Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - A.O. Scott

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

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! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm N.K. and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds. But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care.

Oh look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil.

I know I'll go down to history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. How do you feel about this? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their

racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves. The biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 it'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 thecraigfergusonshow.com slash tour. They're available at thecraigfergusonshow.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 interesting people about what brings them happiness. On the podcast today, A.O. 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 20 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 a oh all day That's good. Does anybody ever call you a oh? No, okay good. I don't think they should I don't think 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 Scots. 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 Scots and AO, the initials 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 stationery. So 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 critic, Manolo Dargis was the other one. We, we kind of did it together.

But here's the thing though. I, I, before we started this, I thought, I wonder what kind of reviews A. O. Scott gave any movie I was in. So I looked up, you know what? You gave me good reviews. I did. 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, cause it was all in the New York times app. And the other one was, uh, uh, a movie I'm very proud of called the big tease, which is a hairdressing competitive hairdressing movie that completely tanked. Yeah. It was, uh, I, it was, and is I think a fabulous film that is sadly, uh, 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, I don't know, what is it? 20 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 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, uh, becoming Spock.

His son made it. It's a real kind of love letter to his father after he died. And I watched it. It was very emotional. And I said to my wife for the time, gosh, that was lovely. I really wish I'd had him on the late night show. And then she Googled it and he'd been on twice. I was like, and no recollection on it.

Does that happen to you as well? Like you get movies, 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 quoted on the DVD box.

I read it because you reviewed it. It's very kind of humbling in a way because you put this work into this thing, you think hard about it, you know, and I always try to do my best and not phone it in and take the movie seriously and think about it, but just, you know, the human brain in the passage of time and you just kind of lose it. But it's very interesting though. You and I, my friend, we are dinosaurs.

We are the last of a generation whose memories will not be digitized. From now on, 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 lose, although, I mean, in one way it's good, I guess, because you can remember a lot more. But in that way it's sad because I think memory does play some lovely tricks. You know, it helps you deal with stuff. It's a very clever thing.

It does. And forgetting is part of it. Forgetting and then remembering what you've forgotten. So I have all these books on my shelves and I pick them up sometimes and I find things I wrote in them, notes I made, and I don't remember. But it does come back. The thing is it can reawaken in your brain. And I think there's something, 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 go 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, yeah, yeah. That must be unnerving if you're writing for the New York Times and you say, wow, this one held people for two minutes. Well, exactly. It's a little unnerving when you look at the data and it says, readers spent one minute and 37 seconds 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 minutes. No, they couldn't. I wonder, is that connected to your departure from film criticism and moving into, cause you're in the review of books now, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. I went, I mean, it was a few things. I had started out as a book critic 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, this is a sideline and I'm really a literary critic and then that lasted 25 years. And, and so I wanted to get to get back, you know, back to that while there was still time in my in my productive years and, and also to get just sort of off of the treadmill of the weekly review. I mean, the thing about being a film critic is that there is just, 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 kind of feel like you've, I felt like I was starting to run out of ideas and of moves. And does it rob you of the love of the genre itself? Does it demystify it to an extent where you can connect to it in the same way? I think it does by repetition because you've seen the same thing. There are so many movies, movies belong to different genres and styles and schools. And in a way, it's not their fault that they have so much in common, that they follow certain formulas and patterns.

But when you've seen hundreds that are sort of doing this, 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, 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 have all been made and not being receptive to what 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 I, 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 in late night, I did a lot of that. And that was how, a lot of how I earned my living and I loved it. But I look at film now, cause it was my life when I was making them. And they, I look at film now and I think it's harder and harder to find in the film business, kind of the idea that films are art. They are worthy of academic examination in the form of the kind of criticism you do. It's not, I don't see it. Maybe I'm not looking, but is it still there?

Well, I think it's still there, but I think that it's gotten smaller and more marginal in a way. I mean, I think that there were always, there were always bad movies and good movies. There were always commercial movies. I made plenty of bad movies myself. Right.

And some of those bad movies are kind of good. But I do feel like, and I don't know if it's because of streaming or because of other changes in the business or other kind of generational shifts, but I do find something similar, that you have to look much harder and that the movies that

are ambitious in that way or creative in that way 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 feel like... I think it's economics in America, particularly. I was, I worked with a, an Italian film director once called, um, Roberto Faenza, uh, 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 and, and, and, but they were like, you know, Panzer divisions and like

lots 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, I said, you guys are spending a lot of money on this picture. And he 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. Different idea.

I thought it kind of is that the, the Italian, cause Italian summit, even now the recent times, um, Oh God, what's his name again? They have fabulous Italian director. Like Randy Belitsa. Yeah. Yeah. Sorrentino. Oh, God, what's his name again? The fabulous Italian director, La Grande Belizza. Yeah, yeah, Sorrentino, Paolo Sorrentino. Yeah, yeah. His movies are amazing.

Exactly, and they're at a kind of scale that- Unbelievable. 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. But it's a very, like, you know, in a way, it's a small personal movie

in terms of the story. It's a story. It's a story. It's his life. It's about 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 technique of it is so big and so extravagant. And you couldn't imagine that in, you know, in an equivalent movie in America would be like, would be shot on an iPhone in somebody's apartment with their friends. Guess what, Mango?

What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know! That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, Mango, I'm gonna cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead?

Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like, how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is, and we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into Part-Time Genius.

Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I fell too seen. Um, dragged. I'm N.K. and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me?

Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl! Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because, if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of f*** up conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society experiencing some kind of f*** up conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you, and it will call you a basket case.

Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, the Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels, but the image of

It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When the civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools,

these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wonder for me, anyway, it's kind of like the same thing with music. I wonder if it's just because I'm getting older and I'm like, oh, music's 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 exist. So I think it's a, and I wonder if you go from, I mean, first of all, the idea that you as a young man would want to get into criticism. Is that even a thing now? Is academic criticism even, it's kind of grandfathered in the New York Times, but I don't know if it's anywhere else. I think it's, I mean, I do meet young people and I do sometimes teach young people who are interested in it, you know, who want to write about film or want to write about the arts in a way that's serious and creative and literary.

And I think there just are so few outlets. I mean, I don't think 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 go into film criticism and you'll be, you know, that's, that's where the money is. 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 increases on the arts. Yeah,. They mattered. Again, a decent review in those really mattered. Yeah, they mattered a lot. They mattered in the local markets and they were also great schools for writers to come up and young people or people from different kinds of backgrounds could have a chance to learn the craft, to learn something about writing and about criticism. What I worry is that that doesn't exist.

You can write a sub stack, you can write a newsletter, you can go online and say what you have to say. You can post it on social media, on Letterboxd, or on X or Facebook or wherever, but the sense of it as a craft, as a discipline, as a way of being serious and of writing as well as you can, I don't know how you learn that now. I don't know how you, where the institutions or the outlets are that can teach you that. And what about the idea of creating the, because you write very well.

Did you ever write film? No. Were you never tempted to do that? Not really. You know, I... You know, I works clearly. Yes. And, and every once in a while I've sort of thought about it and like, you know, you'll be sitting around with some friends and oh, we should write it, but yeah, let's write

a screenplay. Let's write a screenplay about this, but it never, you must never do that. Yes. No. And, 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 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 would go, you know, I'd be quite interested in reading that. Um, especially if you put a superhero in it or someone with magical powers. Um, cause that I wonder is cause Scorsese took a lot of flight for saying these weren't movies. Um, are you sympathetic to his take on it? I am actually.

I mean, I, um, I spent a lot of time, uh, as, as one has to, you know, thinking about and writing about, um, and trying to figure out what to do with as a critic, the superhero movies and the franchise movies and how in a way to give them the, to take them seriously and give them a benefit of the doubt and not prejudge them because you never want to be a snob and say, well, you know, I hate all of these kinds of movies. 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, um, 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. Oh, sure. I mean, I, I saw the, I'm sure you saw it. 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 was a good, yeah. Yeah. It's a really kind of, it's poetic and, and, and emotional and, and, and, and dramatic and fabulous and, but I've watched a lot of the other ones cause I've,

you know, I have young kids and, or they were young at a certain point. you know, I have young kids and, or they were young at a certain point. And, 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. Cause they, they just exist in a way to get you to the next one, to keep, to keep the, the, the, the, the fans engaged and not necessarily to provide, in a way I think that some of them do, I think Will Wolverine is a good example, to provide a sort of a complete experience

in and of themselves. And I think that it's sort of run, certainly in the Marvel universe, I think has run into a real dry period. I mean, I don't think those movies... It's interesting because to even talk about these things and 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 franchises that basically they're just customers of, uh, with some wild loyalty. It, do you think that, I mean, I don't remember that existing before. I maybe start 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 who felt like they were maybe outsiders or misunderstood or nerds. And here was a thing that they could connect to and connect with each other 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 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're part of this collective thing and nobody can criticize it and you will take it personally. You know, if I, if I, if I, as a reviewer for the New York Times say, well, this movie's not so good, you know,

I've insulted you, right? I've, you know. And I've had those exact things happen to me in my life in the New York Times where not necessarily from you, but from critics who've 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. And I used to get mad at that, but now you don't even get that. You 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 10 grossing

films, that's crazy. What does that got 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 Fanny and Alexander. Therefore, the movie Twister is a better movie than or the movie Twister makes more than La Dolce Vita. Therefore, the movie Twister is a better movie than La Dolce Vita. It's insane. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it's become, because also people didn't necessarily know or care, I mean, just sort of ordinary, let's say, newspaper readers

in previous decades, you know, didn't necessarily know about or care about box office figures. But that's become a way, I think, of a kind of fake insider-ness, you know, that everyone can feel like, well, I know what's really going on. And I think that Hollywood and television kind of, and you know, and the internet and other parts of the culture too, like to sell that. It's like you're, you know, it's a kind of cynicism, but it makes you feel as just the ordinary person, as the ordinary fan, like

you know what's going on. You know what the real story is and what the real value is. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know! That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House.

Mango, Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto?

Plus we cover questions like, how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is, and we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I fell too seen. Um, dragged? I'm NK, and this is Basket Case.

So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you, and it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in France.

A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies, when the civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools these charter schools were exempt from bigger than a flag or mascot

you have to be ready for serious backlash listen to rebel spirit on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what about I mean you talk about the streaming and, and, and the, you know, the, the way that movies are consumed now are probably, you know, I'd say what 90% on screens, the size of the ones we're talking on right now. I mean, the, the idea of going into a giant movie theater with, you know, a thousand other people and watching a movie, does that, I guess it does exist if you go to a retrospective, Angelica screening of old Woody Allen movies or something,

maybe not Woody Allen movies, but whatever it is. Well, Woody Allen is actually a good example. There's someone who is very you know, very out of favor. Yeah. Um, and therefore his movies are seen through, uh, do you look at movie through a new 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, in particular about, about Woody Allen.

I, I, I wrote some, um, some things because things because he's someone whose movies I would not be the person I am without Annie Hall, without the early ones, Sleeper, Manhattan. I just grew up, I'm of the sort of generation and background where he was one of the main cultural figures of my life. I had all his books, I had seen his movies many times, and I had to struggle with how I felt about him as a person and things that I understood him to have done. And I wrote a few pieces about that, about my own struggle with it, because it was 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 troubled by some of the implications in the work and in my appreciation of the work in terms of, especially the, let's say the treatment of women and of young women in that work. the treatment of women and of young women in that work. But one of the results of that was that people who were much more on his side and very partisan kind of came down very hard on me. I got a lot of talking about sort of angry fandoms. A lot of people who sort of said I was basically, you know, a Nazi for doing this.

And it's a hard one. And I'm not gonna say, you know, I was right in every nuance and I'm not gonna get mad at anyone who thinks about it differently. But I do think that young people, let us say, are not going near it. I've taught a lot of film students over the last 10 years and I would ask, how many Woody Allen movies have you seen?

And they just hadn't. It's just like they weren't going here, which I think is a loss. But I think also- It has a kind of thing about it because it's the separating the art from the artist. I mean, how many young people know about Erich Von Stroheim and what it's like? Or Man Ray, or there's some very strange dudes around, or were around. For sure. I mean, even the history of Hollywood guys like Jack Warner, who would probably be in a lot of trouble if he was, you know. Oh my, or Louis Mayer, or you know, and anything for sure.

I mean, but that's, as I believe a character in a wish 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, you know, 20 or 30 or however many years, if we're still, you know, around and watching things that aren't just fed to us by AI and algorithms, people will find those movies again. Well, I think that's true. I think it's like history. Neil Ferguson says that history doesn't begin until a hundred years after the event. Until that point, it's just, you know, once everybody's dead, then you can start to get a sense of perspective on things. And I've always felt that about movies and literature too, and it's one of the interesting

things about being a critic and writing just at the moment when something is brand new. 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 going to, you know, critics included are going to 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 what value it has. At least I mean- Well, I really hope that happens to my competitive hairdressing movie that's stiffed in the year 2000. It will. I'm confident, you know, 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 in New York times to going or returning to literary criticism. And I, I'm kind of fascinated by it because I, I, I'm not, we're not, I'm not trying to, you know, climb on, on your, you know, hanging your coat tails, 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, I still don't understand why I don't like it. 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. Uh, you know, I also love a movie. It's a great movie. I love that movie. You know, I also love La Grande Baliza 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, they're 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 read books may be more inclined to a discourse rather than fandom. Is that true or no? I think it's true. I mean, my feeling about being 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. And 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 has 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 write 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 someone will do, someone on a podcast or on a broadcast or somewhere will say, you know, oh, see, this movie had made a hundred million dollars at the box office, but it got, you know, oh, see this movie had made $100 million at the box office, but it got, you know, rotten tomatoes. It was, it was, it was a 54 and it was run. 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, and it's, it's something else that you want from it. And the people who, who read critics people who read critics 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 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 that it's a kind of experience that you might want to keep going with or keep engaging with. I mean, I was really...

No, no, no. I'm interested because I think that, you know, the book is always better than the movie. I can't think of any time, perhaps maybe to kill a mockingbird, they kind of get it even, but to my mind, the book is always better than the movie. Could you say The Godfather? The Godfather maybe. Yeah, you know, you're right. You know, I never read The Godfather.

It's not that good. It's not that good a book. Not that good. 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 sort of a trashy pulpy book that Coppola made into something transcendent that's beyond what, what the book was actually doing, but that's, um, it's, it's a pretty good movie. I will agree that the interesting thing, Coppola is a fascinating subject actually, because I remember once talking to, uh, Quentin Tarantino on the, uh, the old late night show. And he was telling me a story about how you'll make 10 movies and he's going to stop. And that's no more than 10 and he'll be lucky if he gets, you know, that done and, and feel like he's done it.

And I think he's, he's done it very well, but the, uh, I'm a big fan, but the, uh, but Coppola made, you know, Apocalypse Now, I mean, 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 say anything negative about Francis Ford Coppola because of his, you know, the, the white work, but he's made some real stakers. Yeah, I mean, because he's such a sort of a sympathetic and heroic and semi-tragic figure and such. 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. But it's true 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, my God. Right, that's right. Yeah. And, you know, and he made Apocalypse Now, which has its problems, but is pretty mighty I think in the end.

Yeah, it's a flawed masterpiece. Exactly. 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, um, Bruce Springsteen made, you know, a handful of really great albums and, 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 darkness on the edge of town. Right. So, yeah, maybe, and maybe that's the, that, but maybe that's familiar familiarity as an audience when it comes to, you know, uh,

particularly with musicians as you bring it up, just simply because the idea of that Mick Jagger at 80 years old is still singing songs that he wrote when he was 20 years old, right? You know, uh, which are the ones that people want to hear. I mean, they don't, they don't necessarily want to hear that. The, the, the more recent ones, but, but that, I think, I mean, but if we're talking about what people want to hear versus a serious look at what an art form is, that it's like you were

saying that they're kind of two separate things. You know, I remember, uh, I was a big fan of, uh, and I had him on, uh, the late night show a lot was the late Dennis Hopper. It was, Dennis was very funny and very clever and very talented about art. And I used to needle him all the time because I thought that Rothko was a charlatan. And I would say I think Rothko was a charlatan and what the hell is that and these big things. The usual I don't know about art, but I know what I like. Rothko was a charlatan. And at one point he said to me, I don't know, because I loved it.

He said, he said, yes, yes, yes. We've all heard that Rothko 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 it. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves,

the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in the prints. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on.

Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of here. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from it. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know! That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House.

Mango, Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto?

Plus we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is, and we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I fell too seen. Um, dragged. I'm N.K. and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl.

Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of f*** up conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you and it will call you a basket case. Listen to

basket case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 else? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think there are many and there are films that I don't particularly like or want to see again that I have to acknowledge the importance of or that they matter in some way. I mean, I feel that way.

If I hadn't quit already, this would get me kicked out of the film critics club. But I feel that way about a lot of Godard movies. Some of them I quite like, masculine, feminine, and band of outsiders. But I look at a lot of them and I think, okay, 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 movies. But these movies as themselves, I find there's something very kind of cold and a little bullying about his films and kind of aloof from the experiences of the audience. And so I don't like, I don't love, I can't say I don't love good art. But that's interesting. It's a very interesting thing. Cause these are very esoteric terms, you know, bullying and, you know, aloof. And I love that.

And I think that's the absorbing 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, a part of what you do in the publicity things, you have to go and talk to film students about the, you know, the Q and A's with film students. And there's always a lot of talk about tracking shots and closeups and the use of wide shots.

And I think it's that fake insider thing, just trying to sound smarter than you are about it. But I don't know in real cinematic or any artistic term, if the technique is ever even nearly as important as the emotion that it brings up, even if that emotion is negative. 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?

I know what a tracking shot is, right? What a close-up is or what, you know, I can tell if a filter has been used, whatever. But I don't know in a particular movie what, you know, I don't know 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 what the technique that's being put to use there is. But a movie in a way, 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 emotion or 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 working, like what made it work that way. I think about this, I can't remember who I was talking about. I was once interviewing a filmmaker who had, I don't remember who it was, but who had done a film with a child actor, very young child actor, like six or seven, younger than, and I said, there's this scene,

which is so full of kind of emotion where these things have happened with the child's parents and she's absorbing all this feeling and I was like, how did you get that performance out of this young child? And she was like, she said, well, I just said, look up that way. And I pointed the camera this way. And then I mixed in the soundtrack. So I thought I was looking at it, what I'm saying so I thought I was looking at it. 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 acting. So, you know, what I'm saying is you never know. Right. I mean, that's a great example of it. It's like, you really don't know what's going on. It's, it's, it's what's put together in posts that makes it work. Um, 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 at a book and also the idea that you can change your mind. Like me reading 1984 when I was at school at 13 years old, I think was the first time that we were given 1984 and then me reading it when I'm 40 and then me reading it when I'm 60, it's a different book. And I wonder, 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 habit.

I mean, I've gone back and written about, I don't know if I've done it sort of in that way. I don't know if I've done it in that way, but I've gone back and re-read and written about, certainly about writers that I wrote about before and revisited their work. 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 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 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 very snotty, cynical kind of, you know, punk rock, art cinema. I was like, what is this? I'm familiar with the condition. Yeah, you know, punk rock, art cinema. And I was like, what is this? I'm familiar with the condition. Yeah, I know.

And then of course, you know, watching it again in, in however old I was, you know, 40, with, with my kids, I was just like a puddle of tears. You know, I just, I was, I thought this is, this is the most beautiful, moving, sad, you know, wonderful movie I've ever seen. Spielberg said an interesting thing actually about, 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. And that, you know, when Richard Dreyfus leaves, he said, I've been, that would never happen.

You wouldn't do that. You know, once you have kids, you would go to another planet and see things like that. Nah, I gotta be here with the kids. But it is an interesting 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 Gone with the Wind when I'm 20 and I read it when I'm 60, I'm,

I'm a different character in the book. You know, I'm a, and, and I, I wonder if, if when you write things, because I know I've, I've written stuff, I've made stuff, I've told jokes even that I thought, God, I would, I would never say that now. That's a horrible thing to say. Um, I've done that quite a lot actually. Yeah.

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, I was too enthusiastic or I was too critical or I just, I missed it. And it's part of, I mean, I came to think that it's kind of part of the job to be wrong. It was partly because of what I was saying before, that 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 a person at whatever point in your life you are. So I think it's generally true of critics when we're young are much more aggressive, much more hostile, much more, and more likely in a way to be offended, to think. I remember thinking this. You know, that- I don't think that's just critics, though, to think I, I, I remember thinking this, that you know, that, that I don't think that's just critics though, Tony. No, I don't think it's just critics.

I think, I think everyone, I mean, if you look at the, the kind of the fractious nature of the, the, the relationship between older people and younger people like now, and I know Socrates who going on about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of the young people and they're writing things down. You know, I mean, it's like, I think it is a, it is a bit of a product of age that on each end of it, I think you are a little more aggressive, a 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 a bit. If you're lucky, if you do it the right way, you

should lighten up a little bit as you go older. You become yeah 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 that every every bad movie was was a sort of you know a crime that I had to avenge, right? And how dare... So I think 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 have arrived at. I think, yes, that's the hard wisdom of the years. That's how we earn these gray hairs on our head. Exactly. It's been an absolute joy talking to you, Tony. I really, really enjoyed it. And I was very pleased the beforehand I looked on and you were actually kind to me about some pretty hair movies that I was involved in.

It made me very happy. Thank goodness. I had no idea at the time that it would come you know, come back to pay such a good dividend. But this has really been my pleasure. It's been, it's been fun. Thanks for coming. It's lovely to talk to you. I'm N.K. and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology, swaps of different

meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down to history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry,

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. This is Michael Rapoport and I have been professionally podcasting for 10 years. The podcast game has changed so much and if you're looking for the most disruptive podcast in the world, then subscribe to the I Am Rapoport Stereo Podcast today. We're talking sports, politics,

pop culture, entertainment, and anything that catches my attention. Listen to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.