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o o o o o Notes
from SAJA Critics Panel
NEW YORK CITY, NOV. 14, 2001 -- The
role of the television film critic is to make sure that the audience
does not switch to another channel and to finish on time, according
to Joel Siegel, the entertainment editor at ABC News.
"In between it is pure serendipity," said Siegel, adding that he strives to generate film appreciation in his segments. "I let the audience know what they should look for in the movie and also to try and improve their movie viewing habit." Siegel was one of the six participants on a panel discussion which included some of New York City's top arts critics. The discussion, "So You Want to be a Critic," held tonight at the Indo Center of Art & Culture, was jointly sponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the New York Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Siegel started his career as a freelance writer in Los Angeles. He had written for everything - from newspapers to the back of a Brillo box and descriptions of Baskin Robbins flavors - before he was asked to audition for the expanded version of CBS News. "Television news was expanding to an hour and producers did not know how to fill the space and time," Siegel said. "As it turned out, I liked television and television liked me." Nina Mehta, freelance book critic and the only woman on the panel (the moderator was a woman - People magazine reporter Sona Charaipotra) started her career writing press releases for new books. Then one day she discovered that a publication had reproduced her press release under a reporter's byline. At that moment Mehta knew that she could publish her own book reviews. Other members of the panel also became critics quite by chance. Richard Bernstein, book critic of The New York Times started his journalism career as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post covering stories from Taiwan. He later did a three-year stint for Time magazine in Hong Kong "doing China watching." "Eventually I had had enough of being a foreign correspondent," Bernstein said. "But I never thought I would one day make a living reading books from home." "Mostly I report on the books, as I would report on an event in China," he said, adding that he does not have a background in reviewing books, and discussing issues such as where a book fits in a writer's career. "Instead I give the reader a sense of what it is like to feel while reading the book, and whether the writer succeeded in giving me an experience as a reader." And for Jonathan Foreman, movie criticism for The New York Post was the end result of a journey on a long and twisted road - from a stringer for The International Herald Tribune, to law school, and writing editorials for the Post. His advice to aspiring critics: "Don't expect to get started in the area of your passion and don't turn down a journalism job because you only want to review movies." Some panelists said that dealing with publicists is one of the drawbacks of being a critic. Christopher John Farley, the music critic for Time, spoke about his failed attempts to do a feature story on actor Denzel Washington. He said he was given the run around by Washington's publicist, but eventually the interview never materialized. He then realized that in the field of "criticism, there are gatekeepers who do not work in the interest of the stars but of themselves." Ken Tucker, television critic of Entertainment Weekly also avoids publicists. His other goal is not to interview people. He does not have to pan the works of people he likes, he said. "I watch TV with my family to get their reactions, and to experience it the way the readers do. It comes across in your writing." Most of the panelist said that they did not read other reviews, as that could influence their writings. But Farley and Tucker said that they constantly read feature stories on artists. So what does it take to be a critic? "You need to have opinions - strong heart felt opinions and to explain to those who haven't read the book or listened to the CD, how you came to your opinion," Foreman said. "Most critics read all sorts of stuff. You need to have the depth and the breadth of knowledge so you are able to move from music to films to literature." -30- |
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