Part Two of an Interview with Sara Voorhees, Film Critic and Novelist - Page 4

A few years ago, Martin Scorsese had it restored and released it in the theaters — apparently it was an important movie for him, too — and it was just as powerful as it was the first time around. 

Scott: What is your favorite non-fiction book about film?  

Sara: Besides How to Watch a Movie, which is out of print, and I have no idea who wrote it, but it'd filled with information about the tools of movie making and written in a way that your average moviegoer can undestand.  

I also love autobiographies. Charles Grodin's It would Be So Nice if You Weren't Here is a very funny book about being a second-level star in movies.  I just finished Gene Wilder's autobiography Kiss Me Like A Stranger, which had the most astounding honesty I've read in any autobiography since Julia Phillip's scathing Hollywood memoir You'll Never Each Lunch In This Town Again.  I love autobiographies, because when people sit down to write about their own lives, it all becomes a story: the horrible, tragic events and the wonderful triumphant moments - they all form the substance of what a life is.  It's good for us to step out of the immediate scene we're living and see our own lives that way.   

Scott: Who, besides yourself, is your favorite movie critic? Who is your least favorite? 

Sara: I would never put myself in the category of my favorite critics.  But again, how can you choose a favorite from the broad range of critics writing about film today? There are print critics I admire - like Roger Ebert and Terry Lawson, who writes for the Detroit Free Press, and Jay Carr, who was the critic for the Boston Globe for many years. Those men are marvelous writers, and their insights about film give us all perspective on our culture and our personal lives.  I wish there were more women writing about film - Sheila Benson left The Los Angeles Times just when she was beginning to demonstrate how a woman's perspective can be essential.  

I'm on the board of the Broadcast Film Critics' Association, and we have 210 TV, radio, and internet critics in our membership who are all so interesting and varied, you could never choose.  There are critics in this country who are as entertaining as the movies they review... some are esoteric in their views of film... some have both feet firmly in the popular culture... some are writing for other critics and not for audiences.  Some critics are writing from a specific perspective - religious, satirical, maternal, technical.  Every one of them is valid. Every one of them has something to say to someone in the audience. Variety! There's a reason that is the most-read magazine in the movie industry.  

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education.

He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.

Visit Scott Butki's author page — Scott Butki's Blog