It’s not easy
being a critic
Newsweek's David Ansen talks
By Tim Ryan
about egos and 'foul play'
in Hollywood
Star-BulletinNEWSWEEK senior writer David Ansen seems fated to have become a film critic. "At 12 I was already keeping a master list of all the movies I had seen and even rated them," Ansen, 54, said in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home.
It didn't hurt that Ansen's father was a screenwriter, exposing his son to films at an early age.
Ansen, who graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English, is making his second tour of duty as one of five jurors at the Hawaii International Film Festival, which begins today. The jurors will select the Golden Maile award winners in the documentary and feature film categories.
A film critic for the national magazine for 22 years, Ansen began his career at The Real Paper in Boston -- a counter-culture newspaper -- which has produced some of the best known critics in the United States, including The New York Times' Pauline Kael.
Seven feature films are nominated for the Hawaii International Film Festival's Golden Maile Awards this year. The films are "A Beautiful New World" (China); "Don't Look Back" (Japan); "Jesus' Son" (USA); "Rainbow Trout" (Korea); "Siam Sunset" (Australia); "Tempting Heart" (Hong Kong); and "Vanaprastham: The Last Dance" (India). Each of the nominated features will be reviewed in the Today! section through Nov. 12, when the winner of the Golden Maile Awards for feature and documentary films are announced. The first review is here. Golden Maile Awards
Ansen spent 11 years working for Newsweek in New York before moving to Los Angeles where he reviews as many as 100 films a year. He took some time to answer a few questions about watching films for a living.
QUESTION: Everyone has an opinion about films. Isn't being a film critic just having an opinion?
ANSWER: Opinions are easy; articulating them is something else. A critic must be able to write ... You look at a movie with two separate eyes: one watching as an average movie goer; the other watching how the movie makes you feel and trying to figure out why it's working the way it is and is it succeeding on its own terms. But you also can't judge all movies by the same standard. You don't write about "Die Hard" the same way you write about 'Persona' because they're different species.
Q: What are your favorite types of films?
A: I have very eclectic tastes. I love comedy and film noir, two extremes. I appreciate great comedy, it lasts. But it's never given the credit it's due because audiences think it's easy and trivial. The great comedies are still being watched and enjoyed from the '30s and '40s.
Q: Have you ever been quoted out of context?
A: Oh yes. A headline in a New York Times ad for "Foul Play" with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn quoted me as saying "Good Fun." I hated the film and wrote a completely negative review. When I read my review it said, "Though it's all intended in good fun" ... I called them and screamed and they removed it.
Q: Have you ever been banned from a screening or blackballed by a studio for a negative review?
A: No, but I get hate mail like when I wrote a very bad review of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." I thought the film was boring, incompetent ... that (George) Lucas had forgotten how to write and direct because he's so busy working on his empire.
Q: Can you see a film just for the sheer enjoyment?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Are today's films better or worse than when you started?
A: Worse, though I feel this is a particularly good fall with a lot of good movies coming out. Many of us got into reviewing in the early '70s and late '60s when movies were exciting and central to the culture; they were breaking all the rules. It was an incredibly fertile time. But everything shifted after "Jaws," "Star Wars" and the Reagan era. No one foresaw that the director would stop being the boss and all the control would go to the studio, producers and actors.
Q: The film "The Player" is about the Hollywood's inner workings. Was it accurate?
A: It was a reasonably honest satire but not as savage as it could have been. It did show how hard it is to get any film made, good or not. Movies get made for a lot of very bizarre reasons. But fortunately, Hollywood isn't all run by greed but also ego. And part of that ego is wanting to be thought of as a studio that makes Oscar-winning, prestige pictures. What you realize when the Oscars come around each year is that people working in Hollywood hate their own product because they don't vote for them but do for independent films.
Q: What are your idiosynscracies about reviewing?
A: I don't like over-manipulative films; movies that hit me too hard on the head to make me cry; bring out the heavy ammo to make the simplest point; don't leave you any room to discover things yourself.
Q: Your favorite film is?
A: "The Third Man" with Joseph Cotton and Orson Wells. I fell in love with it when I was 13. It cast a spell over me that's never been broken. That's what films are supposed to do.
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