Confessions of a New Yorker film critic

Suppose a critic you've long trusted and respected writes a confessional article that reveals flaws in his professional judgment. Suppose, a year later, this same critic writes an entire confessional book that reveals personal flaws extending well beyond mere professional judgment. Suppose, some years after that, this same critic lands in a controversy, only to handle himself in a manner that's not merely flawed but downright pathetic.

Suppose this critic contributes regularly to the perceived gold standard of American publications, The New Yorker. Worst of all, suppose this critic is someone you knew in high school.

Here in a nutshell is my problem with the New Yorker film critic David Denby.

Denby was a year behind me at Fieldston, a progressive New York private school known for infusing its students with a rigorous academic education as well as the idealistic principles of the New York Society For Ethical Culture. Fieldston's distinguished alumni include such notable journalists as Jill Abramson, the first female executive editor of the New York Times; Carl Leubsdorf, longtime Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News; Jane Mayer, the New Yorker staff writer; the Washington Post columnist Bob Levey; and the TV news diva Barbara Walters.

Pauline Kael's acolyte

I had long assumed Denby belonged in this pantheon as well. But in 2003 Denby wrote a memoir in the New Yorker entitled, "My Life As A Paulette," in which he revealed that for a few years beginning in 1969 he had belonged to the circle of impressionable young critics who became so intoxicated by Pauline Kael, the brilliant (if not necessarily wise) queen bee of film criticism, that they let her bully them into echoing her judgments of films as the price of basking in her proximity.

"To be included in the pool of light around her table," Denby explained, "and to exchange opinions and to hear the work of well-known people debunked was an electrifying experience for a young man or woman struggling with self-doubt…. You couldn't agree with her too quickly or you lost her respect, but in the end, you did have to agree; in my experience, she could not remain friends for long with anyone who consistently fought her."

Here was candid insight into an influential figure in the film world, but also an ethically dubious approach to film criticism. As a film critic during much the same period (1971-83), I took great care to avoid socializing or even conversing with other film critics; I presumed I was being paid to give readers my independent judgments, not somebody else's. Denby's otherwise interesting memoir didn't even acknowledge this issue.

Blowing an inheritance

The following year Denby published another personal memoir entitled American Sucker, in which he described in dismal self-flagellating detail how, in the face of an impending divorce and the likely loss of his cherished Upper West Side apartment, his personal greed and envy led him to blow a six-figure inheritance in an ill-advised attempt to make a million dollars in the stock market within one year.

The tale of how a naÓ¯ve, self-absorbed and lazy man got sucked into the irrational exuberance at the turn of the millennium might make a passable magazine article. But a 320-page book? Who else but a New Yorker writer would presume to sacrifice even one tree for such an exercise in navel-gazing?

Jumping the gun

Denby's latest ethical challenge arose last month, when he was invited to an advance screening of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, on the condition that the critics on hand refrain from writing about it until December 13, eight days before the film's release date. This demand left Denby with three possible responses:

— He could attend the screening and honor the embargo date.

— He could tell the producer, "I refuse to cooperate with your brazen attempt to manipulate public opinion. If you want me to attend the screening, I reserve the right to decide what I'll say about it, and when."

— He could consent to the producer's embargo and then break it, presumably hoping that the producer would honor the old politician's maxim: "Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel."

Denby chose the third option. His review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo appeared last week, a week before the embargo date.

Moral fuzziness

When the film's producer, Scott Rudin, vented his fury, Denby blamed "year-end madness" for the lapse. "The jam-up of important films" at the end of the year," he e-mailed Rudin, "makes it very hard on magazines," especially since "we do a double issue at the end of the year." Besides, Denby stammered, "Since I liked the movie, we came reluctantly to the decision to go with early publication." Such mealy-mouthed mutterings are enough to make a liberal yearn for the moral clarity of George W. Bush.

The common thread running through these three incidents, I submit, is Denby's apparent belief that anything in his life is fodder for public consumption, and folks will cut him some ethical slack because he is, after all, David Denby of The New Yorker. The price of working at a legendary magazine is a certain insulation from life's harsh realities, a tendency that can also be discerned in Denby's New Yorker colleagues like Malcolm Gladwell, that serial discoverer of the obvious (to read my parody of Gladwell, click here), or the incurably ditzy Janet Malcolm, whose exhaustively researched exegeses usually wind up reflecting more on her than on her subjects.

My whining roommate

Denby reminds me of my homesick freshman college roommate, who spent most of our first semester pining for his hometown in Florida. One day about a half-dozen of his dorm-mates read Jeff the riot act.

"It's enough already," we told him. "We're tired of hearing how homesick you are. Stop whining and act like a man."

"Well," Jeff replied, mustering what remained of his dignity, "at least I'm man enough to admit it."

Denby is man enough to admit his deficiencies too. But as we said to my roomie: It's enough, already.♦


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