White noise

My friend (well, he was my friend, and then he does this) Aaron Aradillas points me to New York Press critic Armond White's latest "everybody in the world sucks but me" screed, "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies," which he kicks off by flexing his disdain for the "opinionated throng" of internet critics who emulate the "Vachel Lindsay-Manny Farber tradition." That's a great start, given that only a person who has read either Farber, or Lindsay, but by no means both, could possibly conceive of yoking the two together in this way.

White then goes on to piss all over the recently-grievously-ailing Roger Ebert...after which he wishes him "nothing but health." That's awfully sweet of him. Gets in a few swats at A.O. Scott. Praises the praiseworthy Shotgun Stories and pillories all the critics who either ignored it or don't love it as much as he did, because it "should have rocked film culture." Although he admits that in the case of that film, he was part of the problem: "Even I, shamefacedly, only caught up after it had opened."

White takes a little stab at Premiere, the print publication, too:

This sea change in media attitude was typified by the American launch of Premiere magazine (finally trimmed away two years ago), which perverted movie journalism from criticism to production news.

As a there's-nothing-new-under-the-sun person, I'm always amused by this kind of analysis as applied to, well, anything. The American edition of Premiere that launched in 1987—adapted from the French magazine that had began about a decade before—had a lineage. Noble or not is open to debate, but I always felt the book had strong roots in Photoplay, the American movie magazine founded in 1911. One of my favorite bits in P.G. Wodehouse's 1936 Laughing Gas is when the English-Earl-in-the-body-of-a-child-star (it's complicated) is kidnapped by gangsters who...sit around a table and discuss screenplay structure. Inside baseball's always had the appeal of, well, inside baseball; Premiere "perverted" precisely nothing.

But here's the thing, finally. White's wrong about the demise of the print publication; it went down one year, a month and two and a half weeks ago. And when Premiere magazine was "trimmed away," as White so charmingly puts it, a lot of close friends of mine—good and talented people—lost their jobs. Now, White's known for spewing bile at his peers in print, and then turning around and being quite affable to said peers in person—I've experienced it. And I've had it. So: screw you, Armond. Don't say "hi" next time you see me at a screening because you won't get a "hi" back. You think you're applying some form of moral rigor to your work, but the fact is that you're a bully and a hypocrite, and I don't want to know you.

Oh, and also—my Premiere review of Shotgun Stories ran the day of the picture's New York opening. So bite me.

Comments

[Keith G]

So he thinks the only worthwhile film journalism is criticism? What the hell?

And PREMIERE was more than just production news, it was profiles of artists - directors, actors, writers, technicians. It wasn't just who was making what when - that's Variety's job. It was an in-depth look at the process, the creativity of filmmakers.

I still mourn the passing of the print version of PREMIERE. I'm glad you're blogging Glenn, because it feels like a little bit of what I remember about the magazine is still here. The rest just doesn't feel the same.

[Jeremy Smth]

Is it possible to hate White's examples and still agree with his thesis? Aside from SHOTGUN STORIES (which I have yet to see, so I guess I'm part of the problem)?

It's a whole mess o' crazy, but I feel like the busted clock strikes right twice in that essay. There *is* an alarming tendency toward posturing and disaffection nowadays; too many smart writers are way too unwilling to connect with something real. But it's the LITTLE MISS SUNSHINEs I'm worried about, not the DEAD MANs.

[msic]

This screed is just riddled with glittering generalities about the Common Man and the art that moves him, stuff that would be more at home in a Zhdanovist treatise. And let's not even get into the factual errors. For example, people don't refer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul as "Joe" to be cliquish or efface his Thai ethnicity. It's because he's stated that he himself often prefers it, which actually makes it good manners. What's more, he should properly be referred to as "Apichatpong," not "Weerasethakul," following Thai custom.

But I don't have all night to get into all this. Maybe we can just ignore it? Armond White has finally confirmed himself as the Hilton Kramer of contemporary film criticism, and let's move on. Hey, I wonder what the as-yet- unannounced French Comp film at Cannes will be.

[Glenn Kenny]

Jeremy, not to go overboard on my nothing-new-under-the-sun idea, I think a survey of every era's criticism could yield substantial amounts of posturing and disaffection, or some equivalent thereof; the difference these days is in its proliferation, which new media has enabled an explosion of. White's schtick is that only he has the perception, the judgment, and the moral vision to see through it all; this, in his mind, excuses his incivility...no, to hell with it, it's not incivility, it's simple snickering haughty mean-spiritedness. And I feel sorry (among other things) for anybody who insists on mistaking it for brilliant contrarianism.

And msic: I like the way you think. I'm gonna try to be as zen as you...

[Chuck]

I admit that I read and was stunned and totally bought into it. Then I thought about it, read some of the other reactions (most particularly yours Glenn) and came around. I feel the general divorced from cruelty point is valid, but White displays a grand hypocrisy in his essay, it pummels and targets insecure people into submission and plays on a hatred of critics in a way that recalls O'Neill's piece on Sunshine the other day. The difference is that White is hell of a pure writer and can pull it off before you start to think about it.

[Chuck]

Pardon me, Sunrise.

[Filmbrain]

Wow...seems like Armond was getting annoyed at all the attention being paid to Tom O'Neil.

I challenge Armond to show me ONE film blogger emulating Lindsay.

[Victor Morton]

Armond White wrote:

The most powerful, politically and morally engaged recent films (The Darjeeling Limited, Private Fears in Public Places, World Trade Center, The Promise, Shortbus, Ask the Dust, Akeelah and the Bee, Bobby, Running Scared, Munich, War of the Worlds, Vera Drake) were all ignored by journalists whose jobs are to bring the (cultural) news to the public. Instead, only movies that are mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral or socially retrograde and irresponsible (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Army of Shadows, United 93, Marie Antoinette, Zodiac, Last Days, There Will Be Blood, American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Letters From Iwo Jima, A History of Violence, Tarnation, Elephant) have received critics’ imprimatur.

If merely looking at that list doesn't type White as a buffoon, I don't know what else to say.

In what world were MUNICH, WAR OF THE WORLDS, VERA DRAKE, WORLD TRADE CENTER and THE DARJEELING LIMITED "all ignored"? And in what sense did MARIE ANTOINETTE and LAST DAYS (54 and 60 percent respectively at Rotten Tomatoes) get any "critics imprimatur"?

I note that I've been careful to pick examples of films about which my own opinions vary considerably.

[don lewis]

Victor-if you've never read Armond White's reviews, you're missing out. He's a brilliant nut job. I seriously cannot tell if he's serious or kidding half the time.

p.s. Sic em GK!

[Dan]

I can sum this article up in six words:

"OFF MY LAWN! YOU DAMN KIDS!"

[Dan Coyle]

To paraphrase Armond himself, in a just world, he'd be in prison.

[Victor Morton]

Don:

I have been semi-following Armond White's buffoonishness since his memorable(?) piece in Film Comment some years ago on "Simi Valley aesthetics." I haven't read him since I began boycotting the NY Press in response to their cover article "52 Funniest Things about the Death of Pope John Paul."

[Stephen Bowie]

Victor, I'd think you'd be on board with Armond White, at least politically; it's his odious post-9/11 neoconservatism that finally pushed me over the edge with him, after years of finding White to be one of the most talented and sporadically brilliant film critics we have. Despite the unnecessary solipsism that's been belabored ad nauseum by many, many bloggers, probably to Armond's considerable delight.

I forgot about the "52 Funniest Things About the Death of Pope John Paul" ... that shit cracked me up, almost as much as when they named Mr. Kim of Kim's Video as one of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. The NYP is generally a pretty worthless rag but I guess it's had its moments.

[Tony Dayoub]

What gets me is how White condemns modern film criticism for being elitist while trying to cordon off the profession from bloggers and New Media.

The wonderful thing about New Media is the fact that it opens up opportunities for people who normally may not get the access whether they deserve to or not. He's right when he says there is a lot of junk out there now. But I would counter that proportionally there is the same percentage of crap writers that there have always been in the profession.

Whether it's film journals, newspapers, film magazines or what have you, only about ten percent (arbitrary estimate) of the writers are worth reading. As it should be. Good writing becomes all the more precious when you have to dig around for it.

[Arion Berger]

That list of "powerful, politically and morally engaged" films makes my blood BOIL. Hulk angry. There's nothing that brings down the red curtain faster, for me, than someone throwing out specious lists like these and then refusing to be critical about them. Why not put your pp&me "Vera Drake" right up against "mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral or socially retrograde and irresponsible" "4 Months" head-to-head, Armond and tells us why?

But he has a point about Premiere. I mean, I guess they didn't have a regular film critic. I can't remember the dude's name anyway...

[wells]

Uh, "Ye-Ye"?!

[Glenn Kenny]

Arion, it's worth remembering that Premiere ran regular film criticism well before that dude came on board—criticism by the likes of J. Hoberman, David Denby, Todd McCarthy and Libby Gelman-Waxner, morally upstanding writers all.

Wells, you mean you never heard of "Ye-Ye," the documentary about the French pop style that took that country's charts by storm? Me neither. I believe White means Yang's "Yi-Yi."

[wells]

No, I'm sure he meant the former. You know the hipsters and the bloggers love that Chantal Goya bullshit. Oops, Glenn, there we go, being united in our sarcasm. Good thing we know Armond isn't reading this... Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to diminishing cultural discourse.

[Billy Whizz]

Armond White hates movies. He uses them as his tool of choice to distance himself from the rest of humanity, to spotlight his superiority. I know it's hard to be black, gay and a fan of Morrisey, but really, does he have to take it out on the rest of the world? I mean, how can I take anyone seriously who refers to Torque as "pop-art masterpiece?" I'm sure he thinks with all the attention he's getting that he has somehow grabbed the keys to Kael's mansion, but if he had perspective on himself he would realize that what he just grabbed were the keys to Dale Peck's studio apartment.

[Nathan Duke]

Finally, there's someone willing to take on the irresponsibility of "Marie Antoinette," which recklessly mixes French aristocracy and Siouxsie and the Banshees songs, and the amorality of "There Will Be Blood," with its championing of milkshake theft and bastards in baskets. Thank you Armond White.

I'm glad he included "Running Scared" on his list of morally engaged films, considering that film's extended Children in Peril sequences that are played up for thrills.

[Claire K.]

I kind of agree with you Billy Whizz, except for the idea that White hates movies--I think he's actually the movie-watching equivalent of the book-loving Burgess Meredith character from that Twilight Zone episode. Or at least, I think that's how he'd like to see himself.

[Nick]

White seems to ignore context when it suits his arguments. Film critics aren't going to stop the way American consumer culture has affected criticism and art of all kinds. No critic can do that. Talk about denial.

[Moviezzz]

White lost me early on with:

"Nowadays, reviewers almost never draw continuity between new films and movie history—except to get it wrong, as in the idiotic reviews that belittled Neil Jordan’s sensitive, imaginative The Brave One (a movie that brilliantly contrasts vengeful guilt to 9/11 aftershock) as merely a rip-off of the 1970s exploitation feature Death Wish."

Maybe if he had looked into film history and noticed that THE BRAVE ONE was written by the guys behind the Michael Douglas and Hal Holbrook as vigilantes THE STAR CHAMBER and TV's THE EQUALIZER (and countless B grade action films), he might not have written off those comparisons.

I guess in his eyes the wildly uneven Jordan is a true filmmaker, while Sidney Lumet is still a hack.

As for SHOTGUN STORIES, it is kind of hard to review a film that barely gets released outside of major cities, unless you live in those major cities.

The internet is worldwide, not just in Midtown Manhattan.

[Marilyn]

I think he's just pissed off the Roger Ebert got some high-profile, glowing write-ups instead of him.

[Dan]

Wow, is it ever a small world: I look up White on Wikipedia to see if Whizz there was joking about his being a black gay Morrisey fan, and what do I see but praise from James Wolcott! Unverified, alas, but it's still funny to see.