It's official now: Richard Schickel, longtime film critic/essayist/enemy of Hollywood Commies/hagiographer of Clint Eastwood, doesn't like Robert Altman. Here's Schickel dumping on a new oral history of Altman, while grudgingly admitting to partially liking McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, NASHVILLE and CALIFORNIA SPLIT:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book22-2009oct22,0,2690542.story
[UPDATE 10/30/09] Since Schickel's review was published, there's been a fair amount of disagreement going on, from LA TIMES film gossip columnist Patrick Goldstein to filmmaker/Altman disciple Alan Rudolph. Here's an excerpt from a letter actor Jim Beaver (DEADWOOD) wrote to the TIMES (found this on USENET's group rec.arts.movies.past-films):
However, the fact that no one I know who takes film seriously has much respect left for Schickel's opinions does not lessen the intensity with which we feel bewildered and often angered with how he has become some sort of éminence grise in the public eye, the wise and irrefutable voice of "film history" as represented in TV specials and DVD commentaries. Publications such as the Times and organizations such as the AFI and many other public dispensers of information or perceived wisdom about film history often turn to "experts" such as Schickel who have managed the leap from reviewing movies to a hallowed place where they are the authority of first resort whenever a book on film needs reviewing or a talking head is needed on CNN after a film legend has died. I know hundreds of people who know more, understand more, and are able to discourse more usefully on film than Richard Schickel ever could, yet I daresay he is asked to review more books on film than any other reviewer in America. This latest diatribe is perhaps the most flagrant example of his unsuitability for the unelected post he has been raised to. I hope at some point the brand known as "Richard Schickel" stops being pasted onto every article relating to film and that actual, as opposed to presumed, experts be given a chance. I bear Mr. Schickel no malice and am grateful for his early contributions to my knowledge of film. But enough is enough. His slander of Robert Altman ices a cake that is far too stale.
Schickel WAS 100% RIGHT. Altman was GROSSLY OVERRATED,a poser, a dilletante, Fool's Gold Rebel, Delusions-of-Grandeur, his views on everything - EVERYTHING ,but especially movies and art - was pathetically wrong-headed.
ReplyDeleteHe was a Left Wing hatemonger,and it showed thru his movies and views; anyone even an inch to the Right of him was portrayed as childishly, petulantly, mean-spiritedly one-dimensional.
No matter his image of being a "rebel", his attitude and behavior,was still typical of the born-and-raised,spoiled-rotten RICH kid that he was, that expected to get whatever he wanted, and would be nasty if he didn't get it immediately. The man was a mental case .