The Who2 Blog

NY Times Culture Critic Kicks the Snacks Out of NY Times Movie Critic

There’s a whole lot to like in this video of NY Times movie critic A.O. Scott being harrassed by NY Times media and culture columnist David Carr.

Carr may be playing the devil’s advocate, but he does so with admirable gusto as he casually pulls apart an oatmeal-raisin cookie. (“You’re a critic for the New York Times. You’ve got a big box of lightning bolts on your desk.”) He’s hilarious and should have his own show.

And kudos to Scott for fighting back, mid-orange. Sample exchange:

Carr: “You make [criticism] sound so warm and cuddly, but in fact, you take that something people have sweated over for years on end, sunk their life into, and you’ll grab ahold of it, you’ll look at it and you’ll go — CHH! — snap it in right in half.”

Scott: “…This is not a progressive kindergarten. It’s not, you know, ‘you did a nice job and you tried really hard.’ What you’re pursuing is excellence, is truth, is beauty.”

Scott’s takedown of The Lorax (at the 6:20 mark) is a special pleasure:
“A hateful and despicable movie, a crime against childhood, an insult to the imagination of one of the great artists of the 20th century, Dr. Seuss.”
Truer words were never spoken.
 
Two men in casual clothes sit at a cafeteria table in a room with huge windows and great light
And what a great peek at the Times building and the journalists who inhabit it. Carr’s outfit is particularly groovy. 
 
Photo of David Carr in a black sport coat and a black t-shirt with a pink pig, dog and rooster on it
 
(That shirt: a nod to the Bremen town musicians?)
 
These days we take it as a matter of course that two critics are sitting in a glassy light-filled lunchroom, eating oranges and having a conversation for website video. Meanwhile, back at the Times newsroom in 1942…
 
Photo of newsmen in suspenders and ties, working at a series of wooden desks
Cousins, for sure, but distant cousins.
 
Bottom line: David Carr should do more videos. And he’s lucky he didn’t ask A.O. Scott about American Beauty.
 

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