Pauline Kael - Influence

Influence

Almost as soon as she began writing for The New Yorker, Kael carried a great deal of influence among fellow critics. In the early seventies, Cinerama distributors "initiate a policy of individual screenings for each critic because her remarks were affecting her fellow critics." In the seventies and eighties, Kael cultivated friendships with a group of young, mostly male critics, some of whom emulated her distinctive writing style. Referred to derisively as the "Paulettes," they came to dominate national film criticism in the 1990s. Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence include, among many, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, David Denby and Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, David Edelstein of New York Magazine, Greil Marcus, Elvis Mitchell, Michael Sragow, Armond White, and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com. It was repeatedly alleged that, after her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate with each other forge a common School of Pauline position" before their reviews were written. When confronted with the rumor that she ran "a conspiratorial network of young critics," Kael said she believed that critics imitated her style rather than her actual opinions, stating, "A number of critics take phrases and attitudes from me, and those takings stick out—they’re not integral to the writer’s temperament or approach."

When asked in 1998 if she thought her criticism had affected the way films were made, Kael deflected the question, stating, "If I say yes, I’m an egotist, and if I say no, I’ve wasted my life." Several directors' careers were indisputably affected by her, though, most notably that of Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader, who was accepted at UCLA Film School's graduate program on Kael's recommendation. Under her mentoring, Schrader worked as a film critic before taking up screenwriting and directing full-time. Also, film critic Derek Malcolm claimed that, "If a director was praised by Kael, he or she was generally allowed to work, since the money-men knew there would be similar approbation across a wide field of publications." Alternately, Kael was said to be able to prevent filmmakers from working; David Lean claimed that her criticism of his work "kept him from making a movie for 14 years." (He was most likely referring to the 14-year break between Ryan's Daughter in 1970 and A Passage to India in 1984.)

In 1978, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.

Though he began directing films after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic." Wes Anderson recounted his efforts to screen his film Rushmore for Kael in a 1999 The New York Times article titled "My Private Screening With Pauline Kael". He later wrote Kael that "your thoughts and writing about the movies been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that."

In January 2000, filmmaker Michael Moore posted a recollection of Pauline Kael's response to his documentary film, Roger & Me (1989). According to Moore, Kael was incensed that she had to watch Roger & Me in a cinema (after Moore refused to send her a tape of the film for her to watch at home), and she resented Roger & Me winning Best Documentary at the 55th New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Moore claimed that "two weeks later, she wrote a nasty, mean review of my film in The New Yorker. It was OK with me that she didn't like the film, and it didn't bother me that she didn't like the point I was making, or even how I was making it. What was so incredibly appalling and shocking is how she printed outright lies about my movie. I had never experienced such a brazen, bald-faced barage of disinformation. She tried to rewrite history... Her complete fabrication of the facts was so weird, so out there, so obviously made-up, that my first response was this must be a humor piece she had written... But, of course, she wasn't writing comedy. She was a deadly serious historical revisionist."

The career of Pauline Kael is discussed at length in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, by critics whom she helped with their careers, such as Owen Gleiberman and Elvis Mitchell, as well as by those who fought with her, such as Andrew Sarris. This 2009 documentary film also shows several Kael appearances on PBS, including speaking together with Woody Allen.

In his 1988 film Willow, George Lucas named one of the villains "General Kael," after the critic. Kael had often reviewed Lucas' work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of Willow, she described the character as an "hommage à moi."