Your speaker at the Autumn General Meeting next Monday, December 9th from 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm at New St. Mary's Cathedral, 1111 Gough Street, San Francisco
Mick LaSalle is the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. He is the author of two books on pre-censorship Hollywood, "Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood" and "Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man." Both were books of the month on Turner Classic Movies and "Complicated Women" formed the basis of a TCM documentary in 2003, narrated by Jane Fonda. He has written introductions for a number of books, including Peter Cowie's "Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star" (2009). He was a panelist at the Berlin Film Festival and has served as a panelist for eight of the last ten years at the Venice Film Festival.
Mick has also authored two more books about film, including Dream State: California in the Movies, 2021 and teaches at Stanford University.
Mick LaSalle December 2, 2024 Updated: December 2, 2024, 6:24 pm - San Francisco Chronicle
Hi Mick: In your opinion, what are the best movies about campaigns? I’m going to kick-start the conversation with Alexander Payne’s 1999 classic “Election.”
Chris Gruwell, San Francisco
Hi Chris: My favorite fictional one is the film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s play, “The Best Man” (1964), about the machinations surrounding the nomination of a candidate at the Democratic convention. This is from back in the days when conventions, not primaries, picked the candidates. It starred Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson as the warring candidates and Lee Tracy as the Harry Truman-like former president.
My favorite nonfiction one is “Game Change” (2012), about the nomination of Sarah Palin, starring Julianne Moore with Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, the campaign manager for John McCain. Ahh, the good old days.
Dear Mick LaSalle: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write an article about how to become a good film critic.
Bill Campbell, Campbell
Dear Bill Campbell: Being a film critic is not a going-to-the-movies job. It’s a writing job. So, it’s really all about writing. The task is to communicate so that others want to keep reading. And people want to keep reading if they feel that they’re getting something real from you.
How do you accomplish that? By being honest — not just factually honest, which is easy, but emotionally and stylistically honest. You can’t just say what you think. You have to say what you think in exactly the way that you think it.
If you do just that, your writing will end up surprising people, because readers don’t expect pure, honest communication. They expect to be lied to in some way. They expect smooth nothingness, so if you give them clumsy authenticity, they wake up. They’re grateful. It’s like, “Oh good, somebody’s actually talking to me.”
Now, as I like to tell journalism students, the good news for aspiring writers is that everything you need is already within yourself. Don’t try to develop a style, you’ll just sound phony. Just be yourself — no, strive to be yourself. Write something, and ask yourself, “Would I really say it in that way?” If the answer is no, rewrite it. Eventually, sounding like you will become second nature, and then that will result in a style. It’ll just be you, organically.
The thing is, anybody can sound like themselves in an email. The apprenticeship of a writer consists of practicing and practicing to the point of getting proficient in forms more technically demanding. An article is more demanding than an email, because you’re writing to strangers, and you’re communicating facts and a point of view. A nonfiction book is exponentially more demanding than an article, and a fiction book is the ultimate, and that one has eluded me (and not for lack of trying).
I’m not saying it’s easy — when I was in my 20s, it would take me five hours to write a letter — but I am saying it’s simple. It comes down to the same thing, whether you’re writing “Ulysses” or panning “Black Adam”: Get advanced enough in your craft that there’s no blockage between who you are and what appears on the page.
Dear Mick LaSalle: I just watched “Charley Varrick.” Do you think that hairy-eared Matthau would be the same leading man he was in the ’60s and ’70s in 2024?
Oscar Labovich, San Rafael
Dear Oscar Labovich: He wouldn’t be the same leading man. (He’d probably wax his ears, for one thing.) Every big career is a miracle, so you never know how the breaks might have played out in a different era. But all things being equal, a 2024 version of Walter Matthau would have appealed to people. He was a pretty likable guy.
The Art of Critique: Mick LaSalle on authentic film criticism
Greg