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February 19, 2008 - The SAG Missive Crisis
The End of An Era: Episode One - The CriticsDavid Ansen joins the parade of film critics heading out the Traditional Media door at 62. He will, as Time's Corliss and Schickel, remain in the game. But unlike some outlets, Newsweek will surely establish a new critic, likely from their familiar gene pool. I'd be shocked if the answer they come up with is not someone like Dave Karger from EW, Rebecca Keegan from Time, their own Ramin Setoodeh or some other young, New York media savvy, non-critic who has been around the industry for years.
The whole series of anti-criticism events demands a look at the bigger picture. I was asked last week about whether I thought all of these firings (with plenty more to come) really hurt independent film. And the answer is more complex than I would like it to be. Let me start with the punch line and then go back to the detail work ...
The weight of responsibility is now on exhibitors who want to be in the Indie business - and not just the Dependent business, which is rarely "indie" in any real way these days - and the distributors and the publicists to find the new dynamic to get audiences to show up at "art house" movies. The lack of as large a poll of critics to use as promotion to sell these films is a small issue compared to finding the screens around America to show these movies on and the uphill fight against scores of millions of dollars spent to sell "bigger" movies every weekend of the year.
Moreover, the studios have unthinkingly (with a few exceptions) conspired to turn even the critics who are keeping their jobs into worthless players. On the one side, you have a total whore like Peter Travers - when his name or that Rolling Stone logo on top of an ad now assures that a movie is suspect ... which is a shame for the good movies he is quoted for - who has become about as valuable as David Manning because no one reads his full reviews and he is so shameless about quoting that no one wants to do so. Doesn't it occur to studio ad departments that the only people who care about critics' reviews are the same people who know that Travers and Roeper are not remotely reliable? (Roeper is not a quote whore ... nor is his taste often horrible ... but he adds little in terms of ideas to the mix and is still referred to as "that guy" in most conversations I wander into with people.)
It is, obviously, arguable that studios are not responsible for promoting new critical talent. But at the same time, if they want critics as a truly valuable marketing tool, they need to make real choices about seeding the next generation. However, the mind set remains, "quote from the biggest, most legitimate possible media outlet, regardless of who the critic is."
When is the last time you saw a quote from The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow? Well, it was likely either in The Baltimore Sun or in a national ad for a movie that got weak quotes from a dozen other outlets before they even turned to the list that Sragow was on. And since Sragow - as an example here - doesn't write to be quoted, they would probably be adjusting his quote to make it hotter even in that situation, finding it easier to use a quote whore from the junket circuit who gave some mouth-breathing year's best kind of praise.
The flip side is The Indies, whose system of releasing films relies heavily on New York, then Los Angeles, then Chicago, and then on to another dozen markets, and then beyond, if things go well. But Indie advertisers still have the mindset of majors ... they want the biggest media outlets for quotes.
In the New York indie market, that has meant The New York Times followed by The Village Voice, then the other alt-weeklies, then the other major papers (ranked this low because they rarely review the smaller films at all), then the bigger websites, then the smaller websites. New Yorkers who read The Village Voice are hip to who their local critics are, as opposed to critics in the VVMedia family who might be reviewing out of Dallas or Ft Lauderdale or Los Angeles. LA's Scott Foundas, who is both film editor and lead critic for the VVM-owned LA Weekly, has become more of a national player, including sitting on the NY Film Fest selection committee, so they can get away with him, following survivor J Hoberman on the Voice roster. Even Ella Taylor - who deserves better, but this is a reality check, folks - plays more like a part of the national team, not one of the leaders of the VVM group.
If VVM was actually smart about it, they would be leveraging Ella and another female critic of weight to bring more attention to their national film coverage. A critic's work is usually not defined by their sex, however there are clearly insights by women that elude men, simply by way of experience. (See Manohla Dargis: Strong enough to be as critical as any man, but not afraid of reminding you that she has lived a woman's life in the American culture.) But VVM has done the worst of what a paper chain can do with the issue of criticism ... they are making a small syndicate of just barely enough critics to cover the beat nationally, taking every dime they can out of the arena, as opposed to taking the power of a nation series of voices and exploiting that to create a bigger, more important voice under their banner. This is what I have continually suggested to the Tribune Co as their best future. Sure, take a Sragow review from Baltimore and run it in L.A. But also, take responsibility to get every film in all of your markets reviewed and on bigger films, exploit a variety of critical ideas across your chain. Of course, the problem there is not just the Trib Co, but the individual fiefdoms that will not understand that Michael Phillips vs Ken Turan is a feature that can make both the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune more compelling, more necessary reads.
In any case, the point is, there are indie distributors who feel that a review by a stringer in the New York Times or a no-review is like having a limb amputated, a bad review in The Times is like having a second limb removed, and a dismissal of any kind by "The Big 3" in the Voice leaves you just one weak limb to try to move along with. And with Roger Ebert out of commission for most of the last 2 years now - he has done a lot of work when he's been relatively well, but he hasn't been able to see and review as wide a range of films even in that effort - an indie is on life support. When The Los Angeles Times doesn't get someone to review (and it tells you how tough things are when Kevin Thomas, a notorious hard ass to work with, is remembered as a lost brother these days in L.A. after he was dumped from the paper), it is like kicking the near-dead in the head ... with a steel-toe boot.
Yes, the indie distributors LOVE indieWIRE. And they should. iW covers them with style and skill and obsession and love. But an indieWIRE quote is still a quote that only a niche knows much about. And on top of that, as the nature of hiring film critics on the web goes, the critic reviewing for indieWIRE is often someone with whom even regular readers of the site don't have a strong relationship.
But even The New Yorker and New York and other widely read locally based magazines with relatively well known critics just don't seem to have the weight to push a movie forward. A David Edelstein or David Denby review quote will be put on an ad ... but not as a top choice. This doesn't define the critic. It defines the way marketing works.
As a result of all of this, advertisers have put themselves into a corner, as newspapers and websites alike have become painfully aware that criticism doesn't sell newspapers or ads ... there is just too much criticism available that doesn't require picking up a paper or limiting yourself to one voice ... and people who care about criticism also seem to be more web savvy. Older audiences, who you might suppose were driven by reviews, are notoriously slow in getting to new movies, preferring word-of-mouth to reviews by what seems like a considerable degree.
But that speaks to the bigger problem. How do producers, distributors, and marketers work in a niche universe for movies. Snow Angels has an audience ... but it sure isn't as big as the Juno audience, though much of the Snow Angels audience probably saw Juno. How do you pick through one audience to sift out the other? How does a producer or a distributor come to peace with how small the audience is and not overreach financially? And how many times will a producer or a distributor convince themselves that there isn't a bigger audience when there is one ... as often as the other way around?
But I digress ...
We were discussing criticism and the generational shift.
We, critics and media employers alike, need to learn the same lesson as the producers and distributors. We need to determine, with clear vision and fearless honesty, what we expect critics to be. Is a critic just another service element in a newspaper filled with obits and tv listings and sports scores and weather? Is a critic an opportunity for a smaller paper to launch a national voice that actually has something weighty to offer on how we think about cinema?
One thing that is unique about being underfunded on the web is that you learn how to make the most from the little you have. Instead of sitting around pining for the good ol' days or what tools are just too big for your shed, you consider and reconsider how you are using the tools at your disposal. Of course, this is not unique to the web. It is what rising entrepreneurs of all stripes do. But in journalism, that edge is on the web right now.
And the truth is ... and this was the original inspiration for this piece ... the "great generation" of critics is aging out. I have as much or more respect for the over-60s as ever. I grew up on many of them and like the great filmmakers of our youths, those voices stick and stick tight. I am not sure what a critical world without Ebert - whose ability to be both a cineaste and a honest populist with ideas is not being reflected anywhere on a weekly basis right now - and Morgenstern and Mathews and Schickel and Corliss and Ansen and Sarris and even Rex Reed is going to feel like. Joel Siegel is gone too young (whatever you thought of him as a critic, he loved movies and pushed people to go to the theater) and how far behind is Gene Shalit ... and what will NBC and ABC do to fill those voids? Will they truly be seen as voids, other than on a personal level at the networks? They are and will be. That "I want to know what X thinks" slot is a position of power and privilege and even if Disney didn't take it seriously when they had a chance to built the Next Voice, I hope that others will.
I thank God that the New York Times grabbed Manohla Dargis and gave her a platform for her big brain and unfettered kink and that AO Scott has taken the job as seriously as he has and gotten better and better at it over these years. But while Ken Turan is a smart and kind man, he is best known these days for being cranky. His LAT sidekick, Carina, has never gotten beyond that status, as she really seems like a wordsmith who could give or take film as a medium, just waiting for Joel Stein's slot on the op-ed page. Roeper is worthless. However you feel about Claudia Puig and Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum and Leah Rozen, their voices are only empowered by the attachment to the mastheads of their large media outlets. With due respect, throw in four different names and not much would change, except for serious crit readers who have strong feelings about each person. (Interestingly, these major mags that are not at all critic driven have a lot more women at work than smaller outlets.)
First and last, we are lacking great, decisive (and divisive) voices in criticism. There are a lot of interesting tadpoles (of all ages) out there. But to grow, they need a few things;
- Studios that will promote them via smart pull quotes
- Outlets that will invest in promoting them
- Television opportunities greater than soundbites
- Hard work, covering almost every movie
Yes. New Media voices NEED Traditional Media to become anything more than tiny niche players, no matter how smart, no matter how capable. New voices need exposure. And care.
Take it from me. I have done as much television as any independent-sited critic/journalist. And I still know, occasional seats in the balcony are great for the ego. People see them and say nice things (whether they mean them or not). But it is the constant presence that becomes a part of people's families. Two days a week for 6 months ... that is when a lark becomes a chance.
Just like movies.
You have to have the time on screens to develop word-of-mouth and thus, an audience that means something.
And ironically, the same powers that control the big studios control many of the big media outlets. The people who desperately want critics to be important and the people who can't really change the dynamic. And the people who can? All in all, I think they're just happy with the real life David Mannings. And when the biggest whore at the biggest outlet, Travers, retires, will Rolling Stone want a real critic in the slot ... or will they want to keep pushing for quote to keep letting movie studios promote their magazine?
Here's thumb in your eye!
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