Pauline Kael


December 1, 2001


BROOKE GLADSTONE: On Friday in New York City there was a remarkable cultural event. A memorial for a film critic mounted at the fervent request of filmmakers. Pauline Kael, the diminutive, indomitable film critic for the New Yorker died in early September and much was made of her influence on a whole generation of critics. But her impact on film audiences and filmmaking may have been greater still. Robert Towne has written or doctored dozens of scripts including Shampoo, Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown and The Godfather, and he's on the line from his home in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show.

ROBERT TOWNE: Thank you, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And here in the studio with us is David Edelstein, film reviewer for Slate.com and one of the youngest of a circle that has come to be called "The Paulettes."

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Ahhhh--- Hmmmmmmmm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, David you don't like that term, do you? [LAUGHTER]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: No, I don't. I, I prefer to think of myself not as someone who sat on the lap of the Queen Bee but someone who learned a good deal and appreciates that aesthetic and continues to fight the good fight. I am a-- I am a "Paulinista." [LAUGHTER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now Ms. Kael was known to champion her favorites whether critic or director or screenwriter. Mr. Towne, it's safe to say you were one of those?

ROBERT TOWNE: Yes, but I, I don't think she had, ever had any hesitation especially with favorites of hers if there was something she didn't like.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Can you tell me about an experience when Pauline Kael did take on the role as champion.

ROBERT TOWNE:Well, certainly in the case of Bonnie & Clyde, when that was released. I don't remember a movie that got more systematically battered by prominent critics, and Pauline reviewed the movie and the reviewers, and a month later it was on the cover of Time Magazine which had dismissed it in a kind of small kind of anonymous paragraph as being in the vanguard of the new cinema.

WARREN BEATTY/CLYDE BARROW: Why just the other night me and Bonnie were talkin' and we were talking about time we're gonna settle down and get us a home, and-- she says to me, she says, you know I couldn't bear to live more 'n 3 miles from my precious mother. Now how'd you like that, Mother Parker?

MABEL CAVITT/MOTHER PARKER: I don't believe I would. I surely don't. You try to live 3 miles from me and you won't live long, honey! You best keep running, Clyde Barrow. And you know it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:I understand that Bonnie and Clyde was the first review that she wrote from her perch at the New Yorker. What was it that she loved so much about that film?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: The moral stance of it seemed very original. On one hand we saw them clearly -- we saw them as killers, and we saw them in a certain sense as bumpkins, but at the same time we loved them, we understood them, we understood how they got where they were. There were also a variety of tones. The movie began as a kind of a comedy and is very larky and then suddenly became very serious and very tragic, and she responded to that. She loved this kind of unruly mixture of tones.

ROBERT TOWNE: And I think she liked the fruitful mess approach as against the [LAUGHS] neo-classicist approach, and you know Francis was nothing if not a fruitful mess, you know?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Francis Ford Coppola. [THEME MUSIC UNDER]

MARLON BRANDO/THE GODFATHER:[I make] my own life. I don't apologize. I take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool -- dancing on a string held by all those-- big shots. I don't apologize. That's my life, but I thought that well, when it was your time that-- that you would be the one to hold the strings.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much do you think Pauline Kael was responsible for the success of The Godfather?

ROBERT TOWNE:Her review of it was so extraordinary. It was something that found its way into the country and allowed the country to embrace it and, and have fun with it and also take it seriously. I, I think it really-- made a tremendous difference.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: I mean there was a, there was a time in the '70s when I was a teenager and then later in college when you used to go to a m-- a great movie -- maybe you didn't - were having trouble sorting out your feelings about it, and you'd curl up with Pauline Kael, and you'd sort of re-live the movie, and you'd see it through her eyes, and you'd think -- you'd compare your responses to her responses, and that was thrilling! I mean that created this kind of-- a holy trinity among the work of art, the viewer and the critic that I, I think is unmatched.

ROBERT TOWNE: And it was the great and unexpected nature of her reviews. I mean whether you agreed in every instance or not, what she was doing was discovering something in herself.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did the movies always have to have somewhere within in it a dark core for Kael to--passionately champion it? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: No.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: For instance when she reviewed the very early Spielberg film The Sugarland Express, what did she have to say about Spielberg?

DAVID EDELSTEIN:Hang on -- I have it right here. She said: He isn't saying anything special, but he has a knack for bringing out young actors and a sense of composition and movement that almost any director might envy. And then she goes on to say: He could be that rarity among directors -- a born entertainer; perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawkes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's pretty good prognostication. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

DAVID EDELSTEIN:And that -- this was a movie that not a lot of people, you know, were paying a--attention to. I mean it, it was a small movie; it didn't very well. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

ROBERT TOWNE: I remember, yeah. Yeah, she was as capable of anyone surrendering herself to a guilty pleasure, and shameless about it. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: It was never an unconditional surrender, but who cares? [LAUGHS]

ROBERT TOWNE: Yeah, yeah! I know! She, she - she didn't leave-- she didn't check her mind at the door, you know? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: No! Exactly. And she could -- I, I mean to put it very crudely, she'd go to bed with any movie, and that's why directors, some directors hated her so much-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

ROBERT TOWNE: Yeah! [LAUGHS] That's right! [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

DAVID EDELSTEIN: -- because it's one thing to-- You can dismiss criticism by sort of a loftier imperial critic, but somebody who has been to bed with you and who can point out your moves -- even moves you didn't know you had --you know - that person gets under your skin in a very special way. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

ROBERT TOWNE: Yeah, that's, that's what she did - that's why she drove people crazy.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think was her greatest contribution to the craft of filmmaking?

ROBERT TOWNE: Well there's been an awful lot of talk in recent years about the golden age of film, the '70s. Well, an awful lot of that came from somebody who created a common ground for audiences to appreciate that golden age of the '70s, and maybe that filmmaker'd say hey, man - we've got that audience -- we can do this! We can do that! And-- studio executives would no more dream during that decade of messing around with an ending of yours than they would of trying to fly to the moon! And I think she was tremendously responsible for creating a climate, both on the part of the filmmaker and the film viewer that encouraged and emboldened the filmmakers to make the kind of movies that were made then.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: David?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: I have nothing to add other than I miss her like crazy.

ROBERT TOWNE: Yeah, me too. You know, I, I just quite shamelessly loved the woman.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Robert Towne, thank you very much.

ROBERT TOWNE: You guys take care too.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And David thank you so much.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Thank you, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:David Edelstein is the film reviewer for Slate.com and Robert Towne has authored dozens of screenplays including Shampoo, Chinatown and Mission Impossible and contributed to many others, among them Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather.