A FILM CRITICS TAKES DIRECTION
I have lived in Los Angeles most of my working life, but I am also a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. And so it came to pass in January that I was present at its annual awards dinner, a chummy affair at a vast, multitiered Chinese restaurant in lower Manhattan complete with winners, celebrity presenters like Brad Pitt and Alec Baldwin, and, of course, the critics. Not all of us had voted for all the awardees, far from it, but everybody was on their best behavior. Almost everybody.
When it came time for writer-director Quentin Tarantino to accept his Best Screenplay award for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, he cut short his ingratiating ramble: “Peter Rainer, writer for the Christian Science Monitor, you have never given me a positive review in 30 years.” I put down my chopsticks. “Not to make you feel guilty,” he continued, “but I used to read you every weekend when you used to write for the Herald Examiner in Los Angeles. From 15 years old. I didn’t agree with all the things you said, but I respected it. And not only did I read you. I still have those fucking Herald Examiners in my fucking office.”
Not sure if I should feel mortified or flattered, I looked to my two nephews, my dinner mates, for guidance. Their response: “Cool!”
I reluctantly made my way over to Tarantino after the ceremony. I had never met him, and I felt some kind of rapprochement. He said I once wrote that was like with better dialogue, but, in fact, he countered, had dialogue. This is how it went for a while. I recognized in him a true believer, not only in movies but in movie critics, highest among them, for him, being Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael.
