By John C.

On August 6th, I had the chance to interview A.O. (Tony) Scott.  Film critic for The New York Times, and current co-host of At The Movies, he and Michael Phillips have done a great job of continuing the legacy of the show – which airs it’s last this coming Sunday.

We talked on the phone for over 20 minutes, both about the legacy of At The Movies, and the best films of the year so far.  You can read my interview with Michael Phillips here, and come back Friday for my own look back on the show.

A big thank you is in place to A.O. Scott for taking the time to do this interview.

Enjoy!

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When did you start reviewing movies, and when did you know that’s what you wanted to do? I started reviewing professionally for the New York Times actually – although there were other subjects I’ve written about before movies.  I was mostly a book critic, and I think I’ve always been interested in criticism and the way of writing and getting to discuss amazingly diverse art films.  I don’t know if it was then that I got the ambition to do that but it was pretty early in life that I realized I wanted to be a writer, and criticism was the most compatible to my way of writing.

What’s your best memory from hosting the show? There have been many great ones – a lot that are only in the blooper reel, such as when we would kind of blow the lines on the teleprompter.  And some of the other ones have been when Michael and I’ve disagreed or argued about films like Bright Star, Zombieland, or Green Zone.  The show I’m proudest of, was when we only reviewed two movies – Shutter Island, and The Ghost Writer, and for the show we discussed the works of Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, talking about their films and pushing against the limits of the format of the show.

And that was one of the best episodes.

Were you a big watcher of At The Movies before you were offered the full-time hosting position? I was sort of always intermittently interested in the show.  The first time I watched it was on PBS, and I must have been pretty young – 11 or 12 years old.  Back in the 80’s there were a few imitators, but not much like it, and Siskel & Ebert were what film critics looked like.  In college I kept up with it – not necessarily every week, but every time I moved to a different place I would try to find the time and channel it was on.  It was always a very big part of my consciousness, but it never really occurred to me when I became a film critic that I would ever actually do a version of the show.  I was much more focused on writing and it was preposterous to think of myself on television.

What’s your best memory from watching the show? One of my favorites I remember – and I’m not sure when this was, it must have been the early 90’s or late 80’s – when Gene and Roger did a whole episode on Tom Cruise.  And they were taking him seriously – this big movie star – as an artist and someone in pop culture, (and I don’t mean with too much seriousness), but exploring films like Cocktail, Days of Thunder and making it interesting to talk about what kind of character this guy plays in different movies.  And I watched this whole thing with no particular interest in Tom Cruise, and I thought: good criticism and smart analysis can make you interested in something you weren’t before.

How do you feel you and Michael have continued the legacy of the show? I think that we follow in the footsteps of Roger and Gene in that we both come from newspapers, and have honed our craft writing for a daily newspaper audience.  I think we are both people interested in lots of movies and are collective in our approach, we didn’t have a particular plan for the show, but did whatever made sense, and at our best – at its best –  it was pretty simple. We were two people talking about movies in as engaged and lively a way as we could.  It was an interesting format to play with, since it’s always changing.  I mean, the format of television was different even 10 – certainly 20 – years ago.  The biggest lesson that Siskel and Ebert taught us, is that you can go on tv and be yourself.  Even if we were a little awkward, we’d often surprise each other with what we’d say and we can’t do this unless we are just being ourselves.  I think we very quickly found a way to make it into something that’s pretty interesting television.

And how do you feel the legacy of At The Movies will continue after the show ends in mid-August? I do think that despite reports to the contrary, film criticism does play into the appetite for a non-hype, non-celebrity driven honest discussion of movies.  It’s still there in the news, on the internet, and maybe also television.  The thing about television is that it’s all about economics.  If there is a home and audience for it – and the number of people interested in the discussion of movies has not shrunk, I think it’s grown in some ways – it will turn up.  We live in a very quickly changing media environment and I hope Michael and I as individuals will continue to be a part of it in some new way because doing the show together was a lot of fun.  It’s been a blast – taping is certainly the most fun I’ve had and gotten paid for.

What are your future plans for after the show ends? The New York Times certainly keeps me busy, so I’ll keep doing that, so basically writing, web video, all of that – and if there are other possibilities in television I’d explore those.  After the last show, I’m taking a week of vacation from the paper, then I’m back in the screening room.  The fall is pretty busy with festivals, and then the Oscar season starts.  There are always new movies, so it’s relentless.  You have to just pick a time to remind yourself that there’s life beyond movies.

Well, in the last few weekends in August there usually aren’t too many good movies opening anyway…

Yeah, next weekend will probably be the last big weekend in August with Eat Pray Love, The Expendables, and Scott Pilgrim.

And this weekend with Step Up 3D.

…and The Other Guys.

Now on the show, you’ve always been introduced as A. O. Scott, but your co-workers call you Tony.  I’m presuming the A stands for Anthony, but I’m curious, what does the ‘O’ stand for? Oliver.  I’ve never revealed that to anyone before – so you have a big scoop there…

Now to change gears a little bit, how do you feel this year’s been for family films? Well, it’s kind of a hard category to pin down – I mean, I go to a lot of different kinds of films with my family.  As for animated films, which are always popular with families, there’ve been two very good ones.  One was How To Train Your Dragon, and the other,Toy Story 3, was wonderful.  This summer, Despicable Me was ok, so it’s definitely a striving sector of the film industry.  I do think that TS3 is one of the best of the year in any category – there’s an almost universal appeal, where kids and adults can watch.  Pixar has a real ability to create an experience shared with the widest range of moviegoers.

I agree – TS3 is one of the best for sure.

At this point in time, what movies do you think will be nominated for Best Picture? I honestly have no idea…  There are not enough that have come out yet.  Nobody’s seen The Social Network for example.

Except for films like Toy Story 3, Inception, and The Kids Are All Right, which I think will be nominated. I hope so.  But what comes up in the fall, particularly on a lot of weekends in November and December, will ultimately determine the race.

What are you favourite movies of the year so far? The Kids Are All Right, Toy Story 3 I liked a lot, then there’s Greenberg, The Father of My Children – which is a french movie that was quite good, and then there were some fine films that were Oscar nominees only released this year – The Secret in Their Eyes which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Un Prophet, Fishtank which came out at the beginning of the year…  It’s easy to think there’s not that many when week-in week-out you have films like Valentine’s Day, and The Bounty Hunter – you have to actually sit down and look at the list and when you do, there’s always enough to keep you going.

I think a lot of people have been too hard on this year’s crop of summer films.  Maybe there haven’t been as many great ones as in other years, but there have been a lot of good ones.  But I think it’s also because in other years we’ve seen Oscar contenders like The Hurt Locker. Everyone forgets, you ask any film critic in June, just about any year, and they’re in despair, but by November and December it’s all changed.  You know I think Inception was a pretty good movie – it’s entertaining, kind of unusual, non-formulaic.  The Kids Are All Right was a terrific independent drama – and I thought Dinner for Schmucks was pretty good – it had some good laughs, and I liked the third Twilight movie.

I thought Eclipse was actually the best of the series. Yes, so did I.

And Inception has everyone talking, so that’s always a good thing. Any movie that can get people talking and arguing, I think is one worth seeing.

I’m sure the debate about that final scene will just rage on and on for years.

So, what are your least favourites? The Bounty Hunter keeps floating up as one, The Last Song was pretty dreadful, and I thought Knight and Day was pretty bad – with that one I thought that both Cruise and Diaz deserved better.  There was also When in Rome…  I try to forget most of them.

And there was Sex and the City 2, which I just hated. Yeah, thanks for reminding me – that one was pretty bad…

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. You’re welcome – thanks for your interest.

And congratulations on being able to host the show in its final year – you and Michael have done a great job.