THR‘s Borys Kit is reporting that Quentin Tarantino‘s next and allegedly final film will be called The Movie Critic, and will be set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center.
This suggests that the story could be about Pauline Kael‘s decision, urged by Warren Beatty, to leave her New Yorker critic gig for a misbegotten sabbatical as a Paramount creative exec.
Kael wound up fiercely butting heads with Paramount’s vice-president of production Don Simpson, among others, and returned to her Manhattan berth in ’80. Vanity Fair‘s Lili Anolik wrote an excellent article about this episode in early 2017.
Kit: “The timing of that Paramount job seems to coincide with the setting of the script, and [Tarantino] is known to have a deep respect for Kael, making the odds of her being the subject of the film more likely.”
HE to Tarantino: If The Movie Critic will indeed tell Kael’s story, great. I’m presuming you’ll be fictionalizing it to some extent to allow for sex and violence add-ons, but I’m sure you’ll work that out.
Special plea: Please don’t cast an actress who physically resembles Kael, not because she was unattractive but because she was only 4’11” tall. That’s an alienating height for either gender; almost dwarf-like. (Even the tiny Truman Capote was 5’3″.) Please cast an actress who’s at least 5’4″ or higher.
Or go against the grain and hire a giraffe. Someone, you know, who’s Uma Thurman‘s height (i.e., 5’11”). Thurman, in fact, would be a good choice as she’s nearly 53, which is close to Kael’s age when she took the Paramount gig (i.e., 59).
