Gleiberman - Movie freak : my life watching movies

So how do you get to be a film critic?

In my life, thats the question Ive been asked more than any other. I get asked it at parties, on playgrounds, in apartment hallways, in offices, on airplanes, on movie lines. There are a handful of other questions that run a close second. Questions like: How many movies do you see a week? Do you take notes? Do film studios ever try to influence your opinion? Have you ever had your words twisted in a movie ad? Whats your all-time favorite movie? (The answers are: about five or six; yes, I always take notes; the studios wouldnt dare; once in a blue moon; and Nashville.) The questions generally get asked with a knowing smile, a slight winking tone of come-on-let-me-in-on-it

In the popular imagination, the job of professional film critic is, more or less, the greatest job in the world. Its one that everybody thinks they would want to do; its one that everybody thinks, deep down, they could do. You watch movieslots of them, all day long! You write down your opinions of them! You get to see your words quoted in ads, your name up in lights! You become sort of famous! Whats not to like?

Theres an avid curiosity, and always has been, about what critics do. Just beneath that, though, the real curiosity is about who we are. When people pepper me with all those questions, what theyre really saying is: What gives you the right to be a critic? What makes you so special that youas opposed to, say, theyget to spend your entire life watching movies, deciding which of them is good or bad, and why?

Its actually a great question. And it deserves a great answer.

Lets get one thing out of the way fast. If you have any notion that this profession is, on some essential level, ridiculous, that its simply fun beyond all shame, and that those of us who do it are basically slackers dignified by their salaries well, to quote Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, you are absolutely goddamn right. The role of professional movie critic is, more or less, the cushiest job that Western Civilization ever coughed up. Maybe thats one reason why criticism is now dwindling; as Western Civilization declines, so go the people who were fortunate enough to make a living not creating art or entertainment, but evaluating it.

I admit it: Ive been one lucky sucker.

That said, theres a dimension to being a critic that tends to get left out of peoples I wish I had a job as lazy as yours formulations. And that dimension, in a word, is obsession. Its the thing that Ive tried to capture in this book. I wanted to write about what you might call the secret history of being a movie fanatic, and what that really involves. For the truth about movie buffs, and film critics especially, is that theres a kind of religious mania that drives us, and you either have it or you dont. Before anything else, the primal act in our lives is going to the movies by ourselves, sitting there alone, with a nearly monastic sense of mission, connecting with images of life and reality on the big screeneven as, in doing so, we may be copping out on the very reality those images represent. Ive been fortunate, all right, but not just because I stumbled into a preposterously enjoyable job. The real stroke of luck is that I was able to elevate the nerd madness of my solitary movie passion into an identity, an existence, a personality-defining role.

The world, of course, now overflows with mad-geek obsessives of every stripe (comic-book fans, sportsaholics, Sudoku addicts). But whats unique about movies as an art form is how totally and vividly and spectacularly they create a you-are-there facsimile of life as it really looks, a fully realized alternate earth that the critic inhabits and lives inside. In writing this book, my intent was to channel the deep eccentricity of that pursuit, to get in touch with the elemental weirdness of rabid film fanaticism. In my case, the weirdness isnt exactly compartmentalized; Im kind of an obsessive guy in all ways. But then, thats part of what drew me to movies, which feed off obsession as though it were high-octane gasoline.

We now live in an age of pop-culture fixation, in which our country has evolved into the United States of Entertainment, with a great many other places right behind it. For all the (justified) chatter about the renaissance era of television, movies, in their power and grandeur and reach, their mythological scope, their ability to cast a larger-than-life spell in the dark, remain our stubbornly thriving and preeminent popular art form. The critic, in a sense, is the ultimate fan, but hes also the bridge between movies and the people who voraciously devour them. Ive tried to set down an honest account of my experience, but Im the first to admit that it may all seem a bit insular. The true confessions of a film critic? Of a person who watches movies too much? That sounds like a book that should be entitled White People Problems 3.0. Yet take a look around: Weve become a veritable society of watchers. I hope that my story will speak to the movie freak who lives inside so many of us.