Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [254]
283 “continued to believe that movie criticism”: The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
283 “jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless”: Ibid.
283 “an entirely new style of ad hominem brutality and intimidation”: Ibid.
284 “She is a lively writer with a lot of common sense”: The New Leader (March 30, 1973).
284 “lost any notion of the legitimate borders of polemic”: The New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
284 “sexual conduct, deviance”: Ibid.
284 “just a belch from the Nixon era”: Ibid.
284 “you can’t cut through the crap in her”: Ibid.
284 “plastic turds”: Ibid.
284 “tumescent filmmaking”: Ibid.
284 “the mock rhetorical question”: Ibid.
284 “Were these 435 prints processed in a sewer?”: Ibid.
284 “Where was the director?”: Ibid.
284 “How can you have any feelings”: Ibid.
284 “rarely saying anything”: Ibid.
284 “a new breakthrough in vulgarity”: Ibid.
284 “free to write what”: Ibid.
284 “to accommodate her work”: Ibid.
285 “It is difficult, with these reviews”: Ibid.
285 “Princess Renata”: The Village Voice, August 6–12, 1980.
285 “when not dusting off her diplomas”: Ibid.
285 “Renata Adler should see a psychiatrist”: Letter from Michael Sragow to Pauline Kael, July 28, 1980.
285 “one of the dunces of the profession”: New York, August 11, 1980.
285 “That’s just how Renata reacts to Pauline”: Ibid.
285 “shouldn’t happen to anyone”: Letter from Penelope Gilliatt to Pauline Kael, July 30, 1980.
286 “I’m sorry that Ms. Adler doesn’t respond to my writing”: Time (July 27, 1980).
286 “a kinetic-action director to the bone”: Kael, The New Yorker (September 29, 1980).
286 “a furious aliveness in this picture”: Ibid.
286 “a comedy without a speck of sitcom aggression”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 13, 1980).
286 “The Elephant Man has the power and some of the dream logic of a silent film”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1980).
287 “He only shows you what you see anyway”: Pauline Kael, undated notes taken after a screening of Annie Hall, 1977.
287 “What man in his forties”: Kael, The New Yorker (October 27, 1980).
287 “Throughout Stardust Memories . . . Sandy is superior to all those who talk about his work”: Ibid.
287 “When you do comedy”: Ibid.
287 “a new national hero”: Ibid.
287 “a horrible betrayal”: Ibid.
287 “If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting”: Ibid.
288 “a biography of the genre of prizefight films”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 8, 1980).
288 “it’s also about movies and about violence”: Ibid.
288 “You can feel the director sweating for greatness”: Ibid.
288 “What De Niro does in this picture isn’t acting”: Ibid.
289 “I would say that of all the nonfiction writers”: Author interview with Daniel Menaker, April 1, 2009.
289 “She wanted someone to help make sure”: Ibid.
289 “I don’t think she had a snobby bone in her body”: Ibid.
289 “She loved to provoke Shawn”: Ibid.
289 “I think they really got off”: Ibid.
290 “Painting, painting, painting!” Author interview with Warner Friedman, August 12, 2009.
290 “Here comes Ma Barker and her gang”: Vanity Fair, April 1997.
291 “You make me so mad!”: Author interview with Polly Frost, March 20, 2009.
291 “Most of her criticism was not that hard”: Author interview with Michael Sragow, September 12, 2008.
292 “Pauline had enormous insight into people”: Author interview with David Edelstein, July 31, 2009.
292 “She was watching them, like a movie”: Author interview with Linda Allen, November 14, 2009.
292 “Well”: Author interview with Carrie Rickey, May 9, 2009.
293 “The conversation was over”: Ibid.
293 “I thought . . . I was fine when I was an acolyte”: Ibid.
293 “It’s a movie you want to deface”: Kael, The New Yorker (December 22, 1980).
293 “Little Sheba might not Come Back but don’t worry”: John Guare, The War Against the Kitchen Sink (Smith & Kraus: Lyme, New Hampshire, 1996), x, xi.
294 “You’re not stuck with the usual dramatic apparatus”: