[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. For 23 years, you could open up the film section of the New York Times and find out what critic A. O. Scott thought about the latest blockbuster or a tour film or Korean drama. Many of us relied on Tony as he's known to friends and colleagues because this is my view. He could see a movie for what it was, not what he wanted it to be, or anticipated it would be, but all good things must come to an end.

Last week it was announced that Tony will be leaving his position as chief film critic at the Times, and head to the book review to start a new chapter as a book critic. It's a new old chapter. He actually started his career at the New York Book Review. Since 2000, Tony has reviewed more than 2,200 films and awarded critics picks to now classics like Almost Famous, Moonlight and Juno.

He's also received some audience feedback, shall we say, including some overeager fans who were frustrated when Tony left everything everywhere all at once off his list for best films of the year. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about the highs and the lows, but whether you agree with his opinions or not, I'm sure everyone will be listening, when listening we'll agree that his voice will be missed in the world of film criticism. Join me now in studio is New York Times film critic. I can still say that?

Tony: Yes.

[Laughter]

Alison: Is A. O. Scott. Tony, thanks for coming in.

Tony: Oh, I'm so glad to be here, Alison. It's great.

Alison Stewart: What questions do you have for A. O. Scott listeners about his time as a New York Times film critic? Maybe he turned you onto a movie you might not have seen. What's an A. O. Scott review that particularly is memorable for you? Maybe you want to know what being a film critic is like or what you miss about his film reviews. Our phone lines are open 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC or hit us up on social media @AllOfItWNYC for Tony Scott's exit interview.

On the Times website, it says that you dreamed of being a rock critic, but you accidentally became a film critic.

[Laughs]

How does one accidentally become a film critic?

Tony: Well, it was funny how it happened. I did grow up reading criticism and especially reading the Great Rock critics in Rolling Stone and Cream and other magazines in the in the '70s and '80s. I was knocking around doing freelance book reviewing and some other cultural criticism. I'd always been interested in movies, but I didn't really have a plan or an agenda. I got a call out of the blue one day from the culture editor at the time at the New York Times, John Darton asking me, long story short, if I would be interested in applying for a job as film critic there. I thought, "Well, that's a strange idea, but I'm not going to say no."

I don't think it'll ever happen, but it's nice of them to think of me and at least consider me and maybe someday it will happen. Then next thing I knew there I was. It was the fall of 1999 and I had this this new job that I was profoundly unqualified to do.

[Laughter]

I went out there and started learning as I went. 23 years later I probably still don't know what I'm doing, but I faked it for long enough.

Alison Stewart: The first film you ever reviewed for the Times in 2000, it was for like a heartwarming comedy. My Dog Skip and the review had this title fetch boy, fetch the wisdom of the ages. Good boy. Do you remember this film?

Tony: I remember this film more vividly probably than movies I saw last week, because I was absolutely terrified. It's not a scary movie, but it was certainly the most terrifying movie going experience of my life because I was sitting there in the screening room. I brought my wife with me for moral support. Furiously taking notes and I think I probably worked harder on those 600 words. They went through more drafts and more research.

I do remember the movie. I remember it was based on the memoir by Willie Morris about growing up in Mississippi with his cute little dog Jack Russell Terrier, I believe named Skip. Oddly it had Kevin Bacon in it and Frankie Muniz who was then on Malcolm in the Middle, a child star of the moment. It was all over the place. It's a movie that they don't really make them like that anymore because it was this a live action kids movie with some name actors in it.

Alison Stewart: A dog who drives a truck.

Tony: A dog who drives a truck and eats baloney.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of the trailer of My Dog Skip.

Speaker 3: Warner Brothers Family Entertainment invites you to meet one boy's champion and everyone's hero. [dog barks] My dog Skip.

Alison Stewart: He's drinking out of a toilet there by the way.

[Laughter]

It's a classic.

Tony: Oh, that's Skip.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's Skip. Let's talk to Farley calling in from Toronto. Hi, Farley, thanks for calling All Of It.

Farley: Thank you very much and good afternoon to both of you. I'm a big A. O. Scott fan and when I heard that he was going to be on, I dusted off my copy of Better Living Through Criticism. Maybe you recall writing that book not so long ago.

[laughter]

I remember having read that you didn't like the movie Avengers and I really can't say anything about it because I didn't see the movie, but I understand you really didn't like it. In the course of your discussion of it in the book, you say something like I'll actually quote you. You say Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. I'm sorry to drag out this this skeleton.

[Laughter]

Perhaps you regarded it as a skeleton. I'm just wondering how that way of thinking and looking at a piece of art whether it be a movie or now a book, how will that play out?

Alison Stewart: Let me dive in here. I'm going to let you answer the question. How will this play out into your new beat? This idea?

Tony: Well, thank you for reading my book. I knew there was someone out there who must have read it but it's called Better Living Through Criticism and it's available at bookstores every-- Probably not actually.

[Laughter]

That was a book that I wrote to clarify for myself and for readers just what criticism was all about. I think that one of the things that criticism is about is trying to think about stuff out in the world whether it's movies or music or other works of art that people don't always want to think about, and that sometimes we're discouraged from thinking about.

He's referring to The Avengers and a rather famous at the time argument that I got into with Samuel L. Jackson about The Avengers since he and many Avengers fans took issue with my review of it.

Part of the push back from the fans was like, "Well, this is just a movie. Don't think about it too much. Don't overthink it. Why do you have to get all intellectual about it?" I thought that's an important thing to do. These movies cost a lot of money to make, demand a lot of our attention and money at the Box Office and on streaming. Why shouldn't we think about them? Why shouldn't we look at them skeptically? Why shouldn't we have a conversation about them that takes them and that takes our experience with them somewhat seriously.

Alison Stewart: They're exported around the world.

Tony: Yes, they're-

Alison Stewart: People develop ideas about other kinds of people from the movies that they see.

Tony: Exactly. They're a collective mythology that we all participate in. We should think a little bit about what's going on and what kinds of stories are being told us.

Alison Stewart: Tony, what's changed the most about film criticism in the past two decades?

Tony: There are a lot of things. I was thinking looking back on My Dog Skip days, there are certain words that we use now all the time that did not exist when I started. Streaming platform was one of them. Cinematic universe speaking of The Avengers was another, and another was social media. Those things have all changed film criticism quite a lot. That for one thing now, especially right now and in the wake of the pandemic, but even before that there was a shift away from going to the movies as the way that you saw movies to streaming, to this new way of watching the movies the way that you watch television, the way that you do your email, the way that you participate in social media.

There's also been the rise of this IP driven form of blockbuster entertainment that brings with it a very intense fandom that expresses itself on social media. I think that that has really changed. The sense that every movie you mentioned everything everywhere, all at once and the fans on social media, every movie has potentially, especially a big commercial movie has potentially a lot of fans who if you're a critic writing about it you will hear from and sometimes not in the friendliest way.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Peter from the Upper West Side who has a question for you. Hi, Peter. What's your question for A. O. Scott?

Peter: Hi. Yes. I have a podcast where I talk to actors so I go to a lot of press screenings now and I'm always feeling bad for critics in there because I know when the lights go down, they have to start working and some of them have their pads out and they're writing right away. I've always thought, this is so troubling to me both because I'm feel bad for them, but also just the idea of having your mind go in that way right off the bat, instead of taking in the movie.

I wanted to know how you dealt with that idea of trusting yourself that you're taking in the movie properly before you start writing. Also, are you someone that writes in the press screening?

Tony: Yes. I always have a notebook with me but I'm not writing my review. I'm writing notes since I generally only get to see the thing once. I'm taking notes so I don't make mistakes. I'm writing lines of dialogue. I'm writing sometimes very impressionistically. Sometimes I'll go back to my notes and I'll just see the word blue or hard cut or something like that.

Usually, I'm writing more even than to take notes to keep my attention from wandering the way that you would write lecture notes in class so that I make sure that I'm giving the movie my full attention and not thinking about work or email or what I'll have for lunch.

I also don't think that being a critic or watching a movie in that way prevents you from taking it in. I would say every critic walks into the screening room and sits down with the expectation and the discipline of letting the movie be what it's going to be and taking it in as it is and not prejudging it and not being too quick to form an opinion of it and letting it happen.

The skill I would say that you have to learn as a critic since you're only probably going to see it once, is to, in a way, see it twice at the same time so that you're seeing it through the eyes of anyone who's going into the movies and just having the experience and also at the same time, analyzing that experience so that you'll have something to say, something useful to write about it when you leave the screening room.

Alison Stewart: How did you know it was time to leave this post, this dream post?

Tony: It was a dream post and I always thought that I wanted to leave while I still felt like it was fresh and exciting and I was still at the top of my game. I did not want to become bitter and cranky and I didn't want it to get stale, and I didn't want to be one of these people who's always talking about, "Well, back in the old days. They don't make them My Dog Skip anymore."

I had found too that, in the last few years my interests were gravitating back toward literature and toward books. I wanted to try to write about different topics and to write in different, sometimes longer, forms than just the review. I felt like the weekly treadmill of reviewing two or three, sometimes four or five movies a week overall that time, it can be limiting. I found that as I wanted to branch out and to expand and to test out new or long-atrophied muscles as a writer and a critic that that's what I was getting in the way. That just having something to say about every new movie or so many new movies that came out. I thought maybe it's time to let someone else do that.

It's a wonderful job also. I don't think it's fair to hog it up for too long.

Alison Stewart: Will you just go to the movies now?

Tony: Yes, I'll go to the movies. I'm not going to stop. I'll still have opinions about movies, but no one will care.

Alison Stewart: You'll be yelling them on the subway.

Tony: That's right. No one will listen to me.

Alison Stewart: This is a silly question, but I'm sure people have it. When did you become A.O. Scott versus Tony Scott?

Tony: When I first started publishing reviews, just freelance reviews, which was back in the mid-'90s. There already was a filmmaker named Tony Scott. The late wonderful director Tony Scott. The initials A.O. had been in my family for a while. The family business back in the little town in Ohio where my father and grandfather grew up was called A.O. Scott and Sons after my great-great-grandfather. I thought, "Let's keep that family name going and apply it to something else."

It was also a little bit a byline, is a mask. You can hide behind it. You can say, "Well, in my daily life, I'm just Tony and in the pages of the New York Times, there's this other person called A.O. Scott and if you have a problem with this movie review, talk to him."

Alison Stewart: [laughs] A.O. Scott is still Chief Film Critic at the New York Times. Very shortly he will be joining the book review, so you're not going to get rid of us because we do a lot of books on this show. We will be darkening your doorstep once again.

Tony: Well, I'll look forward to that. That'd be great to come back.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for taking calls and thanks for all of the work that you've done.

Tony: Thank you, Alison.

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