Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [94]
At the time Pauline was far less widely known than Crist, who was unquestionably the most recognizable name and face in the NYFCC. In 1968 Clay Felker had hired her to become the first film reviewer of the trend-setting New York magazine, and she was also the movie critic for the mass-circulation TV Guide and film commentator for the popular morning newsmagazine series The Today Show on NBC-TV. It was estimated that between TV Guide and The Today Show, Crist’s sharp and succinct opinions reached more than 23 million people, and that her income hovered between $45,000 and $50,000 annually. (Pauline’s New Yorker salary was a pittance by comparison.) An indication of Crist’s celebrity came in September 1968, when TV Guide ran a full-page ad in The New York Times, featuring Crist and Bob Hope with the tag line, “Headliners and by-liners help us do the job.” Crist’s taste in films was generally very good, and like Pauline, she was unafraid to acknowledge her fondness for trash.
If Crist was at this time America’s most visible movie critic, there was serious competition coming up fast, courtesy of Rex Reed. As a boy in Texas, Reed had developed a love for the films of golden-age Hollywood. In the late 1960s and early ’70s he was in the enviable position of writing about films during an all-new golden age, but he was far less interested in discussing the work of the new directors than he was in glorifying the stars of his youth, a predilection that hardly damaged his standing with the public. In his Daily News column he regularly took out after the new breed—he didn’t understand Robert Altman at all—and delighted in provocative anti-intellectual comments, such as dismissing Ibsen’s A Doll’s House with, “I have slept through more productions of this dated play than almost anything else I can think of.” He possessed a knack for the colorful, often vituperative, personality profile, which helped give him a reputation for “telling is like it is.” Middle-aged talk show hosts such as Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin were all too happy to have him spout off about the New Hollywood’s lack of decent, human stories, and Reed, with his blend of withering, Waldo Lydecker–style sarcasm and high-mindedness, seemed to satisfy Middle America’s view of what a movie critic was supposed to be.
In 1970, Reed appeared as Myron, the sex-change candidate, in Michael Sarne’s much-reviled film version of Gore Vidal’s bestselling novel Myra Breck-inridge . (Fellow reviewers reveled in pointing out Reed’s complete lack of acting ability.) When they were both at the height of their fame, Reed and Crist had a standoff. Reed had made an unflattering remark on a television talk show about Crist’s celebrity endorsements—she had recently done an ad for a popular feminine-hygiene spray—and later, when she was interviewed on television and asked about the Reed incident, she responded, “Well, when he shows up at screenings, the big question is ‘Does he or doesn’t she?’” “That was the lowest point of my public life,” recalled Crist. “The minute it came out of my mouth, I could have killed myself.” Later, Reed and Crist patched up their differences, but the episode was evidence of how prominent movie critics were becoming in the pop-culture consciousness.
While Pauline had no interest in engaging in open confrontations with her colleagues, there were very few whom she genuinely respected. After only two years at The New Yorker, she believed herself to be superior to all of them. She had little use for the work of Vincent Canby, Renata Adler’s replacement as chief film critic of The New York Times, whom she regarded as a man of pedestrian taste and middlebrow thinking who just happened to be a better writer than Bosley Crowther. She delighted in calling Joseph Morgenstern and