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Richard Schickel

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Critic

The Resume

    (February 10, 1933-February 18, 2017)
    Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Film critic for Life (1965-72), Time (1972-2010) and Truthdig.com (2010-16)
    Wrote over 30 books including 'The Disney Version' (1968), 'D.W. Griffith: An American Life' (1984) and 'Conversations with Scorsese' (2011)
    Directed over 30 documentaries, mostly for TV, including 'The Men Who Made the Movies' (1973) and 'You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story' (2008)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was a lifelong smoker.
    He eventually stopped reviewing Clint Eastwood's films, because he felt their personal friendship would affect his objectivity.
    He wrote, '[Criticism] is, or should be, an elite enterprise.... It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge, and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work.'
    In his book 'Movies' (1965), he dismissed King Vidor as a hack director who 'ground out potboilers' until his death -- even though the fice-time Oscar nominee was very much alive at the time. (Odd; you'd think an elite individual with a 'fairly deep sense' of Vidor's work might have known that.)

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was one of the few film critics who was also a working member of the Directors Guild of America.
    He was nominated for Emmys for writing 'Life Goes to the Movies' and directing 'Minnelli on Minnelli: Liza Remembers Vincente.'
    He received special citation from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics for his restoration of Samuel Fuller's 1980 WWII drama 'The Big Red One.'
    Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan called him 'a beautiful stylist who believed in honesty but steered clear of cheap shots.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 14 Votes: 85.71% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 5 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 22 Votes: 50.0% Annoying