Our Film Critic on Why He’s Done With the Movies (2023)

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From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, AO Scott on why after 23 years as a film critic at “The Times,” he’s now done with the movies, and what his decision reveals about the new realities of American cinema.

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It’s Thursday, March 23rd.

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Hi.

Hi.

I’m Michael.

Tony.

Tony.

Nice to meet you.

No, I’ve never met him before.

It’s funny.

You can go a long time without — at this building without meeting somebody. 15 years as it happens.

Yeah.

Welcome.

Thank you. Very nice to be here.

You are now the second “New York Times” critic that we have had coming to the studio to talk about basically, a mid-career crisis of confidence.

— in less than three months. The first, of course, was our restaurant critic Pete Wells. So I suppose we have distinguished ourselves in the realm of occupational therapy.

[LAUGHS]: And “The New York Times” is just a place that burns out its critics, and —

Right. So in reality, this all started a few weeks ago with a job announcement that came over the transom within “The New York Times” company email system that you, AO Scott a.k.a. Tony, longtime co-chief film critic, are leaving this job to do something else — book criticism and writing as it happens.

And when my colleagues here at “The Daily” saw that announcement, we decided to reach out to you to talk about this decision. Because after all, who gives up the job of being chief film critic? I mean, it’s like abdicating the papacy of culture. It doesn’t make any sense.

It makes me the Benedict XVI then.

It makes you —

Of movie criticism.

I know. It just happens — no one, no one abdicates the papacy except for a couple of years ago for the first time in 400 years. And when we talk to you about this off mic, the story that you told us about why you’re leaving this job, that’s the story that we want to talk to you about today. Because it’s a big and complicated and nuanced journey that in a lot of ways isn’t just about you. It’s about the state of American cinema. So can you remember when you started going to the movies?

I would say, if sort of looking back, there was a decisive moment or period that kind of maybe, although I didn’t know it at the time, set me on the path toward film criticism. It was probably — when I was 15-years-old, my mother had a work obligation that took her to Paris for a few months.

Yeah.

Yeah, nice work. And she took me with her. And it was just the two of us in a little apartment. And she was working all day, and I didn’t know anybody, and was just sort of a lonely teenager. And so I went and took French classes in the morning. And then in the afternoon, I just sort of had the freedom of the city, which was great. And one of the things that I found myself doing was gravitating toward these little independent movie theaters that are kind of scattered across the Left Bank.

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They showed a lot of old American movies.

And so I went a few times a week, whenever I was bored, which was a lot, and just sort of wandering in off the street.

To see a Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita. ”

Or “Dr. Strangelove.”

Or a Hitchcock movie.

There are all of these things that I didn’t really know very much about, I hadn’t heard about, especially some of the older classic American movies, the westerns.

The film noir.

The way that people dress, the way that people talked, the sublimated sexuality that you could always feel.

Those are really weird movies.

Right.

Those take place in a very strange world, and a world that if you didn’t grow up in it and grow up on those movies, might be very bewildering but also just fascinating.

How did you feel when you’d walk out of these theaters, swimming in American cinema and then spilling out into the Paris streets at 15?

Well, it felt very — I mean, I felt very aesthetically inflamed. But also, the world just looked different. There’s something that happens when you see a movie, when you go to a movie, and you walk out of the darkness from what is always a twilight world in the movie theater, and you walk out, and the world just looks a little bit strange. It looks uncanny.

And if you’re the kind of kid that I was, who tends to daydream and narrate and make up stories in my head the way I did and still do, then you start to feel like your own life is a movie, that the walk home or the ride on the metro is —

Cinematic.

Is part of some film. Yeah, it’s a piece of cinema. And I guess that’s when movies really got into my head. I do think that that was the point at which my moviegoing changed from something casual to something that I was more ardent about.

I mean, I started reading movie criticism as a way of, in effect, having someone to talk to, have some kind of conversation since I was often going to movies alone.

Mm You needed to talk to someone.

Someone to talk to.

So you talked to the — you talked to the critics who weren’t talking back to you, but who were writing about those.

Right. And who were seeing what I had seen in different ways, which was always very interesting to me, to go see a movie that I thought was great, And then —

Have it unlocked for you.

Right. Have it unlocked or have my regard for it challenged, having Pauline Kael saying, well, this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I would have to say, oh, OK. hmm, but I liked it, Pauline, and having the imaginary argument in my head. And I’ve always thought that that’s what criticism is and that’s what a critic is, not necessarily an expert or an authority but a companion.

Mm So fast forward to this time when film actually becomes your profession. You become a film critic here at “The Times” in, I think, 2000.

2000.

Right. What’s the state of American film at that time when you take on that post?

I was really walking in at a high point in the film industry. Now 1999 is looked back on as one of the great years, up there with 1939 and 1962 and 1974 in the canon of magic years of cinema. And I think what had happened through the ‘90s was the flowering of, what’s sometimes called, the indie boom of independent American filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino. Todd Haynes, Lisa Cholodenko, Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye.

There’s a long list of names. And I think by the end of the ‘90s, there was a sense that this formerly adventurous, often politically provocative and socially conscious filmmaking, was really maturing and was taking its place in the Hollywood mainstream.

So give us some examples from ‘99.

So for example, so ‘99, you had David O. Russell’s “Three Kings.”

Really, a movie that came to feel very prescient. It’s set during the first Gulf War.

It’s kind of meditation on Middle Eastern oil.

Yeah. And how American global good intentions can go terribly awry.

There were odd personal movies that — like Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.”

“Magnolia,” a very divisive movie, one that I liked quite a lot. A lot of people didn’t like it when the frogs fell out of the sky. I actually burst into tears when the frogs fell out of the sky.

The movies were just this extraordinarily varied and interesting landscape. And by the time I started working here in 2000, my mission was to try to connect movies with their audiences, to let readers know about what was out there that might be the kind of movie that they didn’t think they were interested in. Because for me, moviegoing had always been about taking chances, while not saying that everyone should just surrender to random chance. I wanted to make the case to readers that —

Get out of their comfort zone.

And get out of their comfort zone and see something new and see something that could surprise them, that could show them an aspect of the world or an aspect of movies that they hadn’t felt was there before. There’s a flipside to that or a negative side to that, which is that you also want to be, as a critic, the antidote to hype. Every movie comes on a tide of marketing and publicity and advertising. And you want to be the independent alternative to that.

So what’s an early example of you challenging “The Times” reader to step out of their comfort zone?

I mean, I think my favorite example and the most extreme example is from my earliest years as a critic when there was a movie called “Freddy Got Fingered.”

I apologize for the title but not really.

Which starred and was directed by the Canadian comedian Tom Green.

In which he played I think an aspiring artist, but basically, sort of, couch potato loser.

It was a very repellent movie, in a way, on purpose. And I saw it. And I thought it was really interesting. I thought that it was conceptually interesting. And I thought it wasn’t just gross out humor in a way. But that there was a rigor and inventiveness and ingenuity to some of these comic set pieces.

But making the case for “Freddy Got Fingered” to the readers of “The New York Times” is a bit of a challenge.

Mm-hmm.

And I said that I thought it was a work of art. And you know what? I think I have been vindicated. I think that the movie is regarded as something of a work of art. But you’re taking a little bit of a chance. Whether or not a reader sees the movie, you’re pushing them to the edge of their comfort zone with you.

Mm-hmm.

And the challenge for a critic is to be able to challenge your readers, but also retain your credibility, have them still trust you, and at least say, that movie sounds like nothing I ever want to see. But he might have a point.

Right. I mean, ultimately, what you’re describing here is a world where you are chief curator of the options that we, the reading public, have to go see a movie. And what I’ve always felt about reading your reviews was that you gave us a window into your cinematic brain, right? And when does all this start to change for you, right? I mean, because here we are. We know the end of this movie. You’re leaving the job.

[LAUGHS]: Right.

When do we start to see the changes in this industry and in your relationship to it? This is all pretty good stuff, this period we’re talking about.

Yeah.

When do we start to see these changes that bring us to where we are right now, the last hours of your time as critic?

I mean, I think that, certainly, one of the biggest changes that I’ve witnessed is the rise of — or the real kind of World domination of —

Franchise movies or what are called often, IP-driven movies.

Where you have something that is a brand like Marvel.

Or DC, or even to some extent, Pixar now.

Superhero movies.

Yeah, superhero movies. Basically, what is now called the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And by the middle and end of the 2000, it did just seem like we were in this superhero glut.

There was “Spider-man, 1, 2, 3.” There were the revived “Batman” movies.

The “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four,” “Green Lantern,”

Various attempts to do “The Hulk.”

And it just went on and on. And it just seemed to be sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the movie world.

But every movie you say, well, was a blockbuster.

Was a blockbuster, but also wasn’t necessarily a movie in the way that I had grown up thinking about and writing about movies. which is a singular object in time and space with a beginning, a middle, and an end that you can write about as —

As a discrete thing.

A whole.

Your disgust, if we can go that far with this franchise phase of film, especially “The Avengers” franchise becomes clear and culminates in this essay you wrote about “The Avengers.” I’m just going to read a little bit.

OK.

You write, “this genre, though it is still in a period of commercial ascendancy, has also entered a phase of imaginative decadence.” You actually go on to say, “do you want to fight about it. If you do, I’ll meet you at the top of ‘The New York Times’ building with my death ray suit.”

You go on to say, “the secret of ‘The Avengers’ is that it is a snappy, little dialogue comedy dressed up as something else. That’s something else being a giant ATM for Marvel and its new studio overlords, the Walt Disney Company.” So you’re really saying, this is kind of crap. And it’s making these companies a lot of money. And I disapprove. What was the reaction to that pretty acerbic assessment you had delivered of “The Avengers?”

Well, Mr Samuel L Jackson, the Nick Fury in “The Avengers,” an actor who I greatly admire, went on Twitter and tweeted, “Avengers fans, we need to find A.O. Scott a new job, one he can actually, all caps, DO.” And this was my first encounter with like a real Twitter swarm because —

Right. Because you literally poked the bear of an international juggernaut and its fans.

And its fans. And the fandoms are very sensitive and quite powerful, and to some extent, intimidating. I mean, these movies, I think, are designed to be critic-proof. You create something so enormous and so powerful that it seems like such just a fact of nature, almost, that it just crushes any dissenting voice or point of view and doesn’t give you a lot to talk about.

I mean, I guess I come back to that. If what criticism is is having an argument with or about a movie, the attempt to create argument-proof movies that no one will argue about, that no one will argue with, I think that’s very troubling to me.

And I do feel that there is, embedded in the superhero universe, a very strong and visible anti-democratic or authoritarian tendency. That is that what fandom is to me. And people will be mad. But I’m going to say it. Fandom is about obedience and about conformity.

It’s not challenging yourself. It’s not stepping out of your cinematic comfort zone.

Exactly. It’s saying, I like this. And if you don’t like this, I’m going to — I’m mad at you. I hate you.

Fight with you on Twitter.

You’re a hater. It’s not really about having an argument or even about regarding the thing that you are devoted to, that you supposedly love, as worth arguing about.

So it’s not just critic proof. It literally undermines the very notion, the very idea, the very point of criticism, by design.

That’s it. And that’s its intention. That is, I think, what’s — the most sinister aspect of it is that that’s the world it imagines.

And unfortunately for you, it happens to be the most profitable win of American cinema.

Yeah. And the other consequence of the ascendance of the superhero movie as the main activity of the remaining major studios is it crowds out other movies so that a lot of the comedies or the literary adaptations or just the adventurous personal films that were so much a part of my moviegoing and movie reviewing experience have been really squeezed out.

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It’s harder for audiences to find movies worth taking a chance on. And it’s harder for me to find those movies to write about, those occasions where I can say, hey, listen here’s something, here’s a movie, and not an esoteric, out-of-the-way, teeny-tiny, indie movie. But here’s a Hollywood movie that’s powerful, that’s ambitious, that’s surprising, that’s doing something new that you should go out and see. And I need to have a certain amount of those.

To do your job.

To do my job and to enjoy my job and to feel like my job is fulfilling and meaningful.

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We’ll be right back.

So Tony, at this point, you’re feeling outmatched by the rise of the superhero films. You can’t defeat “The Avengers” no matter how muddy the movie’s plot is. So what’s the next change that complicates your work?

The big change and the one that is still rippling out now is the rise of streaming.

And the beginning of this change was in 2012 when Netflix, which had been a mail order DVD company, switched over to streaming.

And to original programming. And first, what they were making was television.

“House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black”

Right.

They were competing for Emmy’s with AMC and HBO and FX and with the whole emerging universe of what was called then, prestige TV.

Which had been another threat to the movies in a way.

Because who needed to go to the movies when you had “Sopranos” and “Mad Men.”

So Netflix entered that world in the TV mode. It was making series. And it was competing with cable But —

At a certain point, that began to shift, I would say, when Netflix started investing in movies.

And not just in 12 Christmas movies, or Netflix original Christmas movies, but going after and funding work like Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.”

or Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.”

Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman.”

And doing what the studios wouldn’t do, which is, give filmmakers a lot of money to make the projects that they wanted to make.

How is this a challenge for you then? This is wondrous, right?

This seems wondrous and is — I mean, and those movies, I’m very glad — I’m a big fan of all of those, the three movies. And I think one of the problems is that by taking those movies out of theatrical circulation or distributing them in a very limited way on theater screens, Netflix has, in a way, blunted their impact.

Mm-hmm.

Because what happens to movies on streaming is that they go into the algorithm so you can find them. They’re there. But they don’t have I think the same kind of cultural presence that movies used to, or that even traditionally distributed movies still do.

Right. And that algorithm is very much tied to personal habit.

Yes, to personal habit and to a kind of passivity. Because also, you’re working on a subscription model, so Netflix doesn’t care what you watch on Netflix as long as you’re watching Netflix. So as soon as you’re done watching one thing, then the next thing will start. And if you don’t pick it, they’ll pick it for you.

Right. And they’re not doing what A.O. Scott does. They’re not picking a film to challenge you.

Exactly. And that encourages, I think, a kind of passivity. And also, the fact that you know all that stuff is there, that you can get around to it someday, it makes you, in some ways, less likely to watch it. When movies were a little harder to see it meant something.

When a revival or a new print of Fellini’s “Knights of Cabiria” came to town, and you could see it, you had a week to see it in, you would be more likely, I would say, to see it, than if it’s sitting there in your Criterion Channel subscription, and you can get to it any time. But tonight, I’m just a little — let’s just watch some episodes of “The Office.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like — it’s not like you always have to be watching Jeanne Dielman peeling potatoes and sitting at the edge of your seat, forcing yourself through difficult cinema on the way to aesthetic transcendence. That’s not everybody’s Tuesday night. But the danger is that those experiences get more marginalized, get lost, fall out of people’s repertoire of experiences that they seek out.

Right. And what you’re really describing is another very challenging situation for you, which is — let’s make this all about me, which is this kind of algorithmic march toward the middle.

Yes.

To quote from the famous Lester Bangs of “Almost Famous.”

Yes.

And personally, this is how I can account for the fact that I’ve watched 10 Liam Neeson assassin flicks. I’m embarrassed to say. But they’re there. And they’re comforting. And in this universe, your recommendations, you’re exposing your brain on the page and challenging me to go see a movie in the theater is — it has a very small chance of working, right?

Yeah and you might not need it or want it as much.

Right. I guess I’m trying to understand if this is truly a crisis for film or a crisis for film critic.

It’s a very good question. And is it a crisis just for this particular film critic, right? I mean, there are lots of movies out there. There are a lot of people writing about movies. There are many of them writing wonderful and insightful things. So I’m not here to proclaim the death of cinema or the death of criticism.

But I have found that the way that I’ve practiced it has gotten harder to do. And also, the feeling of disconnection between the critic and the audience feels much stronger And the gulf feels much wider. I mean, the whole point of writing for “The New York Times” about movies is to spread the news.

Right. But Tony, couldn’t you take another viewpoint of all this, which is, perhaps, that all these forces you’re describing, superhero films, Netflix, on-demand everything, the clapback culture of Twitter, where fans of Samuel Jackson, they’re the ones who have the last word?

Is all of this maybe not actually a bad thing? I mean, are they collectively democratizing forces in the film world that are giving people what they want? And is it possibly true. That the old Hollywood that you are fond of was a little snobby and a little insular?

I would say worse than that. I mean, I would say that Hollywood was notorious for most of its history for being, at times, actively racist and always exclusionary of people of color, of religious minorities, of queer and transgender people. I mean, Hollywood was, for a very long time, ruled by a production code that mandated a very narrow, very distorted, very conservative view of what the world was like.

And it took a very long time to start to emerge from that. And I think it’s only started to emerge from that very recently. So we’ve seen, in the last few years only, maybe in the last decade, an expansion of opportunities for women, women being nominated in Oscar categories that they hadn’t been nominated before, Black and Asian directors and actors finally getting a chance and getting their due.

So I certainly don’t want to turn back the clock on any of that. But I also think that we should be wary of trusting the corporations that control Hollywood, that control what we see to be democratic, and that the interesting work, the ambitious work that has emerged has always happened in spite of that corporate dominance. So I hope that that continues.

Right. It’s interesting that you are feeling these feelings of, let’s call them, disaffection, disillusionment, because from what I can tell based on some conversations I’ve been having with our colleagues, there are elements of the film industry that are feeling a bit the same way. And they’re feeling it, and I’m not saying this to flatter you, in part because you’re leaving this job.

And here, I want to cite the observations of a colleague of ours, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Times Magazine” writer, TV writer now, who has been in LA And she described this phenomenon. She said she had been in LA, where she writes, quote, “the only question people had for me all week“, when she was there, “was what happened to A.O. Scott and why he’s leaving, and is it a referendum on the movies.”

“And if they could say what was on their faces,” Taffy goes on to say, “it would be what is our future. What does this mean? What could they have done better to please Tony Scott?” So I mean, assuming there’s a little bit of hyperbole in there, to the degree that there’s truth in there, does that hearten you?

I mean, I’ve never written for the industry.

Right.

That’s not — my primary obligation is to write for the readers of “The New York Times” and for the audience. I mean, the audience is whose side I’m on in —

Right.

— in this whole game. But I do think that there are people in, and I’ve met some of them over the years, although I’ve always paid for my own dinner whenever I —

Of course. Of course, you did.

Those are the rules of “The New York Times.” And I respect and abide by them. But there are a lot of people in the movie industry who care about movies in the same way that I care about them, who are in it not for fans or for money but for some belief in the power of the art form and in its future.

So you know — and I’ve thought of myself as, basically, an ally for those people, which isn’t to say that I always like their movies or always give them good reviews or are always kind to them in print, but just that we believe in the same things, that we have some of the same values. So I’m not surprised to hear that reading between the lines of what Taffy said that they feel some of the same things that I’m feeling.

It’s not just that they see my leaving as an alarming sign but as, maybe, evidence or confirmation of something that they already suspect. And I haven’t lost faith in movies. I still love movies. I will still go to movies. But I do — I do worry still and going forward. And I worry about my fellow critics. And I worry about the state of the art form that we all care so much about.

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You care about 15-year-old A.O. Scott?

Yeah. I mean, I’m still him. I’m still that person. And I still feel that same passion and ardor and amazement and bewilderment, but not on a professional basis.

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Well, Tony, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael. It’s a lot of fun. [BELL RINGING]

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. In a closely watched decision on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter point despite fears that previous interest rate hikes contributed to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the larger banking crisis that’s still underway. The rate increase reflects the Fed’s need to balance the health of the banking industry with the threat of inflation, which rising interest rates are designed to counter by making it more expensive to borrow money.

On Wednesday, the chief executive of the railroad company Norfolk Southern, whose train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, told a Senate committee that the company would provide long-term financial support to residents of the town.

That support, according to the C.E.O Alan Shaw, will include a medical compensation fund to address health risks from the accident and another program to ensure that homes in East Palestine don’t lose their value because of the accident.

Today’s episode was produced by Jessica Cheung and Michael Simon Johnson with help from Asthaa Chaturvedi. It was edited by Michael Benoist and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wunderlich. Special thanks to Elisheba Ittoop. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.