Pauline Kael
High Priestess of Movie Love
I admit it’s a bit of a stretch to
include Kael here among the carriers of the plasmate, since her interest in
matters occult was all of zero, and her influence can hardly be said to extend
beyond the parameters of her two fields, movies and literature (or rather,
criticism that attained the literary grade). No, there are only two reasons for
granting Pauline Kael posthumous entry into the shadowy echelons of Divine
Virus: one, that I literally devoured and adored her writings; and two, that I
was fortune enough to make contact with her in the final year of her life.
On the first point, it would be no
exaggeration to say that Kael single-handedly inspired me to write about
movies, at least to the degree—with the intensity and devotion—that I wound up
doing. True, I first started writing film critiques—thumbnail ones inspired by
Leslie Halliwell’s Film Guide—before I
had even heard of Kael. But I had given up this practice for many years when I
finally returned to it for The Blood
Poets, and the reason was Kael. I was reading her books in Pamplona, Spain,
for the umpteenth time, when I sat back with my usual mix of awe, admiration,
and envy, and said to myself, Why the hell can’t I do this? The answer was, How do you know you can’t? So I set
about to try and match Kael at her own game. To date, I have yet to succeed;
but I am still younger than Kael was when she first started film reviewing, so
the game is still on.
I remember the first time I laid eyes on
a Kael volume. I was perhaps 14 or 15, still in the early flush of movie
infatuation, slowly expanding my interests from Eastwood and Spielberg to Peckinpah,
Scorsese and De Palma,
and gradually embarking upon a more “serious” investigation into “the art
form.” I came across When the Lights Go
Down in Hull
library. It was a big maroon volume, and I opened it up and looked down the
contents page, saw that it covered movies like Carrie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, and Taxi Driver—movies I knew and loved—and
decided to take the book. I wasn’t a member of the library, and in those days I
was even more of a collector than I am now; I didn’t want to borrow books, I
wanted to own them. So that was how I
acquired my very first Kael. I quickly devoured it, and returned to the library
soon after and acquired, by the same method, Deeper into Movies and Reeling.
Those were the first three Kael works I read. I still have those stolen copies
somewhere.
In my opinion, Kael’s writing peaked in
the period (covered by these three books) roughly between 1969 and 1979. Her
first book, I Lost it at the Movies,
in many ways her best, doesn’t evoke quite the same degree of nostalgia for me
as do these works, perhaps because I discovered it later, but also because the
movies it covers aren’t nearly so special to me. In Kael’s last volumes, the
writing grew progressively less intense, profound or virtuosic, until by the
time of Movie Love, many of the
pieces weren’t all that different from regular movie reviews (though still of
the very highest standard). Kael may have burnt out somewhat in her later
years, but if so I think the fall-off of her writing was due mostly to the
quality of the movies she was writing about. By the time she finally retired,
in 1991, Kael was thoroughly disillusioned with “the state of the art,” and
felt she had little left to say about it. She had finally lost it at the
movies.
I sent a copy to Kael, c/o the New Yorker, of the first volume of The Blood Poets when it came out in
2000. I was (as now) living in Guatemala
at the time, running a little second-hand bookshop in Panajachel, on the lake Atitlan
.
A month or two after sending the book, I received a letter of thanks from Kael.
It was a short handwritten note, inside a large brown envelope that also
contained some clippings of recent pieces and interviews Kael had done (one of
which was her memories of Sam Peckinpah). In the note, Kael said that my book
read “like one long letter” to her, which in a way it was (the book was dedicated “to P.K, for taking me deeper into movies, and making me reel,” a playful reference to two of her book titles). She asked if there was really another
volume, adding simply: “I want it.” Needless to say, I sent a copy off at
once, this time to her home address.
I continued to write to Kael regularly
over the next months, even though I didn’t receive or expect any replies. I
knew Kael suffered from Parkinson’s disease and had a difficult time writing
(another primary reason for her retirement). She kept in touch indirectly,
however, via some of her other film critic followers and friends, such as Ray
Sawhill, Charles Taylor (who reviewed Blood
Poets at Salon), and Allen Barra. I
think it was Taylor’s
advice (or maybe Sawhill’s) that I ask Kael, through them, to write a blurb for
my book. She did, and came back with those few lines of praise that I now bandy
about at every opportunity and which remain among my most treasured
accomplishments as a writer. On my mother’s suggestion, by way of thanks, I had
a family friend in New York
send Kael some red roses. I heard through one of her team that she was greatly
touched, and I will always be grateful to my mother for making this poetic
suggestion (one it takes a mother to think of!).
I only spoke to Kael one time, on the
telephone (though I had her number for a while, I never thought of using it). I
called on a whim, the last time (to date) I was in Hollywood. I was there expressly to try and
get my Peckinpah script and copies of Blood
Poets to some people (such as Johnny Depp), and after a few days of mostly
frustrated attempts, I decided to call Kael to see if she could hook me up with
anyone. She quickly set me straight as to her connections in Hollywood
(zero), but we wound up chatting
for perhaps 20 minutes. It was an opportunity I will always be thankful for,
though in retrospect, I can hardly believe I didn’t jump on a greyhound bus and
trek all the way East, just to spend some time with the High Priestess of movie
love. Had I known it would be my last chance, I might well have done so.
Kael died in Sept 2001, a couple of days
before the twin towers came tumbling down. (I often wonder how she would have
responded to that. Personally, I was more affected by Kael’s demise than I was
by 9/11.) Of all the writers who have influenced me (those who were my
contemporaries), it was Kael for whom I felt the most affection and affinity,
the one I would have most liked to hang out with and shoot the breeze about
movies. We shared a common passion. We were both carried away by movie love,
and we both knew what it was to get our hearts broken by an art form. When she
died, I felt that I lost not only a mentor (it was too soon to call her a
friend), but an accomplice, a fellow soldier, a sister-in-arms. I still feel
that way. Which is the real reason I wanted to make her—at least in ghostly
form—an honorary member of divine virus. I don’t think she would have any
objections.
Jake Horsley Sep 2006
Pauline Kael’s Cri du Coeur: A Tribute to Kael from
Dogville Vs. Hollywood
Some Essential Kael articles and interviews
can be found at http://www.rockcritics.com/archives/kael.html
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