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http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/?p=264#comment-14048

D: My experience lately has been that editors don’t want “experts.” “Populism” has become the buzzword, although it means something completely different from what these people think it means. They want standard Joes who won’t have some “pointy-headed” reaction and just want to flop out on the couch before movies or TV. It’s this American leveling tendency at its worst, where the sense that you can bring any kind of knowledge or experience to the subject matter is the last thing editors want. In fact, they find it disturbing and intimidating. The New York Times is one of the few exceptions in America.

S: I like Serge Daney’s term “passeur” to describe what the ideal film critic should be.

D: It’s a nice metaphor, especially when you’ve got to give people something in the guise of something else. You’ve got to be a smuggler to get anything vaguely intellectual past editors, or they’ll cut it out and make your life miserable. “Populism” boils down to the attitude that “our readers are morons, let’s treat ‘em that way.” That was the attitude at the Daily News: undisguised contempt for their readers.

Jesse, that’s so funny that you were looking for the Chronicle to supplement the Fresno Bee back in the day! Thank god we have the internet now.

The SpoutBlog linked to this article, and I came close to stating my essential thoughts on this matter in their comments section:
http://blog.spout.com/2008/02/29/blockbusterly-illiterate/

The breadth of films that one watches is not so much the issue as quality of insight. I think many of us will agree that we gravitate to our favorite film critics and writers not because we know they’ve seen thousands of films, but because they write in such a way that, whether their opinion is favorable or unfavorable towards a film, they demonstrate enthusiasm for film as entertainment and art, and that enthusiasm is passed on to us as viewers. In other words, their job is the cultivation of a healthy and vibrant film culture. The problem I have with LaSalle’s “reviews” of those films is the pedestrian quality of his insights, which does nothing to make movies sound like more than something we do just to pass the time away.

SanFran Cinema, the kind of critical processing that you do on your own is surely preferable to relying on a single local critic for insights. What you’re describing also describes what I did in my youth, going to the library to pore through magazines and newspapers from around the country to gague the critical consensus on films that I mostly couldn’t even see, at least until they would come out on video months later, and then I would know which films to pursue. And yes, LaSalle was one of those critics.

Much better is the kind of interactivity you get on the blogosphere. By the same token it’s kind of sad to think that these online discussions have largely supplanted the old days in most metro areas where groups would go see a movie and then hang out at the bar or cafe talking about it afterwards (I’m envious of older generation cinephiles who relate those kinds of experiences).

Ryland – LaSalle has disdain for the Castro? Why, because they don’t show enough pre-code? He’s really off his nut.

do you read sfbg at all? i remember when i was rejected for the film section internship there because my film viewing at the time wasn’t extensive enough. haha

Alex: “If you don’t familiarize yourself with the mediocre, I think you tend to have a very skewed perspective toward film.” This is something I discreetly suspect about myself and beat myself up about now and again. And now and again I’ll make overtures to upset my own apple cart, but then stuff like this happens to scare me back into my cloister:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3413

Ed: I was 16 at the time, I was young, I was naive, what else can I say???

I am sympathetic to a certain degree; and of the five films LaSalle sites, I haven’t seen two of them, actively dislike two of them, and Mockingbird doesn’t inspire a whole reaction on my part one way or the other. But like you I rather take offense at the lines (I can’t even bring myself to call them “capsule reviews”) of the films he watched–which is more than a bit insulting. As you say, it’s working on a level of criticism that anybody and everybody works out without much effort or imagination, let alone knowledge.

And in response to Michael’s comment–I think there’s a bit of difference between his situation and LaSalle’s. With Michael you think, “okay, avoiding X doesn’t bother me because he really knows his shit about Y,” and that is the justification. You could say the same thing about someone like Rosenbaum. But LaSalle? Not that I’m aware of anyway…

-jesse

“To be the movie critic for a network, no training or background is necessary; ‘too much’ interest in movies may be a disqualifiication. Novices are thought to speak to the public on the public’s own terms. They age, but, like the critic on your home-town paper, they remain novices in criticism, because there is no need for them to learn; they understand that their job is dependent on keeping everybody happy, and they are generally not the kind of people who learn anyway.”

This is from Kael’s January, 1971 essay, “Notes on Heart and Mind,” included in her “Deeper into Movies” anthology.

It’s 37 years old (!) and yet as relevant as ever, partiuclarly in reference to “local” movie critics.

I don’t know about Kael’s individual reviews, but her occasional essays are must reading for every would-be critic and film aficionado.

From what I hear, that’s just what happened. He was assigned to the beat 15 or so years ago, electing to write with the pseudonym, Mick LaSalle, thinking it wouldn’t last. His real name is Al or Tony; can’t remember. Anyway, he devolped a following and edged out co-critics Peter Stack and Edward Guthmann.

Pauline Kael wrote in one of her essays that many editors consider knowing too much about film to be a detriment to a film critic. They like the idea of their critic reflecting the readership’s taste and sophistication or lack thereof.

I’m sure they love Mick at Chron.