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June 02, 2006

Crickets: We cannot allow a status quo gap!

While batting a fistful of interesting notions and bold assertions about what's happening to those who've made a career out of being a movie cricket in the evolving print-and-online battle, Anne Thompson's two most interesting insights are: writers shouldn't expect to be paid; and that movie attendance appears to dip in markets where an established, name cricket no longer chirps. "As a generation of top critics move into their 50s and 60s, newspapers are chasing the same young demographic as advertisers and studios... Long gone are the days when the New York Times' Vincent Canby or the Washington Post's Gary Arnold could make or break a movie. But according to Tom Bernard, co-president of... Sony Pictures Classics, critics still have a major impact on... art films... "In the smart movie world, critics have an effect in big movie markets." Thompson observes that "[i]t took [Roger] Ebert decades to connect... with a local, then a national audience. He understands intuitively who his followers are and what they want from him; his job is secure. Not so for most of his peers... [D]aily newspapers are losing circulation, Hollywood advertising and their influence over moviegoers... Newspaper editors seem to believe hiring a younger critic will help them build a wider demo. Although they might deny it, veteran critics Kevin Thomas and Janet Maslin were pressured to give up their daily posts at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, respectively. John Anderson accepted a buyout at Newsday and is now freelancing. Most recently, the Chicago Tribune's Mike Wilmington and the New York Daily News' Jami Bernard were forced out... But when established critics stop reviewing, they often leave behind a gaping hole. "When audiences lose faith in a paper," says SPC's Bernard, "they end up doing something else." [Bernard] contends that theater attendance has dropped in... Boston, Seattle and Miami [where] popular critics [have left]." Thompson goes on to assert that neither of the NY Times' lead crickets, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have " a particularly mainstream sensibility. Both are canny careerists, though, as well as elegant writers who often seem more interested in crafting arcane intellectual arguments than reaching out to their readers." Thompson champions one of her favorite arcane-ists as well: "Perhaps expressing some sour grapes of his own, respected former Daily News critic Dave Kehr... blogged at Davekehr.com about his and Bernard's former employer: "During my tenure at the News, Jami and I suffered unbelievable interference from editorial higher-ups, all of whom seemed to believe that they were vastly more capable of registering the 'populist' perspective on a given film than the people they'd somehow (and clearly mistakenly) hired as experts on the subject... Oldsters in the field—which at this point means anyone over 30—may want to start looking for a new gig." Thompson quotes an online reviewer she favors, Walter Chaw, on the money thing: "I don't know if I'd be as moral... if I were banking Roger Ebert's or even a living wage." [Thompson has the URL wrong for Movie Review Query Engine; try it out here.]

Posted by Ray Pride at June 2, 2006 06:49 PM

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