New low for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES Sunday magazine: wet kiss article about blacklist-era ogre Roy Brewer in today's Oscar issue.

Article by John Meroney, who has goo-gooed over the Roy Brewer/Ronald Reagan connection in the past (namely NATIONAL REVIEW).  Essentially Brewer (plus actor/John Ford regular Ward Bond) was the person Hollywood actors/writers/directors had to beg and plead with to show they weren't Communists and could they work again, please.

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/02/left-in-the-past.html

Ten nonfiction books I enjoyed reading in 2011.

In no specific order:
1. FAB: A BIOGRAPHY OF PAUL McCARTNEY by Howard Sounes
2. CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORSESE by Richard Schickel
3. I WANT MY MTV (oral history written and edited by Craig Marks and Robert Tannenbaum)
4. EMPIRE OF DREAMS (Cecil B. DeMille biography) by Scott Eyman
5. THE AGE OF MOVIES: SELECTED WRITINGS OF PAULINE KAEL (edited by Sanford Schwartz)
6. SPENCER TRACY: A BIOGRAPHY by James Curtis
7. THREE CUPS OF DECEIT by Jon Krakauer
8. A BIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GREAT JAZZ AND POP SINGERS by Will Friedwald
9. FURIOUS LOVE (biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
10. THE DARK STUFF: SELECTED WRITINGS ON ROCK MUSIC by Nick Kent
and just one more:
11. LIFE ITSELF by Roger Ebert

Martin Scorsese on THE KING OF COMEDY.

Although Richard Schickel can be a rather hectoring old scold, his new book CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORSESE is a must-buy.

Of course, Martin Scorsese has participated in more than one interview book in his lifetime.  But he responds to Schickel's queries with a not-always-seen-in-the-past candor.

Take this selection of Scorsese quotes from the chapter on THE KING OF COMEDY (the 1983 classic about kidnapping your way onto the show business A-list) for example:
"I just thought we were making my movie, and everybody would wait on me--a complete megalomaniac."  [referring to the quite-long shoot]

"There is a part of it that's grotesque, you're right about that.  But I was trying to capture something.  As I was making the film, I realized that a part of me was in that story, and I was forced to confront it.  I look back now and I realize why I couldn't make KING OF COMEDY back in 1975 when De Niro first gave it to me.  I was too close to it.  I didn't understand it.  And I haven't seen it since I first made it.  It's too embarrasssing.....Not embarrassing.  It's--....very unsettling."

[Schickel mentions a scene where the receptionist to Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) isn't letting aspiring comic/talk-show host Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) "past the gates"]

Scorsese: "It was so sad.  The poor guy wants to get in there.  He can't get past her.  He tries to make himself likable and yet there's all this extraordinary violence and hostility in him.  I can articulate all that now.  I couldn't articulate it then."

Schickel: "I can imagine why it was very difficult for you to do."

Scorsese: "Oh, it was awful for me, as I said."

Another conniption fit from Richard Schickel--this time about film criticism.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/03/over_the_hill.php

After a recent takedown of the late Robert Altman, film critic/hagiographer/professional scold Richard Schickel [who, at his best, gave the world the 70s PBS miniseries THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES and made the restored-and-expanded reissue of Sam Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE possible] lurched into action at a recent film critics' panel at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater at West L.A.'s Hammer Museum recently.

I'll sort-of-agree with Schickel that nowadays newspapers and magazines want film critics to be
cheerleaders for current mainstream product (evidencing the career of Betsy Sharkey at
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES).

But Schickel can't help but to blurt out dumb insults of online film critics (that he allegedly doesn't read) and defame Ain't-It-Cool News founder Harry Knowles solely for his physical appearance.

As I said in the Hollywood Elsewhere comments section, Schickel--in a perfect world--would be best off founding a website/critics' blog (a la Glenn Kenny's SOME CAME RUNNING) with, say, ex-NEWSWEEK critic David Ansen.

Then, Schickel (provided he was willing to do the work) could write only about the current domestic and international films that come up his personal standards.

Richard Schickel's nuclear hatred of Robert Altman--as man and filmmaker.

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.

Recommended reading and viewing when ill.

Having spent the week suffering from upper respitory infection, I've been coping with homeboundness by reading and watching small-screen offerings that are as noninfectuous as possible.

Here's a list;
CARY GRANT by Marc Eliot--although not deep in analysis of Grant's films, a reasonably comprehensive and honest-but-non-sensational account of his life.
WARNER BROTHERS: YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS--Richard Schickel's recent PBS miniseries about the legendary studio (narrated by Clint Eastwood), offering generous archival interview footage and clips from various classic and less-classic films.
THE GODFATHER (Blu-Ray)--Overall, this umpteenth restoration of Coppola's 1972 breakout film lives up to its "definitive" status. Kudos to Robert Harris (involved in the restorations of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and VERTIGO) and Steven Spielberg (making good use of his time as a major supplier of product to the current Paramount) for making the hopefully-definitive restorations of GODFATHER I and II a reality. Now, if the Blu-Ray treatment can be applied to Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW....
A CAPOTE READER by Truman Capote--A Penguin Books compilation of short stories, essays, the novellas THE GRASS HARP and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and the notorious 1957 profile of Marlon Brando ("The Duke in His Domain") for THE NEW YORKER.