By Lili Anolik 10/25/11 5:51pm

books

Linda Lovelace.

Kiss Kiss, Gang Bang: Pauline Kael, Deep Throat and The New Yorker

In 1972, Gerard Damiano was a 43-year-old hairdresser from the Bronx with a cheap toupee and an opulent dream: to become the first auteur of hardcore. Over a single weekend, he wrote a script centering on the erotic act Humbert Humbert referred to as “a fancy embrace,” convinced local mobsters to kick in a couple bucks and started shooting. The 61-minute movie that resulted might not have had Godard shaking in his pantaloons but it did have a few things going for it: a cute title, an even cuter gimmick, and a leading lady who wasn’t the usual sex-kitten-cum-hell-cat triple-X vixen but a fresh-faced young moppet with an alliterative name and the most muted gag reflex this side of Barnum & Bailey. Read More

By Charles Taylor 3/13/06 12:00am

That Scary 70’s New York— Dog Days, But No Cynicism

The freak show that was 70’s New York both on- and off-screen can be summed up by the kicker of Pauline Kael’s review of Taxi Driver. Arguing that it made perfect sense for the murderous, psychotic Travis Bickle to be acclaimed as a hero, Kael affirmed Martin Scorsese’s view of New York as a modern Read More

By Andrew Sarris 9/27/04 12:00am

Self-Hating James Toback Asks: When Will I Be Loved?

James Toback’s When Will I Be Loved, from his own screenplay, has received an enthusiastically favorable “thumbs up” from Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper on their weekly television show and a blisteringly unfavorable critique from Robert Koehler in Variety. That my opinion is much closer to Mr. Koehler’s than Messrs. Ebert’s and Roeper’s inhibits me Read More

By D.W. Young 6/07/04 12:00am

Two Cherished Critics, An Engrossing Odd Couple

Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me , by Craig Seligman. Counterpoint, 192 pages, $23.

Great critics are usually controversial; it’s hard to defy accepted thinking and not be. The converse, however, isn’t true: Controversial critics aren’t reliably great. To endure as more than an academic footnote, it’s not enough to have provoked or influenced. Read More

By Andrew Sarris 9/17/01 12:00am

Pauline and Me: Farewell, My Lovely

The death of Pauline Kael (1919-2001) was announced on a

local television-news program late on Labor Day night, as I was preparing for

my first film class of the semester the next morning at Columbia.

I can’t say I was as saddened as I had been a few days earlier by the death of

Jane Read More

By Susie Linfield 4/12/99 12:00am

The Late, Immortal Brodkey: A Hollow Core at the Center

Sea Battles on Dry Land , by Harold Brodkey. Metropolitan Books, 452 pages, $30.

Sex and death made Harold Brodkey famous: His two best-known works are “Innocence,” the 1973 short story about a Radcliffe girl’s arduous first orgasm, and This Wild Darkness , a chronicle of his losing three-year battle with AIDS. (Brodkey died in Read More