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In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Pauline Kael

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Pauline Kael
Age: 82 †
Born: 1919
Born: June 19
Died: 2001
Died: September 3
Film Critic
Journalist
Writer
Petaluma
California
Art
Advertising
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Criticism
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Arts

More quotes by Pauline Kael

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I am mystified. I know only one person who voted for Nixon.
Pauline Kael
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The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lightning-fast choreography.
Pauline Kael
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Robert Redford ... has turned almost alarmingly blond-he's gone past platinum, he must be into plutonium his hair is coordinated with his teeth.
Pauline Kael
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Writers who go to Hollywood still follow the classic pattern: either you get disgusted by 'them' and you leave or you want the money and you become them.
Pauline Kael
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McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.
Pauline Kael
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The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
Pauline Kael
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If you use Hollywood as the test tissue for mankind, what could the prognosis be?
Pauline Kael
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Movies are our cheap and easy expression, the sullen art of displaced persons.
Pauline Kael
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Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being wised up knowing the tricks, the shortcuts.
Pauline Kael
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Her only flair is in her nostrils.
Pauline Kael
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Trash has given us an appetite for art.
Pauline Kael
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This movie is a toupee made up to look like honest baldness.
Pauline Kael
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I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.
Pauline Kael
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It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.
Pauline Kael
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When I see those ads with the quote 'You'll have to see this picture twice,' I know it's the kind of picture I don't want to see once.
Pauline Kael
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If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.
Pauline Kael
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Reality, like God and History, tends to direct people to wherever they want to go.
Pauline Kael
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I felt as if I had attended the funeral of someone I didn't know.
Pauline Kael
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Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.
Pauline Kael
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It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.
Pauline Kael