's a yeah, it's it's a flood masterpiece is exactly same.
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.
You know where like.
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.
Darkenest on Me inter Town. Right.
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.
Know, which are the ones that people want to hear. I mean, they don't necessarily want to hear the more recent ones, but.
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 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 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 important and it brought us to something.
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 they that they matter in some way.
I mean I I I feel that way.
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, 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 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.
And so I don't I don't like, I don't love. I can't say that's interesting.
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 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 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 brings up, even if that emotion is negative.
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 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.
I don't know what you know.
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 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. 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?
You know?
I I I think about this.
I had.
I can't remember who I was talking about. I was once interviewing a filmmaker.
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 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. 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.
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 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 you ever go back to a book that you reviewed before you became a film critic and review it again.
I'm trying to think if that's happened.
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. 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 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.
What is this fi rufic condition?
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.
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, 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, 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 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?
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
Crime that I had to avenge.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's been well. Thanks for coming. Lovely told you