Lost Landmarks & Hack Critics

Yet another great Southern California institution is going the way of the Dodo Bird. Acres of Books, the decades old store beloved by Ray Bradbury and myself (amongst others) is going out of business. If you have the time, swing by the old girl and bid her adieu. To help you to better go through the stages of grief, everything in the store is on sale so get while the getting is good.

On Monday I went and picked up some film books (surprise surprise). One of them, “Who The Devil Made It?” by Peter Bogdanovich was a particularly fortunate find seeing as it is out of print. The book consists of a series of interviews Bogdanovich conducted with some of the greatest filmmakers of all time back when they still roamed the earth.

It is utterly baffling to think that there was a time when greats like Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, et al were not heralded as great artists. In his introduction, Bogdanovich writes of a time that I have often read about but never lived through - a time when film criticism actually mattered.

As much as I disagree with the auteur theory, I respect those who founded it and cradled it through its infancy. They did it out of love. They took it upon themselves to bring praise and attention to filmmakers they felt were worthy of adulation.

Seeing something written by Pete Hammond referred to as film criticism makes me sick. It’s akin to calling child pornography, “performance art”. Pick any shitty movie in the past five years and you’ll see praise from him quoted on the poster. What happened to the days of militancy in film criticism? When is the last time someone posted an industry shaking book of film criticism like Pauline Kael’s “Raising Kane” or Andrew Sarris’ “The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968”? Why don’t people seem to care any more?

Where is Jonas Mekas when you need him?