This collection of interviews with Stanley Kauffmann (b. 1916) provides a virtual history of the journalistic practice of criticism in twentieth-century America. His creative life spans seven decades, and since 1958, he has been a film and drama critic for the New Republic, the New York Times, and Saturday Review. He also has been an actor, stage manager, playwright, novelist, and editor. Along with Dwight Macdonald, Andrew Sarris, and John Simon, he is one of the potent, influential critics included in the New York school of twentieth-century American criticism. The Los Angeles Times called him "the Dean Swift of our country's criticism." Susan Sontag proclaimed him "one of our national treasures." In this collection of interviews conducted by Charlie Rose, Dick Cavett, and others he speaks both of the role of theater and film criticism in American culture and of the crisis he perceives within it. With wit and erudition Kauffmann discusses many subjects-film directors who emerged during his long tenure at the New Republic (e.g., Martin Scorsese and Federico Fellini), actors who performed on both stage and screen, novels and their film adaptations, and the fractious relationship between Hollywood and the independent film movement. The precision and concise phrasing of Kauffmann's writing chime also in his brilliant conversations as he speaks of sex, taste, realism, the rise of film festival culture, and government subsidy of the arts. The volume ends with a conversation from 1998 in celebration of Kauffmann's forty-year tenure at the New Republic, where he continues to publish film reviews every week. The collection reveals this critic's sense of cultural mission by showing how Kauffmann applies to drama and film the same high standards he applies to fiction, poetry, music, and theater. Conversations with Stanley Kauffmann reveals that this love of the arts is expressed in his finely honed gift for cogent, witty, wise commentary. Bert Cardullo, a professor of theater and drama at the University of Michigan, has written and edited several books on film and theater and has been published in the Hudson Review, the New Republic, Literature / Film Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, and other publications.

“In an age of narrow self interest (both kinds), with memoirs falling from the press like autumn leaves in a high wind, Stanley Kauffmann’s Albums of a Life is virtually unique. As the title suggests, his purpose in writing about himself, his ways and means over a long lifetime, has no higher or lower purpose than to collect memories that fall together around a person, place or subject. As such he is not overtly telling us his inside story or delivering his career, whether for the public record or the annals of gossip, or bending his experience to make some large political or cultural point. Instead of the typically heated prose of the private memoir or the typically flat style of the public one, his tone is crisply genial, warmly objective, the prose of a writer who does not try to dig into or inflate or argue his experience but to commemorate it in an exact, felt, uncoercive way. Like an album of carefully selected photographs that span a lifetime, they are unassuming and they matter. Open any of these discrete, ad hoc remembrances and you touch a rich life.”—from the Introduction by Ted Solotaroff

This collection of interviews provides a virtual history of the journalistic practice of criticism in contemporary America. Susan Sontag proclaimed Stanley Kauffmann "one of our national treasures." In this collection of interviews conducted by Bert Cardullo, himself a film critic, Stanley Kauffmann speaks both of the role of theater and film criticism in American culture and of the crisis he perceives within it-the culture as well as the criticism. With style and erudition Kauffmann discusses many subjects in this book: film directors who emerged during his long tenure at The New Republic (e.g., Martin Scorsese and Federico Fellini), actors who performed on both stage and screen (e.g., Paul Newman and Robert Duvall), novels and their film adaptations, and the fractious relationship between Hollywood and the independent film movement. The precision, wit, and wisdom of Kauffmann's writing chime in his brilliant conversations as he speaks of sex, taste, and realism in the cinema, as well as the rise of film festival culture and government subsidy of the arts. Film Critic Talks reveals Kauffmann's sense of cultural mission-and love of all the arts-by showing how this critic applies to drama and film the same high standards he applies to fiction, poetry, music, and theater. The volume ends with a conversation from 2012 in celebration of Kauffmann's more than fifty-year tenure at The New Republic, where, at age ninety-seven, he continues to publish film reviews every week.

"In an age of narrow self interest (both kinds), with memoirs falling from the press like autumn leaves in a high wind, Stanley Kauffmann's Albums of a Life is virtually unique. As the title suggests, his purpose in writing about himself, his ways and means over a long lifetime, has no higher or lower purpose than to collect memories that fall together around a person, place or subject. As such he is not overtly telling us his inside story or delivering his career, whether for the public record or the annals of gossip, or bending his experience to make some large political or cultural point. Instead of the typically heated prose of the private memoir or the typically flat style of the public one, his tone is crisply genial, warmly objective, the prose of a writer who does not try to dig into or inflate or argue his experience but to commemorate it in an exact, felt, uncoercive way. Like an album of carefully selected photographs that span a lifetime, they are unassuming and they matter. Open any of these discrete, ad hoc remembrances and you touch a rich life."--from the Introduction by Ted Solotaroff

A revealing look at the making of Martin Scorsese’s iconic mob movie and its enduring legacy, featuring interviews with its legendary cast. When Goodfellas first hit the theatres in 1990, a classic was born. Few could anticipate the unparalleled influence it would have on pop culture, one that would inspire future filmmakers and redefine the gangster picture as we know it today. From the rush of grotesque violence in the opening scene to the iconic hilarity of Joe Pesci’s endlessly quoted “Funny how?” shtick, it’s little wonder the film is widely regarded as a mainstay in contemporary cinema. In the first ever behind-the-scenes story of Goodfellas, film critic Glenn Kenny chronicles the making and afterlife of the film that introduced the real modern gangster. Featuring interviews with the film’s major players, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Made Men shines a light on the lives and stories wrapped up in the Goodfellas universe, and why its enduring legacy has such a hold on American culture. A Library Journal Best Book of the Year A Sight and Sound Best Film Book of 2020

This exceptional collection explores the mutual concerns of dramatic theater, film, and those who comment on them. Plays, Movies, and Critics opens with an original play by Don DeLillo. In the form of an interview, DeLillo's short play works as a kind of paradigm of the theatrical or cinematic event and serves as a keynote for the volume. DeLillo's interview play is accompanied in this collection by interviews with theater director Roberta Levitow, Martin Scorsese, and film/theater critic Stanley Kauffmann. Other contributions include a critical look at the current American theater scene, analyses of the place of politics in the careers of G. B. Shaw and Luigi Pirandello, a compelling reading of Chekhov's "The Seagull", a detailed inquiry into the obsessions that energize the works of Sam Shepard, provocative reinterpretations of the films Mean Streets and The Sheltering Sky, and a translation of André Bazin's important piece on theology and film. Contributors. André Bazin, Robert Brustein, Bert Cardullo, Anthony DeCurtis, Don DeLillo, Jesse Ward Engdhal, Richard Gilman, Jim Hosney, Mame Hunt, Jonathan Kalb, Stanley Kauffmann, Jody McAuliffe, Mary Ann Frese Witt, Jacquelyn Wollman, David Wyatt

In this National Book Award–winning novel from a “brilliantly breathtaking writer,” a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras (The New York Times Book Review). On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul. A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx’s one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life. With Mardi Gras in full swing, Binx, along with his cousin Kate, sets out to find his true purpose amid the excesses of the carnival that surrounds him. Buoyant yet powerful, The Moviegoer is a poignant indictment of modern values, and an unforgettable story of a week that will change two lives forever. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Walker Percy including rare photos from the author’s estate.