For movie lovers (not to mention critics) of a certain age, the name Pauline Kael—who almost single-handedly raised film criticism to the level of art—is a hallowed one. On paper, her razor-sharp insights, endless wit and willingness to take on sacred filmmaking cows endeared her to millions of readers who read her weekly column (from 1967 to 1991) in the New Yorker and her many film collections. Kael reigned during a creative, halcyon period in American movies and a rave from her was strong enough to help kickstart the success of many a financially troubled production.
However, Kael's outspokenness and distrust of East Coast intellectualism, as well as her sometimes overzealous opinions of movies that were of a distinctly lesser quality, also made her a raft of enemies and sometimes mired her in literary controversies. Moreover, she was a woman of extreme contrasts. Although she was a fierce individual—a single, unmarried mother who had fathered a child with a gay man, poet James Broughton—Kael eschewed any attempts at linking her with feminism.
She presided over a group of budding film critics (many of them gay and dubbed "the Paulettes" by her enemies), urging them on in their own careers, yet kept her daughter Gina tied to her until her death. By the early '90s, when Kael retired due to ill health (she died in 2001), her influence had waned as movie audiences changed. The age of the blockbuster had arrived full force, along with a raft of technical advances in the culture which diminished the power of any single critical voice. However, Kael's life's work—her incredible passion for movies via her exquisite writing—remains as a tribute to her enormous talent.
Now, openly gay writer Brian Kellow—who has previously penned studies of the Bennett acting family and Ethel Merman—has written the first biography of this complicated woman. The book, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, has been a critical and commercial hit since its publication last fall.
Windy City Times: Like yourself, I grew up reading Pauline Kael as a lonely teen in Nebraska and was delighted to learn in the ensuing years that so many of my gay friends had done the same thing. Do you think part of her appeal to gay readers had to do with her pride in being "an outsider" which really comes through in your biography?
Brian Kellow: I suppose one of the things that gay men have always loved about her writing is the sharpness of it and the fact that she is willing to take no prisoners and she writes in a very outsized manner and style. I think that probably has something to do with it. I think, in some ways, she's like a character out of those fabulous old movies who just says whatever comes to mind with no thought to the consequences.
WCT: She was like the literary Thelma Ritter, no doubt.
Brian Kellow: Yes, exactly. And I think the presence of so much wit and humor in her writing was something that was bound to appeal to a lot of gay men. And the fact that she crossed authority; that she took on not only filmmakers but other critics and even producers who were very, very well established people. I think that might be some of the appeal, too. She certainly spoke to me from a very, very early age.
WCT: Her insight remains very strong and I still point to her review of Mommie Dearest and her championing of Faye Dunaway's balls-to-the-wall performance as Joan Crawford as proof of that. It seems clear that something in that film spoke to her on a personal level. I understand that you had an entire section about the film in the book that was cut.
Brian Kellow: I wish the Mommie Dearest section had stayed in the book because I think you're right—I think she hit on something that nobody else did in her review. All these other critics talked about what a ridiculous, over-the-top performance it is but Joan Crawford was ridiculous and over the top and I think Dunaway really hit that; I think she hit it brilliantly. The other thing that was interesting about that section is that the original script was written—I believe it was the original script—was by Bob Getchell, who had known Pauline very well.
WCT: So did she look at the original script?
Brian Kellow: I think she must have and as I noted in my cut section of the book, she makes reference to certain things that she could have only gotten from Bob and I interviewed Bob extensively and he talked about the things that had happened with that script. In that sense, I was sorry to lose that section.
WCT: She always had this thing about strong career women like herself and when she took up the cause of Streisand it was as if she were speaking for Our People. [Laughs]
Brian Kellow: Yeah, right! Exactly.
WCT: Kael, it seemed to me, picked up on the uniqueness and freshness of Streisand's arrival in movies; she looked like no one else and sounded like no one and was defiantly, what I call, the ultimate individual. How strong an identification could gay men and women have possibly had at the time? Kael intuitively picked up on that. So, it was interesting to see her later chastise Barbra in print when she made those not-very-good movies in the latter half of the '70s.
Brian Kellow: Oh I think Streisand had undying respect for her and the story that I was told, which I wasn't able to confirm, was that she really gave it to her over Prince of Tides. Streisand had arranged for Pauline to see the film and Pauline really leveled with her how disappointed she was in her. And I think Streisand would take it from her; I think she really had that much regard for her.
WCT: There are these intriguing conundrums in her life—this whole thing that she had these love affairs in her youth with gay men and then found herself at the center of controversy with the gay community over what was perceived as homophobic comments in some of her reviews. What I got from your book was that she felt so comfortable in her life with gay men saying stuff like, "Oh, you're a big fag, shut up" with humor, she didn't get that it wasn't okay to write like that in her reviews.
Brian Kellow: Yes, yes.
WCT: When you read some of her comments on Funny Lady, for example, they could be taken as homophobic. Obviously, as a queer film critic writing for a queer audience, I get this. I have had occasions when quotes from my reviews at Rotten Tomatoes have been taken out of context from people who don't know I'm a gay man and they are apoplectic—assuming that I'm a homophobe.
Brian Kellow: I don't think she was homophobic. I think that in her review of Funny Lady and the way she references Liza Minnelli at the end of it—and I think it's one of the funniest things she ever wrote in her life: "What are you going to do now, eat the audience?"—I think what she was really saying is that she was afraid that this very, very limited gay perspective on Streisand was going to become enough for Streisand. She thought there was so much more to her than being this sort of big, outsized, egomaniac, bitch diva—whatever that made her so entrancing to gay men on a certain level. I think she had it in her to be a great artist and she shouldn't settle for being the darling of the gay bars. I think that's what she meant.
WCT: Some of the reactions about the book and to some of her reviews when she was alive criticize her supposed obsession with her erotic response to a film; that she sexualized the movies. But at heart, isn't that the primal power of movies—they're about objectification? Certainly this is something that queer audiences have long been aware of.
Brian Kellow: Absolutely. My partner and I were watching an old Joan Bennett movie the other night—not a good one, Fritz Lang's last one—and I turned to my partner and said, "My God, can you believe how simply beautiful Joan Bennett was?" I gasped—she literally took my breath away at one point. And I do think that's how we're conditioned to react to film. Film brings out a kind of beauty in people—a kind of magic that I don't think any other art form does.
WCT: And that is, I believe, another secret to the enduring power of Pauline's writing. She articulated that and a lot of other things better than anyone.
Brian Kellow: That was just one of the many tangents I wanted to go out on in more depth. But that's what happens when you have a great subject like Pauline.
See www.briankellowwriter.com .
