Karina on SpoutBlog

I woke up this morning to a feed reader full of stories about film criticism, many of them blog posts in response to the latest bit of polemic from Armond White. It’s a prolonged screed against contemporary critics––young, old, print, web––anyone by Armond, essentially. Most of it just reads as noise, and since I’ve decided to put a moratorium on talking/writing about What Happened In Queens, I can’t respond to White’s not original complaint that the MOMI institute (which he did not attend) seeks to turn young critics into shill bots for studio films. I also can’t comment on his suggestion that the Institute itself is “a project seemingly designed to further confuse the profession,” although I will admit to being, before, during and after the Institute, confused about my profession. And I do suspect that all of our circular, internecine fighting about this stuff is, at least for me, making the confusion worse.

So it’s a relief to come across the second half of Rotten Tomatoes’ interview with critic Nathan Lee, and find an answer of sorts. You want to write film criticism? Stop reading it. Go look at art and get laid. The relevant quotes after the jump.

I find most film writing almost…unreadable. And the longer I write, the less of it I try to read. I think that keeps me a better writer. I’m reading all the time, but I can learn more about the movies I’m seeing this week from reading a great 19th century novel than I can from whatever XYZ critic has to say this week about whatever. I think another problem with movie writing is that it’s insular, especially Internet writing. It’s so narrow and insular and just about movies, and I think to be a really good writer and film critic you need a range. You need to know what’s going on in painting, you need to know what’s going on in music, you need to read books, and get laid, and go to restaurants, you know what I mean?

I do go to restaurants.