Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide has been an essential book reference for anyone in the film world for decades and his work as a film scholar and historian and University of Southern California lecturer has fired the imaginations of generations of Hollywood filmmakers. While visiting KVIFF this year the preeminent American critic led a talk on the role of film music with the multiple Oscar nominee James Newton Howard.
The guide’s last edition was in 2015, which marked the end of an era, as many film publications have noted.
We’re issuing it again this fall without the 2015 on the cover. It’s just finite. Not outdated, just finite. You know, I did it for 45 years. Forty-five years. And toward the end of the run I saw the handwriting on the wall. I went through my mourning process several years ago, whereas my contributors and collaborators were taken aback. Some of whom had been with me for a long time.
Was your two-star review of Taxi Driver the one you took the most heat for?
It’s hard between Taxi Driver and Blade Runner. And I saw three versions of it. I gave it three shots. (Ridley Scott) did a fourth version but I said, ‘No, I’m out.’
As a film historian what trajectories trouble you the most and what give you hope?
Optimism and pessimism are widely felt. Summer is my least favorite movie season. When I have to sit through Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mummy, which are not so much movies as products, it can be dispiriting. You see a film like The Big Sick, which is made with passion and integrity and originality, and I feel good. So to me the independent film world is the source of all my hope. And as an American, I also look overseas for storytellers.
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
