EDITOR’S NOTE: When I wrote this piece, I misread Kenny’s piece and quoted him as saying things that were actually quotes from an email sent to him by a friend. Corrections have been made below to attribute those quotes to the anonymous party from whence they came, with sincerest apologies to Kenny for misrepresenting him.
There’s been a bit of an interesting kerfuffle over a piece Eric Kohn wrote about state of film criticism and Glenn Kenny’s acerbic response to Kohn’s thoughts on the matter. I read Kohn’s piece, and while I get how it stirred the ire of Kenny and his pals, I think their (or your) reaction to what he wrote is largely a matter of perspective. Change is never an easy thing to embrace, and while Kenny seems to have more or less made his peace with the reality that he will likely never again be paid a full-time salary and benefits to write film criticism, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy peace.
On the Hot Blog, David Poland weighed in as well, bemoaning the way SXSW is being “tweeted” to death rather than critiqued by a lot of folks there. And he’s right … it seems I’ve seen a lot more tweeting and a lot less critiquing from folks attending that fest, most of whom I like and respect as writers. This whole cutthroat, bloodletting orgy of “FIRSTS!” and 140-character commentaries about the fest, which seem to be more about waits in line and parties and the “feel” of the fest than about the films, I’ve just found irritating. I never was a personality well-suited to the constant need to feed the ever-hungry blog or Twitter feed.

I love SXSW and think it’s a fun fest, and that the people who run it try to do a solid job with their programming slate. But when fest coverage is so much about the parties and the lines and who ran into whom, it does all start to feel like an insider-baseball clusterfuck than what it’s supposed to be — a film festival. I don’t blame the folks at SXSW for this, and I expect a lot of the writers who are tweeting their hearts out are doing so at the behest of editors demanding that they constantly tweet “the scene.” There’s this sense of a need to give readers the whole “what it’s like to really like to be at the fest” sensation — give us constant updates, tell us what it’s like to be waiting in line, standing shoulder-to-shoulder at packed, over-loud parties, getting a seat at this or that popular film that other folks didn’t get into” BS. Coverage at fests like SXSW has largely evolved (or devolved, depending on your perspective) into this constant need to see and be seen, hear and be heard, tweet and be re-tweeted. I’ve felt this pressure myself, and hate it.
With all this pressure to be first and fastest, where is the room for thoughtful, measured criticism? It’s hard enough to bang out three or four reviews a day at a fest and have them be somewhat intelligent and coherent without also expending all this energy tweet-tweet-tweeting. And yet, as our field evolves, we must evolve with it, or become obsolete. Kenny quotes a letter from an anonymous friend bemoaning Kohn’s piece, which says in part, “He bemoans the firing of staff critics (including yourself), yet he can hardly contain his salivating at all these opportunities…”
It would appear Kenny agrees with his friend, but he admittedly knows Kohn barely at all; I have worked with Eric, I’ve read his coverage from the many fests he covers … Eric, like most freelance critics of my acquaintance, hustles his ass off securing enough freelance gigs to support himself, and he’s managed to do so while also writing intelligent, thoughtful reviews, even from the most high-pressure cooker fests like Cannes and Sundance.
The world of freelance film criticism, let’s face it, sucks. It’s a hard, hard game, not for the weak of heart, spirit or constitution. The people Kenny’s friend dismissively calls “networking [pejorative characterization redacted] such as” Kohn are surviving in a field that’s been shifting like quicksand for years because they understand how the game works now. It’s simply not just about how good you are anymore, sad though that may be. The people who get the freelance work are the ones who get out there and socialize and network a lot, because that is how you build the contacts that get you the next job, and the next one, and the next.
This world of film in which we work is a small and insular one, and like it or not, it is about who you know, and about your reputation not just as a writer but as a person. You might be a great writer, but if you are an asshole to people you will not (most of the time) be rewarded for your assholery by much work coming your way. Before I landed at MCN, I scored many of my freelance gigs off of the relationships I built networking at fests, and those gigs paid the bills and allowed me to continue to write, allowed me the privilege of being read by people who are interested in what I have to say. I may not have millions of people who read my blatherings, but I do have enough to feel it’s worthwhile to continue doing it at this point — and I would not be where I am without the networking that’s connected me to people who know other people who might know someone with a paying gig.
It’s not enough to write one solid piece for one publication anymore; while you’re writing that piece you have to also be thinking about lining up someone willing to pay you to write the next ten. If you’re a freelance stringer working the fest circuit, you have to plan and think ahead constantly to the fest opportunities out there and hope and pray you can get enough work to cover your costs, even if a fest is paying your way there and putting you up.
The full-time-with-benefits film critic gigs are few and far between now, and there’s more competition for freelance gigs than folks not working in this business can possibly imagine. It’s hard, stressful fucking work, and I admire trememdously writers like Eric Kohn, James Rocchi, Eric D. Snider, Scott Weinberg, Todd Gilchrist, Jen Yamato — all friends who I know bust their asses day after day to secure enough paid gigs to keep working in the field they love. I admire folks like Roger Ebert and Anne Thompson who have had to make the shift to this brave new world of film criticism in which we find ourselves, adjusting to the need to blog and Tweet and write faster than ever, while still trying to stay at they top of their game.
There’s been some critcism of indieWIRE for “selling out” and expanding their coverage beyond the world of indie film that was the mission they started with so many years ago. And maybe there’s some validity to that, but they are still alive in an increasingly challenging world, and they are still covering more fests (and the films at those fests) than just about any other site out there. Brian Brooks, Eugene Hernandez and Peter Knegt work their asses off at fests, both with the writing and the essential networking.
I am thankful every day to be employed now by this one outlet that both pays me and allows me the freedom and space to find my own voice and use it; I don’t miss the freelancing game, and if something happened to this job tomorrow, I’m not sure I’d go back to it. But if I wanted to, you can be damn sure it would be the relationships I’ve built off all that dreaded networking that would keep a roof over my kids’ heads. Networking is not a dirty word, neither is freelancing. No writers’ union is going ride in on a white horse and save all the formerly employed film critics. If we can’t embrace the changing face of our field, we damn sure have to accept it for what it is, and then decide if we are willing to also accept that this means honing our skills on the business side of film criticism. Which means, in part, networking and even the dreaded “fraternizing” Kenny bemoans in his piece.
Those good old days of gravy-train critic jobs are going, going, just about gone. It’s an ugly, Lord of the Flies world of blood and competition for freelance film criticim. The future is now, and Kohn summed up the state of things pretty accurately, I thought. I get where Kenny is coming with his concerns about ethics and fraternization between filmmakers and critics, but the reality is that our business requires relationships. It’s on the critics to police themselves and not cross those ethical lines in the sand; there are no longer any ivory towers in which critics can ensconce themselves.
We’re all swimming in the same polluted yet somehow still amazing and entrancing pool that is the world of film, and just as a smart indie filmmaker knows the work doesn’t end with the work of art that is The Film, so smart film writers know their work doesn’t end with The Review. It’s about so much more than that these days, and the old guard will either accept and adapt to it, or they will go out kicking and screaming and wishing it was like it was it used to be, back in the good old days. Wishing it away, or bitching about those who have found a way to keep their heads above water, isn’t going to change that. It is what it is.

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