Seattlest Interview: Andrew Wright

What does a film critic -- at least, you -- actually do all day? What's your typical week like?

Well, to the untrained eye, it probably seems like a whole lot of procrastination. The untrained eye would mostly be correct, in my case. A lot of my week is dictated by what I've been assigned by my editor. I've been covering a lot of video games recently in addition to my regular movie assignments, which usually means putting aside a few all-nighters in order to reach the last level before deadline.

I'm not sure how interesting my process actually is, but when it comes to watching movies, I just try to approach them as I would if I actually plunked down money for a ticket. Some critics I know go out of their way to avoid all trailers, early reviews, or any other info before seeing a movie, but I never really saw the logic in that. (I don't know if it's even possible in this, the era of the IMDB.) During, I generally don't find myself taking notes. (I did religiously when I first started, even to the point of buying one of those snazzy light-up pens, but I rarely ended up using them.) This is probably for the best, as my handwriting tends to look like ancient Sanskrit under the best on conditions, anyway. I'll still occasionally jot down a stand-out piece of dialogue or something, but normally if you see me writing during a flick it either means I'm a) really, really bored, or b) putting the finishing touches on the rad dinosaur I doodled before the lights went down. My movie-related memory is pretty sharp, I guess: I can't tell you what I had for breakfast the other day, but I can still recall in exact detail what I was wearing when I saw Alien in 1979. (What ever happened to Tuff Skins, anyway?)

What I do afterwards depends on my deadline. Generally I find I'm at my best if I have 2 or 3 days to subconsciously chew over something before writing about it, but it rarely works out that way. (For a recent issue, for example, I wrote about something from the previous night, something I had seen the week before, and one from way back in February.) When the deadline draws nigh, I generally give myself an hour and a half or so for a standard 300 worder, and 2 or 3 for a longer piece. I don't follow an outline or anything (I'm pretty much a one draft fella, albeit with constant line-by-line rewrites) but I've found that my stuff falls into a fairly consistent pattern: General broad thesis about the director or genre's history, followed by as brief of a plot description as I can get away with, and then spending the rest of the space trying to puzzle out and describe my specific reactions. This all sounds horrendously self-serving, but if I had to put a name to the type of tone I've tried to develop, it would be conversational, yet informed; like a shit-shooting session with a fairly unstuffy professor after a few drinks, say. (Writers that I respect have said that I write pretty much like I talk, which I choose to take as a compliment.) As a rule, bad movies are fairly easy to write up (but strangely unfulfilling, after your first few dozen slams), while good ones are a lot more difficult. As for free time, I tend to divide my time more or less equally between the book and video store. Beer is sometimes involved.

How does Seattle's movie scene differ from other places you've lived or worked? Or does it at all?

Not to get misty, but there's a sense of community here among the critics (and publicists, oddly enough), that I wasn't able to find in the other cities I've worked. Everyone here honestly seems to get along, for the most part, which makes the whole process a whole lot more enjoyable.

What are the best parts of Seattle's film scene?

I think that Seattle really has almost an embarrassment of riches when it comes to local film writers. I mean, just off the top of my head you've got Richard Jameson and Kathleen Murphy, who both headed up Film Comment magazine during my formative years, John Hartl, Robert Horton, Sean Axmaker, Jim Emerson, and lord, too many others to list. Combine with the film geek Vahalla of Scarecrow Video and the film festival, and this seems like a more or less ideal place to be an informed movie fan, let alone a critic.

Conversely, what's the scene missing?

I'm always at a loss to figure out why the revival house business isn't bigger around here. Knowing what I know about the folks at the Northwest Film Forum or Grand Illusion, I can say that this deficiency isn't due to any lack of enthusiasm or talent on the programmer's end, but it still never seems to catch on with audiences the way I wish it would. This isn't to discount the work of the places listed above (as well as the severely cool Central Cinema), but, still, I'll occasionally look at the theater listings in New York or LA and get bummed that we don't have that variety here. Is it too much to ask to have a chance to see Rio Bravo in a theater, for once? I mean, geez.

When you meet someone new and tell them you're a film critic, what do they ask you? And how do you answer them?

For every critic I know, the first question seems to be the deadliest one: Namely, "What have you seen that's good?" I'm not sure why that consistently vapor-locks me, but it always does. The last person to ask me it was my barber, actually. When I tentatively responded with The Descent, she said, "Oh, I hate horror movies." I spent the rest of the half-hour in fear of retaining my ears.

Who inspired you to become a film critic? And who are the contemporary film critics who influence you -- or at least, the ones you make a point to read regularly?

Even as a kid, I was a dedicated reader of reviews, as it seemed to me to be an easy deluxe combo pack of my two main interests: namely, reading and movies. To state one semi-embarrassing example, I can remember waiting on the front porch for the freaked-out paperboy at 4 am in order to read the first review of Return of the Jedi. When in college, I really got into Pauline Kael and especially David Thomson, whose Biographical Dictionary of Film remains my favorite film book, no matter how many times I disagree with his opinions. The single biggest lightning bolt as to making me a critic, though, was probably Michael Atkinson, who wrote a lengthy piece on The Planet of the Apes series in Film Comment that just blew my mind. I loved the conversationally slangy language of the article, but what struck me the most was the way that he seemed to take the movies seriously, without diminishing their flaws or essentially lowbrow genre nature. Speaking as someone who honestly respected Bergman and Godard, yet who would also readily blow off a frat party in order to watch something featuring a killer mutant alligator, that approach fired off Roman Candles in my brain.

What's the difference between a professional film critic and someone who sets up a web site to talk about movies? How do critics watch movies differently from regular people?

At the risk of being flip, I think the main difference is in seeing it as a profession, and to realize that you're ultimately writing for an audience. There are an awful lot of web-only critics that I enjoy reading, but I'm occasionally struck by the existence of overly personal passages, or the way that they often seem to go loco with the hyperbole. One of the biggest challenges in this job, honestly, is to find something substantive (and entertaining, hopefully) to say about all the mediocre films, the ones that don't cause you to feel especially strongly one way or the other. I guess the other big difference is in dealing with an editor, and being able to consistently and clearly express your opinion within the allotted space and guidelines. I chafe against my assigned word count on a fairly regular basis, but more often than not I find that the imposed limitations really help me focus and ultimately get my ideas across much clearer than if left wholly to my own devices. With all that said, I'll readily acknowledge that writing for The Stranger gives me more wriggle room than that of your average daily reviewer, sometimes to more of a degree than I'm willing to take advantage of. I may be one of the few critics around to have had an editor insert obscenities into a review, for example. Of course, that was one of the reviews that my parents actually read, but I digress.

How many movies do you see each week, and how many of those do you see like Joe Moviegoer, paying admission and buying popcorn?

It can really change on a dime, depending on the time of year or nature of my assignments. During the buildup to this year's film festival, for example, I was powering through 4 or 5 a day. Normally, I'm generally good for about 6-8 movies a week, with 3 or 4 in the theater and the rest on video. Joe Moviegoer interaction time generally falls during matinee hours, where I'll catch up with the stuff that I didn't have a chance to see before release. Recently, that last number has been growing, due to the increasing number of movies that the studios are refusing to screen for the press, resulting in much Friday morning deadline scrambling. I basically had to write last week's review of Pulse on post-it notes while driving back from the theater, for example. Apologies to anyone I may have tailgated.

Are there any genres you just don't like? Any that you automatically look forward to?

Comedies have always been the toughest for me to write about, just because the sense of humor varies so much between people. Even when I see something that I really respond to, like, say, The Squid and the Whale or Looking For Comedy in the Muslim World, I always send it out with a little trepidation, knowing that it just won't work for a number of readers. This can go the other way, too: It probably signifies something that the two main instances of hate mail in my career have come from my negative reviews of Wedding Crashers and Clerks 2. (Kevin Smith has some angry, passionate, angry fans out there.) As for favorites, I always perk up when there's a new horror film on the schedule, even though I know that 90% of the time I'll go away fairly disappointed. Still, there's always that chance that you'll see something that, if not out and out good, will contain enough flashes of inspiration to keep you going 'til the next one.

Are there any movies you've seen dozens of times, but still can't resist watching if you come across them while flipping channels?

I've somehow developed this strange parasitic relationship with AMC, where the more the quality of their programming diminishes, the more I become devoted to them. A few months ago, for example, I found myself staying up until 4 am to watch Halloween 5, Predator 2, The Howling, and The Howling 4, even though I already owned 2 of the 4 on DVD. It's a sickness.

If you could, in one year, either program and run SIFF or choose the Oscar winners, which would you choose? And how would you use your powers?

I'd probably go for SIFF, mainly because it would offer me an opportunity to program, and subsequently see, Jerry Lewis' immortal The Day the Clown Cried. On the other hand, hiring Debbie Allen to choreograph musical numbers honoring best picture nominees Slither, Brick, and Bubble would be pretty cool, too. I remain conflicted.