One difference I noticed is that Kael is interested in what she thinks and Woody is interested in the audience reaction as well, which is a big part of making movies. Since he makes movies and she did not, I think he has a tendency to be less judgmental about whether he likes a movie and is more interested in why others may or may not like a movie.
Two greats speaking about movies in a year that saw the release of arguably the greatest film of the seventies, CHINATOWN. What a decade for the movies!
@@karter25 I said arguably, but would be curious to hear what your favorite films of the seventies are, unless of course, your choices are STAR WARS or ROCKY, which leaves us nothing to discuss.
@@jackrimbaud3826 Yes, I saw that BBC documentary. I graduated high school in 1972, so was an active ticket buyer during those exciting times at the movies.
Glad to hear both Kael and Allen saw the indelible greatness of young Marty Scorsese so early in his career. I first watched Mean Streets at age 15 and, from the very first frame of celluloid, was immediately drawn to its vivid colors, frenetic energy, exciting performances, and urban soundtrack. Here was a budding director with a bold vision of the way American cinema should be, and the chops to see through his ambition. It's a pity the film is still relatively underrated by the public, as it remains one of Marty's best!
I’ve been reading Kael for years, but I’ve never heard her speak. She has such a crisp, thoroughly assured, and very American tone. Oddly, it’s how I imagined she’d speak.
Fantastic! Really captures the excitement of that moment: Mean Streets as a movie that makes other movies look "creaky," and the cultural phenomenon (for better or worse) that was The Exorcist. Fun, intelligent conversation between two people who knew movies very well.
This is fantastic! Pauline Kael had a show? Fifty years ago they both saw and recognized the emerging genius of both De Niro and Scorsese. Woody had not yet made "Annie Hall".
This is wonderful! You can hear the excitement in Woody's tone over Scorsese. In a lot of ways he and Scorsese were the same, exploring a more naturalistic style to film that you found in the French New Wave.
Mean Streets is very close to my favorite movie, seen it over 50 times memorized most the lines, me and my pal used to do scenes from the movie on the spot all the time. Best dialog ever. I discovered the movie in late 89', and thought the idea of making the dialog interesting and real more important than driving the plot was genius. The way it used and rock n roll as a soundtrack to capture the feal of the scene was the best Id seen to that point. And, then Quentin Tarantino released Reservoir Dogs and I was like, "thats what I'm talking about!" Someone else was feeling that movie like I was.
I love how Kael calls out the corporate sub-mentals at Warner Bros and their failure to market Mean Streets because they were incapable of understanding it. Some things never change in Hollywood.
Fascinating. The notion of Woody Allen watching The Exorcist is like worlds colliding. Kael absolutely hated it and I think she had good reason to, though in the end, the fact remains:The Exorcist is an extraordinary film. It just didn't play to Kael's instincts.
@@kramalerav Really? I don't recall Kael's review of the sequel - I'm surprised she even bothered to look at it. God knows it got trashed everywhere as a cash-in sequel. (Which it was.) Still, Boorman is no one to sneeze at - he is a great director, though he was definitely on a roller coaster at that point in his career. He had just gotten done doing Zardoz, which bombed with both critics and audiences and likely put his career in a ditch, so likely signing on to the Exorcist sequel was a last ditch effort. He, of course went on to make a number of great films after that. (Incidentally, I thought Zardoz was a wonderfully interesting film - definitely one of the great curiosities of the 70s and now a cult film that's being rediscovered by audiences.)
@@orpheus9037 Zardoz was interesting, but as I watched it, I kept wondering when Kirk, Spock and McCoy were going to beam down and set those folks straight.
@@kramalerav The Star Trek crew is a rather G-Rated club; I think they'd be in for a shock. Recall, the futuristic commune hippies enjoyed sexually experimenting with their specimens.
Woody appears to have liked it more than Kael, but seems sheepish about saying so, and deflecting by referring to the audience's positive reactions. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he disliked it as much as Kael did. But as a fan of both The Exorcist and Allen, I like to think he appreciated it. That said, it's a very Catholic movie, but one that was directed by a Jewish filmmaker, so I don't think it would necessarily have been alienating to Kael and Allen, and one might also argue that Mean Streets is a fairly Catholic movie, or at least one that particularly resonates with Italian-American audiences.
Pauline and Woody, two geniuses of film in criticism of and direction. Thank you (She has a much more refined voice than I expected. Woody: "De Niro I thought was just fabulous, dynamic, like an amazing meatball sub bought on Carmine st. in the middle of the night").
They sound like my Upper Class friends here in Ithaca. The Upper Class social stratum has such a stoic approach to cinema and to Everything; they say nothing about Father Karras' and Regan's struggles with guilt or even the conflicts of redemption within Charlie Kappa; Kael does explore themes in her review essays; The Upper Stratum doesn't seem immersed in what's actually happening in the films. The Exorcist to Kael back than would probably be like Avatar today; the fanfare and mania are turn-offs to her.
Actually tbh it’s more like the obvious reverence to the Catholic Church and how much of a puff piece it is. Even to me it feels old fashioned in its values.
@peteradaniel just the theme of Father Karras making the ultimate sacrifice to save Regan's life; transcends the overarching Catholic precepts; Blatty named Regan after the King's middle daughter in King Lear, you can even draw literary parallels that thematically reflect and eschew tenants of the Catholic faith. interesting Peter is a New Testament name, and Daniel is an Old Testament name (Peter, the apostle and Daniel, the prophet); someone, somewhere in your family line dug The Holy Bible for you to have those names. how did your parents and grandparents react to The Exorcist? There seems to be a huge generational gap in The Exorcist's appraisal.
I'm a big fan of Kael's writing. She's so eloquent, but I often disagreed with her. She hates a lot of my all-time favourite films, including The Exorcist, and I suspect that its hype was one of the reasons. She probably felt that us audience members were being too easily manipulated, but I agree with you that the film's poignant power comes from the risks the two priests are willing to make to save this child's soul. Even as an atheist, albeit one who was raised within the Catholic Church, the film affects me at a very emotional level.
Pauline Kael had a leftist progressive bias. She thought Dirty Harry was fascist, which shows she, like leftists of today, didn't know what the term means. She probably looked at the movie as conservative, which it was. Is it really 'old fashioned' on its values? I guess if you think belief in God and the devil is 'old fashioned.' IN a way the movie is saying it's now because the movie itself wasn't filmed in an old fashioned way at all.
Yet I would argue Mean Streets is a raw and visceral film where Exorcist looks slick and expensive. Mean Streets is steeped in catholicism. It is about religious guilt, responsibility and redemption (or the lack thereof). "You don't pay for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets. Everything else is bullshit and you know it."
It's easy to see why Pauline Kael had so many admirers (The Paulettes). Regardless if you agree or disagree with her, she's absolutely fascinating to listen to and she speaks her mind, regardless of how beloved a movie is. She called "The Sound of Music" the "Sound of Mucus" and "Love Story" "Camille with Bullshit". How can you not love her? And that voice is like velvet.
See, this is why I am a Paulette. I don't really care if she agrees with my taste; it's her bull-in-a-china-cabinet writing that is hilarious, clever, and insightful. Sometimes it's fun to discover she hated or loved a certain movie.
Really appreciated hearing this interview. Nice to see that Woody actually saw both Mean Streets and The Exorcist. As a filmmaker, he saw two of the best films of the 70's by two other genius filmmakers. Sorry to know that false accusations that haven't been proven, destroyed the career of such a talented man, one of the smartest writer,directors ever involved in the creation of movie making.
Here you have the strength and weakness of Kael's criticism. When she loves a good film, such as `Mean Streets', Kael is incredibly perceptive about its qualities. But when a film doesn't speak to her, such as `The Exorcist,' she becomes almost entirely dismissive of it, even its undeniable positive features. Another problem is her assumption that mass audiences share her taste; Woody is correctly skeptical that the downbeat `Mean Streets' would have been the hit that Kael believes it could have been had the studio marketed it better.
@@xpindy 100%. Even when I disagreed with Kael's overall opinion, I always found her writing to be witty, eloquent and highly evocative. Every time I read one of her reviews, I feel immersed back into the film being written about.
The irony in Kael's take is that the genius of Mean Streets for it's modernity - for which she is spot on - being overlooked by the studios and particularly Warner's, she herself was guilty of regarding The Exorcist. For not realizing and quite frankly overlooking the exponential potential off the film's novelty or even newness, as well as the groundbreaking effects, Kael corners herself, trapped in the vagueness of its lengthy development, characterizing the expressed emotion of the film as derivative shock value. Like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist spawned the modern generation of horror, freeing it's genre from the antiquated tropes of the 1930s monster movies as well as the later 1950s stale and cheaply made sci-fi doctrine. The emergence of horror - one of the most popular genres to this day, owes it's roots and foundations to these groundbreaking films - something apparently oblivious to Kael.
@@brentsobie3977 She wasn't oblivious to the emergence of modern horror movies; she just didn't like them. She did make a few positive comments about "Night of the Living Dead", the first zombie apocalypse movie -- even though she didn't particularly enjoy that either.
This is an amazing post, thank you. After reading and loving Pauline Kael's work for many years I'm not at all surprised to hear the conviction and authority in her opinions. It's a bit of a shame that she interrupts and talks over Woody so much - Small Woman Syndrome, perhaps?
Fascinating to hear them discuss Mean Streets like this. Allen's comment that its modernity made even impressive recent films look 'creaky'. Makes you realise just how new this style was, though I note that a few similarly uncreaky movies predated it: Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Detail ('73) and The Long Goodbye ('73), spring to mind. And Cassavetes. Scorsese had worked with Cassavetes, a pioneer of the free-flowing, near documentary style of Mean Streets, and gave Scorsese the needed push to make this movie. Scorsese had just previously made Boxcar Bertha for a Hollywood studio. Cassavetes watched Boxcar Berth and said, Marty: you've just spent a year of your life making a perfectly acceptable commercial piece of shit, and you can have a fine career doing just that. Or you can go it alone and try to do something that matters to you. And Scorsese said, 'I've been thinking a lot about these guys I grew up with...'
I love Mr. Scorsese mostly for his prodigious love of and restoration of film history, but Hal Ashby and Cassavetes will always be more interesting filmmakers to me. Regardless, all three were onto something.
Woody is nothing like his on-screen persona. He is highly intelligent and creative and one of the best film makers of his generation. He made over 60 movies in his career, all from his own screenplays! Too bad he screwed up (figuratively and literally) his legacy.
@@lysanderofsparta3708 He lives a very quiet personal life with his wife. Can’t see what the problem with that is or whose business that is, other than his and his wife’s.
I saw it last Halloween. It was so slow! There is a ton of material involving the priest and his mom and visits to the nuthouse before you get to the possession scenes (what the audience is actually there for!)
@@agathaellajadwiszczok9840 The adults came to see an excellent story, which had been a long an detailed hit novel. The demon used his guilt over his Mom during the exorcism, in case you missed it lol
This is great to listen to…back before art was completely taken over by corporate consolidation, and before tastes were systematically lowered to pathetic levels.
Considering how much Allen admired De Niro's performance here, I'm surprised he never worked with him. I wonder if he ever reached out/tried to cast him in anything.
@@johnayres1819 That would have been fantastic. I can see De Niro playing the Chazz Palminteri character from Bullets Over Broadway if say that film had been made a decade or so earlier.
I realize that Kael would be agast, but while I recognize the historical importance of Godard's "Breathless", I didn't connect with it, mostly because the lead character was too unlikable for me to connect with it. I connected more with Jean Cocteau dilms or Bergman films. Yes, I know scandalous.
"While I recognize the historical importance of Godard's "Breathless", I didn't connect with it," Me Neither. For me in terms of Quality. It's mean Streets, Then The Exorcist, them Breathless.
I suspect the Exorcist was seen as schlocky by a certain class of film reviewer. Now of course we know it’s a stone cold classic. All these years and I still haven’t watched Mean Streets. Woody said it was modern but for my generation it had virtually no relevance right up until Goodfellas came out - when it was mentioned a lot. I will watch it this week.
Mean Streets is still my favorite Scorsese. So this conversation is important. It had everything, from gangsters and violence and music to William Blake. Never seen another film quite so thrilling and fulfilling. The Exorcist isn’t a bad film either.
Oddly, Kael's voice is very similar to Ellen Burstyn's. If I didn't know it was Pauline Kael I was hearing discuss The Exorcist, I'd just assume it was Burstyn. As for Woody's assessment of The Exorcist, I don't see how both his audiences could be let down by the first hour. Never in the film's 51-year history (not counting millennials or Gen Z'ers) have I heard, seen, or read one complaint of the film's pace. Sure, I've heard some say it isn't scary (as Woody did) but never that it's slow.
No, I personally buy that argument. I'm not saying I necessarily agree, but any audience member looking to be 'horrified' is going to have to wait for over an hour to feel sated. It's a great film but a bit of a slowburner from a genre POV. That's arguably what makes it so great. Despite Kael's dismissal of it, it's not mindless generic pap. It's a fairly thoughtful movie.
Depends ... I personally think that, had William Peter Blatty and Friedkin not been such good friends (as is revealed in Friedkin's wonderful biography THE FRIEDKIN CONNECTION), Friedkin would have probably insisted on writing the useless LJ Cobb cop character out of the script, be it only for pacing reasons. I mean, really, EVERY scenes with him are pointless, slow and bring the story to a screeching halt. Worst thing is : even his badly timed arrival at the end of the film is totally unnecessary and he's just left standing in Regan's room, wondering what the hell just happened (while the viewer wonders what the hell is HE doing there !) Someone should eventually make a homemade edit of the film WITHOUT the LJ Cobb's scenes. I'm sure nobody would notice his disappearance ;)
@TRINZINI I disagree about the Kinderman character (his interrogation scene with Bustyn is a master class in tension). I am with you, however, when it comes to him and the film's climax. Is his untimely arrival (especially that late at night) because he now suspects Regan to be Burke's murderer? Or was he just curious because he once again was staked out across the street and couldn't help noticing the Pink Floyd light show emanating from Regan's bedroom? And what was his follow-up to the fact that two priests are now dead (one having perished in the same manner as Burke)? I can't remember if these conclusions were addressed in the novel because I read it way back in 1981.
@@GregOrCreg The thing is, without the 'slow' and careful set up - the time taken to build the characters, you don't become invested in the story. It is precisely because we know and care about these people that the 'horror' that unfolds later has as much impact as it does. These aren't throw away characters that scary things happen to, they are real and have substance - the trauma is experienced by us as much as it is by them. And that's why the film continues to haunt you, or at least provoke thought, long after you've left the cinema.
Kael walked down several mean streets when it came to Barbara Streisand. She was incredibly mean to Babs. She got personal where she even criticized Babs' looks.
It's curious how respectful and friendly Kael and Allen are here because as a fan of her film writing, I know she could be quite scathing and even belittling of his work and entire character at times. That said, she was a fan of my all-time favourite Woody Allen movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo (which is also one of the few movies within Allen's ouevre that he actually likes).
This movie hit me differently when it was released. It was excessively violent like all his movies. Paul Schraders script was the main reason of its ultimate sucess.
I was not "raised in Little Italy" but I'll never forget going in to see Mean Streets and thinking 'Holy Shit! I know these people" even Johnny Boy who represented a very specific person person in my life. It's a remarkable acheivement, the first time I felt I saw the real world up on the screen. The Exorcist is one of the very few "horror films" that I think is actually a great film (maybe Psycho, The Shining- off the top of my head)- didn't scare me when I saw it at 17, but I don't get how adult viewers can be scared by a movie, anyway. At least not when they know it's horror and not when they know its a film. (Maybe, the open heart surgery scene in All That Jazz might frighten you if you were about to have that surgery.)
Likes the sound of her own voice. I really wanted to hear Woody's thoughts, not so much hers. And anyone who dismisses The Exorcist as "that damn film" is someone who's taste is immediately suspect.
@@raindrops21_9 Saw The Exorcist once and thought it was worthless. I just don't really care about the devil and God and all that crap. They pinpointed it in this interview-it is more shocking than scary. Oh by the way, my taste in film (art in general) is impeccable.
Wish this was live and could see the both of them interact. I was more bored with Mean Streets. I was hoping there would be more plot to this gangster film, but it is character-driven but not in a way I enjoyed. The Exorcist is not a film you want to see again.
This is too good to be true. Must hear more. By the way: Pauline Kael’s original review of The Exorcist in The New Yorker is one of the greatest pans in the history of criticism. She nailed the loathsomeness of the film, and rejected it on grounds of fraudulence, exploitation, questionable aesthetics, and general hideousness. I remember well the hysteria surrounding the release of The Exorcist, and it was a relief at the time to read her almost comical condemnation of it.
First of all The Exorcist is a masterpiece and William Friedkin never gave a shit about what stick in the muds like Kael had to say and she's also the same jackass that thought Clint Eastwood would never be a success. She's been dead wrong so many times I've lost count
I’m not surprised that neither of them cared for The Exorcist. Unless Brian DePalma’s name was in the credits, Kael was usually dismissive of popular genre films. In her original review, she mocked The Exorcist’s earnestness, seeing it as crass pop commercialism posing as something profound. She was a notorious movie snob. I assume for a Jewish atheist like Allen, the movie’s solemn Catholicism and shock value probably seemed too hammy. Mean Streets and The Exorcist are both worthy of high praise, but for Kael and Allen to applaud Martin Scorsese’s personal vision while rebuking The Exorcist as derivative and sensationalist, is a rather superficial take. Both films are about Catholic guilt, and William Peter Blatty, who had a Catholic upbringing like Scorsese, wrote The Exorcist during a crisis of faith. William Friedkin, a secular Jew like Allen, said making the film had a deep spiritual impact on him. The Exorcist is just as personal as Mean Streets. I understand that taste is subjective, however, I think Kael and Allen deliberately ignoring The Exorcist’s exploration of transcendence and the mystery of faith is a perspective bereft of nuance.
I like the Excorcist better. And Godard is a total hack. No one talks about him anymore. That said Mean Streets is a very good film and you can't go wrong with early De Niro.
Kael was right. The Exoricst has great framing and editing, but the core of the movie is shocking the audience. And there's no lazier way to get a response than from shock.
@@sg24336the story holds up over time and still today. What horror film can hold up the test of time? Boundaries and lines in the horror genre have been pushed so far. But the story telling of the Exorcist still holds up. IMO 😂 everyone’s a critic. Lol.
@@randyd7836eh, don’t know about that. Thats with your perception of what storytelling/film is supposed to be. I can watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Manhattan back to back and with no inner conflict. No disrespect.
@@GregOrCreg I'm trying to decide whose opinion I respect more. The genius film maker, or the random woman who likes the sound of her own voice. I'll have to think about that.
No. Raging Bull. Goodfellas close second. Raging Bull is a modern day opera, modern day Shakespearean tragedy. It is untouchable. Goodfellas is actually the realization of the vision he had (but was too inexperienced to pull off) in Mean Streets.
Can you explain? I don't think you're wrong about the first part (i.e. that she's a great writer with an occasionally lousy taste in films), but I don't think she had the power to ruin cinema, esp. French cinema.
Kael was given a chance by Warren Beatty to put her principles into practice via big job in Hollywood at Paramount or somewhere. She simply could not cut it. Others of us who never got to helm the job at the New Yorker not onlyi do damn good criticism (low paid) and also write screenplays mostly unproduced. Prefer the English critics of Kael`s time ie Houston and Mortimer.
@@GregOrCreg I think she is a lousy film critic. She did not understand film as is proven by her inability to craft a script, to develop a project. The English crifics whom I mention by comparison were also screenwriters, producers, etc. They understood the medium.
the dismissiveness in Pauline's voice when referring to The Exorcist shows just how much she either too chicken s**t watching the movie...or she just totally missed the movie's point and thus, dismissive about it.
@RideAcrossTheRiver While we could debate the merits and "point" of The Exorcist, over half a century removed, what cannot be argued is the lasting effect the movie has had on both the genre itself and popular culture. It - along with Rosemary's Baby - spawned the modern generation of horror, placing the film in the ethos of literally everything that has come after, with all modern horror judged by its measure.
@@brentsobie3977 You tried REAAALLY hard to sell that mental contortion you just did there, but demons and Santa Claus: same thing. That's why the film is ridiculous. Lemme guess ... you believe Satan and demons are physically real and are at work among people.
Mean Streets is now criminally underrated, and you can thank the criminally overrated DiCaprio-Scorsese collaborations as well as a generation unable to appreciate the 20th century for that.
