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

[matt lynch]

I seem to remember hearing about Armond having a personal beef against Georgia Brown that some say trickled down to him calling Noah Baumbach "an asshole". Also something about a controversial radio appearance involving the White and Brown. I can't seem to find anything else about it though. Any help?

[Arion Berger]

Sheesh, I was just flattering in you. GD. Anyway, someone needs to make a movie called "Ye-Ye," right? We got a million-dollar idea, y'all!

[don lewis]

Wolcott...don't you wanna get outta Cape Cod...outta Cape Cod toniiight....

Sorry.

Isn't White a black, gay, REPUBLICAN Morrisey lover? Man, that's a tough road to travel....

[Matt Noller]

Matt, I don't have a link, but I'm pretty sure he suggested that Georgia Brown should have gotten an abortion.

He's a classy one, that Armond.

[David Schwartz]

Glenn,

Let me be the first...or, well, thirtieth, to chime in on Armond White's column. I need to respond to one thing he wrote about the Museum of the Moving Image's recent institute in film criticism (which I co-organized). Namely this:

"These desperate stakes became even more alarming with the recent announcement of the Museum of the Moving Image’s Second Annual Institute on Criticism and Feature Writing—a project seemingly designed to further confuse the profession. Offering a session on marketing and publicity, the MMI’s Institute implies that flackery is part of critical journalism, and that’s really the root of the problem—sanctioning the way in which critical journalism has blurred its mandate into promoting the industry, not the art form. It overlooks any chance for criticism to unite while enlightening the audience, keeping it divided. There is no 'conversation' when what we say when we talk about movies is driven by elitism or commerce, both now horribly combined in Queens."

Do we really need to state the obvious: Film is art AND business; to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. The point of the publicist panel at the Museum was to demystify and discuss the way that publicists work. Like it or not, publicists control access to films, filmmakers, and actors, and they attempt to influence how a film is received. So it seemed reasonable to give critics an inside, candid look at how they work. The panel indeed was a conversation--a lively, informative, candid one-- and not a brainwashing session.

David Schwartz
Chief Curator
Museum of the Moving Image

[The Playlist]

Armond White has always been insufferably self-important. He has fittingly written for years in near obscurity over at the fucking New York Press - an ignored paper so perfect for the already bitter, disenchanted writer further frustrated with his station in life.

[Fred]

Polemics and counter-polemics are always fun. But the most crucial thing to take wawy from this "debate" is that both White AND Kenny are full of s**t!

Nothing personal, it's just the being full of that substance is part of the job requirement for being a film critic.

Kenny's a snob and White's a crank.

[Dan]

Fred, gotta disagree with you there. Take our host's review of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". I think it's better than 2 1/2 stars, BUT, unlike a lot of hilariously godawful reviews I've read of said film (male nudity never fails to reveal a few closet cases in the film "blogosphere"), Glenn ticked off the merits it had and things he thought could improve, he didn't buzz-bomb it. Honestly, if I thought he WAS a snob, I wouldn't be such a gadfly on his blog!

[TC]

What bothers me most about White is the "either/or"ism that I get from reading essays like this. It's possible to like "irresponsible" movies like THERE WILL BE BLOOD and ZODIAC, as well as the ones from White's list (well, some of them anyway).

[Joe Leydon]

Seriously: I was very sad when Premiere stopped publishing. And not just because I was sent copies of US Weekly to compensate for never-published issues I was entitled to receive for my not-yet-expired Premiere subscription.

[Kent Jones]

Many years ago, a good friend of mine made an observation that's stuck with me - "You can be addicted to anything - drugs, alcohol, exercise, even your own personality." You can even be addicted to the sensation of righteous indignation. Which, I'm afraid to say, is what I see in Armond's writing. About which there's nothing much to add to what Matt Zoeller Seitz has written.

There are usually insights sprinkled throughout Armond's reviews, but they are now buried under mounds of shaky suppositions and assertions, unvarnished opinion masquerading as fact, unverified "proofs" of the moral bankruptcy of this or that film, filmmaker or critic, and attacks on some phantom hegemony. On top of which, one can pretty much predict what Armond's feelings about a given film are going to be. He also has an ugly habit of attacking his fellow critics, and when he does it by name it's in truly alarming language, as his remarks on Lisa Schwarzbaum and Georgia Brown attest. He seems to feel that he has license to do so because he feels that he is the one on the barricades, that he alone is speaking out against I-don't-know-what. As I found out myself.

He has become eminently if not proudly unreasonable and illogical, and I'm sorry about that, because as Matt wrote, he did a lot of strong work in the 80s and 90s. I wish him well. I'm sorry that he's erected such a high rhetorical wall around himself.

[vadim]

Glenn, I'll love you forever for the LAUGHING GAS shout-out. One of my favorites.

[The Playlist]

Sure, Glen can read and sound like a snob at time, what film critic doesn't? I can understand the problem some people have with him, but compared to Armond he seems like a congenial walk in the park.

[Evan Waters]

The list basically turns this into "other critics don't like the same films that I do!", which is petty and dumb. If he thought WAR OF THE WORLDS was great and transcendent, good for him! Yay for diversity of opinion! But other critics' failure to praise it means jack squat. It's not because they failed to grasp the profundity of Spielberg's vision, it's because they didn't think it was that well made.

Heck, the Ten Current Film Culture Fallacies are just a list of specific films and filmmakers and movements that we're supposed to think are good or bad based on his judgment. The new musicals suck, Dogma 95 sucked, David Cronenberg = Paul Verhoeven (or something), etc.

The one point I will agree in a way on is that I do think Wes Anderson sometimes gets misread- the surrealism of his work is mistaken for emotional detachment. But THE DARJEELING LIMITED got quite good reviews, so it's not really the best test case, is it?

[Kent Jones]

I agree completely about DARJEELING, and about Anderson's work in general. But were the reviews really that great? Many people I know hated that film, and I read many reviews that were either severely qualified, mixed, or dismissive.

[Glenn Kenny]

Yes, Kent, "Darjeeling" in particular came in for a lot of (to my mind completely unwarranted) hostility. Seemed almost reflexive, too, as if a lot of haters were just waiting to pounce. I appreciated A.W.'s spirited defense of the movie, and Anderson in general. But your points on Anderson's essential nature as an artist are what I pull out when I want backup in an argument...

[Kent Jones]

Thank you GK. Dave and I are on our way to pick up Nathan. Meet you at Elaine's at 3.

[Brandon]

I think White's plea is justified, yet, obviously, not entirely accurate.
Criticism is not a competition of who has the best idea about what they have seen. Each piece IS a personal viewpoint on the film. Political, moral, or theoretical analysis (or the lack thereof) is all filtered through that, as Mr. White so clearly shows with his own piece of anti-hype.

That being said, I think the biggest problem with criticism today (if I can be so White) might just be in the general lack of differentiation between praising a film and defining it as (comparatively) worthy of note; in other words, the difference between liking a film and it being good.
These have always been two separate things for me...

[Lizzie]

It's appalling to read all these denunciations of Armond by his colleagues. Is it unforgivable merely to say what everyone already knows to be true about Roger Ebert? Are today's critics really so desperate for celebrity that they revere Ebert's example rather than lamenting the obvious damage he's done to the profession?

Every objection I've read to Armond's article is based on a misinterpretation of his ideas. I'm afraid that willful ignorance, cultural prejudice, and arrogance are combining here to create a shameful spectacle: a vicious pile-on/scapegoating of a principled person who is also, ironically, his profession's best hope and most eloquent defender.

[Glenn Kenny]

Lizzie, the reactions here are to much more than White's denunciation of Ebert, and I can't say that any of the critics who have made their objections above or at "The House Next Door" have ever displayed anything like a desperation for celebrity. That's a nice straw man you've put together, though.

One reason Armond's ideas are so eminently open to what you call misinterpretation is that they're incoherent.

[Lizzie]

Glenn,

If you really found Armond's ideas "incoherent" (they're not), why not ask for clarification, either from the critic himself or from the online community? The latter option would perhaps have resulted in a conversation that would have justified the existence of this blog.

Instead, you extended no respect or professional courtesy to Armond, despite the apparent consensus in the community that he did some important work once upon a time. All because he dared to question Ebert's and The New York Times' authority, and rejected the bloggers' claim to authenticity. If you can get beyond your deep-seated complacency, try wrestling with what Armond put out there last week. Start by, um, reading it.

[Tony Dayoub]

One should not have to ask for clarification from an eminent critic like Mr. White. His writing should speak for itself.

But his "incoherence" often seems to be deliberate, proposing half-baked theories or obscure references to support his ideas. Invariably this perpetuates his own notion that no one understands him because his mode of thinking is so beyond everyone else's.

Kent Jones is justified in his statement that White has "erected such a high rhetorical wall around himself."

[Glenn Kenny]

Lizzie, for a crowning example of both White's incoherence and factual double-dealings, see Victor Morton's first comment above, citing White's competing lists of thrifty-brave-clean-and-reverent films to slothful ones. Also, just on a side note, just why is it that a film that is irreligious or anti-religion is immoral. I guess I SHOULD ask Armond that one.

[Dan]

Lizzie, first off I'd like to point out that trashing your colleagues in print isn't "professional courtesy" no matter who does it, which is precisely what White did, and more to the point, he did so not only a magazine that didn't really deserve the bile he spewed on it ("Premiere" may not have been "Film Comment" but it was far, far away from "US Weekly") but in such a way as to personally offend our host. How would you take it if I walked up to you and said, "Hey, I'm glad your friends got fired! BECAUSE THEY SUCK!"

As for Mr. White's opinions, I have no doubt they're sincere, and I agree with them to a point, although they're bluntly nothing new, and White takes it WELL beyond the pale of both taste and ego: our host's summary of the article was apt.

Frankly, I think you could bother to read the piece more closely yourself: he contradicts himself throughout the article. For example: if elitism is the problem, why is he dismissing everyone who isn't endorsed by him? And why is he dismissing Roger Ebert? You'd think an anti-elitist would view bringing film criticism to the masses would be a good thing.

Furthermore, it's choked with generalizations about anybody who isn't Armond White that are, well, more cranky and silly than anything else. A critic is defined by their insights and grasp of the medium, not whether they're paid or what medium you find their reviews on. Nor do those insights have to be of a political or social nature, in fact often those tell you much more about the critic than they do about the film.

In short, just because someone disagrees with you on a matter of opinion makes them neither an idiot nor ill-informed. A lesson, I think, both you and Mr. White could stand to learn.

[Evan Waters]

Ebert-bashing aside (not that I approve of that either), the problem with the article is that it basically says "critics are wrong for liking these films instead of these!" As I've said before, diversity of opinion is good. I personally think highly of a lot of despised movies (do NOT get me started on THE AVENGERS, we'll be here all night.)

But there's a difference between having a minority opinion and saying that the reason you have a minority opinion is because the entire system is corrupt and elitist. The latter, in my opinion, is a barrier to genuine discourse. It makes the discussion hostile, which White can then turn around to his own advantage by saying how hostile his fellow critics are. He really seems to want to position himself as a lone voice in the wilderness, and not just as a guy with unorthodox views.