For Armond White

Comments

[Jeff]

I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating...

White should have been booted from the NYFCC after his kerfuffle with Baumbach and Hoberman. He is an embarrassment to profession of film criticism and he degrades all of you. His fellow critics need to stop being cowed by his “truth to power” schtick and disassociate themselves from him in every possible way. If his superiors at the New York Press want to continue to exploit his personality defects to generate page hits and ad revenue that’s their business, but the critical and cinema establishment should not continue to act as their accomplices.

[Glenn Kenny]

Let's not forget Kyle Smith, who's gleefully crouching behind White and sniveling "Hit him again" at Darren Aronofsky. He's a distant second to White, but man, his naked resentment of successful artists is kinda sad, considering Smith's Mencken fixation and the fact that all the reams of copy Smith's churned out wouldn't be worthy of mopping up the contents of one of Mencken's spittoons.

Also, I bet White wouldn't have pulled that bullshit if Sidney Korshak was still alive.

[Casey Tourangeau]

What the hell did White do now?

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

@ Jeff: Yes, exactly. I understand why the Press keeps him on---he's like the Glenn Beck of the film world. But I truly don't understand why the critical establishment tolerates him. After his performance at the Slate Movie Club I thought he was done, but he inexplicably keeps getting invited to emcee, host, and otherwise represent at all sorts of events way about his ability. I really, truly, don't understand why, and I'm not saying that rhetorically. Anyone have a theory?

[Kent Jones]

There's a simple answer: because he volunteered two years in a row and everyone else was undoubtedly happy that someone had taken on the drudgery of booking the venue, inviting the guests, sending the invites, selling the advertising, etc.

[Scott Lemieux]

The Tourist > The Social Network. Can I get a job with the NY Press now?

[S. Porath]

What DID he do now?

[Bryce]

@ Casey and S. Porath

http://www.avclub.com/articles/armond-white-debuts-live-version-of-his-contrarian,49901/

It's not pretty...

[EatmyShorts]

Love Armond. Plus the director of Black Swan kicked it all off which is his right, but you are all covering for him. And you never thought the joke was funny Glenn so don't act like you are just some innocent observer coming to this conclusion. Long live the great Armond.

[Oliver_C]

FUCK ARMOND WHITE!

Dick Cheney > Audrey Hepburn
Pancreatic cancer > Cotton candy
The Ebola virus > Kinkaku-ji temple

See how easy it is?

[S. Porath]

I actually thought his list this year was somewhat more palatable than past years...but his act at the NYFC shindig, that is just grotesque.

[Oliver_C]

Many critics get away with contrarianism -- David Thomson for example. The crucial difference is Thomson, for all his much-publicised dislike of Bogart and Kurosawa, doesn't stoop to petulantly and repeatedly insisting that 'Battle Beyond the Stars' and 'The Ghost and The Darkness' are superior to 'Seven Samurai' and 'The African Queen' respectively.

[Griff]

Very well put, Oliver_C.

[bill]

Thomson doesn't like Bogart?? Isn't that sort of, I don't know, completely inexcusable?

[Tom Carson]

bill, I strongly advise you against reading Thomson on John Ford. He's an infinitely better critic than AW (because who isn't these days), but the slide from contrarian to crank may begin right there.

[bill]

I've read Thomson in the past, but my reading has been fairly random, so I guess I haven't read him on Ford. It sounds like I'd remember it. It's my understanding that he likes Nicole Kidman an awful lot. I mean, he *like* likes her.

[Kent Jones]

Opinions, opinions... Thomson never wrote, to my knowledge, that he "doesn't like" Bogart, but that he was a limited actor. His thinking on John Ford is something else. His complaint - that Ford cosmeticizes US history and worships the military, that he is a dangerous purveyor of an assortment of myths - is redolent of an earlier era, a Vietnam era kneejerk reaction to Ford (on the other hand, he's written beautifully on John Wayne). Personally speaking, I don't think he ever became a crank or a contrarian, but that he invested so much of himself in cinema that he never found a way of regaining his faith once he had lost it, and then started spinning his wheels as a critic. His best recent writing was that beautiful memoir from a couple years back.

A far cry from relentlessly attacking your peers and assuming that you are the only one who knows The Truth.

[Tom Carson]

Kent, I have a huge if lately somewhat chastened admiration for Thomson. As a thinker or (god knows) stylist, White doesn't even belong in the same locker room. The single thing they may have in common is a readiness to tilt against the conventional wisdom that has evolved into a distorting self-dramatization -- an anguished one in Thomson's case, I think, since he *did* invest too much of himself in movies and now seems to feel his subject let him down. But something like The Whole Equation makes pretty painful reading for a fan of his earlier work.

I also don't have BDoF in front of me (books in storage, dammit). As I recall his entry on Ford, though, the right word would be "spluttering." He scores some good points, especially about booziness as an ingredient in Ford's world view. But beyond the dated Vietnam-era attitudes you mention, there's an irascibility at work that I don't think DT is able to rationalize even as opinion, and that, yes, cranky tone has gotten much more prominent in his recent writing if you ask me. I haven't read his memoir, though, which sounds like it's very affecting.

[Oliver_C]

"Thomson, we should recall, was once a serious critic who became
disillusioned with cinema, and unexpectedly discovered that writing
about this disillusionment was far more financially profitable than
celebrating the work of Angelopoulos and Ophuls.

'There are beter things to do than watching films' is essentially the subject of everything Thomson has written in the last two decades. Would a serious literary critic asked to write about, say, Faulkner dare turn in a text encouraging readers to put away those dusty books and take a bracing walk?"

-- Brad Stevens

[Kent Jones]

Tom, as someone who got into trouble for writing unfavorably about the 2004 (I think it was 2004) edition of BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY, I suppose that your sentiments align pretty much with my own. As a critic, Thomson meant so much in the late 70s and early 80s. And then he started on the treadmill of articulation and re-articulation of his disappointment with cinema. At the time, I was pretty harsh on the very point made in the quoted passage from Brad Stevens - his disillusionment, coupled with his immense talent, made him the go-to guy for major news outlets and magazines. In the final analysis, I think he's been struggling with the expression of something enormously complex and painful, which can be pieced together from various writings - entries on certain British filmmakers and on Nick Ray in the dictionary, the memoir (title: TRY TO TELL THE STORY). It has something to do with identity, being English or American, the American side of the issue question to cinema.

Regarding Brad's Faulkner reference, on one level I agree with him wholeheartedly. On the other hand, I believe that David has something of a point to make buried within his highly questionable critiques. One problem with film culture is its inflationary rhetoric, which is generated from within a great big bubble. This filmmaker is a genius while that one is beneath contempt, this film is the greatest expression of human longing for home since THE ODYSSEY, while the negative of that film should be melted down and converted into guitar picks. Within the movie culture bubble, there are hundreds of Faulkners. The problem, of course, is that David doesn't bother that much with newer cinema, so he can't really claim with any authority to find it lacking.

[Kent Jones]

Make that: "...the American side of the question tied to cinema."

[Scott Lemieux]

While many of his argument are problematic, I don't really see Thomson as a "contrarian" in the pejorative sense -- he doesn't seem express idiosyncratic views solely to piss people off. To put it another way, Thomson even at his most dubious is writing about movies, actors, directors, etc., while White has become pretty much solely concerned not about movies but about the perceived critical reaction to movies. You could predict White's reaction to a movie with 99% accuracy by scanning the Metacritic scores (and looking to see whether Speilberg directed it) -- Thomson's judgments are nowhere near as predictable or offered in such transparent bad faith.

[Stephen Bowie]

Thomson remains interesting to me. He's certainly not the only retirement-age critic with public problems of engagement. It's disappointing that Jonathan Rosenbaum has totally punched out of modern popular cinema since he left the Reader, and of course at the other end of the scale there's the train wreck of Richard Schickel (whose LA Times hatchet-jobs on worthwhile movie books are more objectionable than any "disillusionment" piece Thomson has penned). Roger Ebert was never one of my favorite writers, but I admire him more now than I used to because he stays so effortlessly contemporary (without losing touch with the films he championed 40+ years ago).

I wish I had time to engage with Thomson on Ford, which I mostly agree with (even though anti-Fordian sentiments seem totally unwelcome, at least in the internet discussions I frequent).

[Glenn Kenny]

Thomson drives me nuts (like it takes a lot, I know). That Naruse stunt in one edition of BDOF was inexcusable, and his trying to charm readers around it in a subsequent edition even worse. And don't even get me started on "Watch this space." Then he'll turn around and write about a figure such as Rivette with such perception and sensitivity that I want to marry him. Like I said, nuts.

Putting him in the same room with Armond is like putting Lenny Bruce in the same room with Gallagher.

[Tom Russell]

What was the Naruse stunt?

[Tom Carson]

Just for the record, I don't think of "contrarian" as a pejorative term. "A readiness to tilt against the conventional wisdom" strikes me as a useful stance in a critic. An addiction to same, on the other hand -- White's case, not DT's -- is a recipe for worthlessness.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ T. Russell, re "Naruse stunt:" Too depressing for me to detail, particularly in my weakened state. It's easily pieced together via canny use of search engines, I'd reckon. Sorry!

[bill]

Lenny Bruce wasn't funny, either. Yeah, THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Is THE WHOLE EQUATION really that bad? It's the one Thomson book I own, and thought, due to its proximity, it would be a good first Thomson book to read through to completion (prior to this it's all been browsing various editions of the BDOF, and yeah, "watch this space" bugs me, too).

[Kent Jones]

The "Naruse stunt" is in reference to the Naruse entry, which basically amounts to: people tell me this guy is great and it's always nice to have something to look forward to. This was "updated" in a later edition to: people told me this guy was great, I saw some of his movies, and they were right. In other words, ANYTHING but actually trying to WRITE about the films.

[Glenn Kenny]

@bill Not funny? Come on! "Comic at the Palladium" is CLASSIC! And let us not forget "poor Vaughn Meader," that was good, too.

I think the best, and kindest, word for "The Whole Equation" would be "eccentric." Whatever you do, steer clear of "Rosebud" and "Showman."

@Kent: The other part of the Naruse stunt that killed me was something concerning the films Thomson's son would someday make. Oy.

Okay. Now I'm going back to bed for real.