What happens to old film critics? Where do they go? Do they slink off to some elephant graveyard? Or do they all end up teaching at crappy colleges, having countless affairs with their students, and dying bitter alcoholics?
These questions occasionally cross my mind when I wonder what ever happened to so-and-so who used to frequent the same screenings I still attend. One day as I was leaving a particularly annoying Yugoslavian comedy, a small man in a rumpled brown suit slipped me a card as I headed for the elevator. “We read about the magazine you work for being sold,” he whispered, pressing the card into my palm. “Give us a call.” Then he scurried away down the hall. I slipped it into my pocket and promptly forgot about it until later that night, when I came across it while sipping a tumbler of vodka. The card read “The Critical Mass” and listed a telephone number. My curiosity piqued, I dialed the number and a man answered. “We have the perfect place for your retirement Mr. Dermody, and it won’t cost you much. If you would care to take a tour, be at this address at 9 a.m. Monday.”
I just had to see what the hell this was about. When I arrived on Monday, a nondescript car pulled up to the curb. A man stepped out, blindfolded me and guided me gently into the back seat. We drove for hours. From the sounds around me I suspect we were up north, near New Hampshire or possibly Maine. I heard our car being loaded onto some kind of ferry and we voyaged over what I think was a body of water. Finally the car settled to a halt and the man removed my blindfold.
In front of me was a beautiful island shoreline. We trudged across the sand and along a well-worn path through a dense, jungle-like terrain. Eventually we arrived at a glorious, ornate hotel with multiple cottages alongside. The hotel’s porch rounded the entirety of its front, and was dotted with many rocking chairs and couches. Elderly folks sat around them, reading or playing cards. I climbed the front steps to the entrance, recognizing a few of them- critics whose names used to adorn film ads with depressing regularity. Denny Buddy Home, who used to write for a Boston paper; Katja Fallingstar, who reviewed for a monthly women’s magazine; Colin Sick, who was renowned for his gushing praise of mediocre comedies; Frieda Slaves, who wrote for a once-edgy weekly; Jacques Strap, whose witty wordplay delighted readers; Regis Smallprint, who snottily reviewed movies on television; and Ben Jackinoff, an effeminate aesthete who waxed poetic on the radio about the current cinema and misused the term “mise-en-scene” frequently.
“Welcome,” said one woman, greeting me with an outstretched hand, introducing herself as Alma Children and explaining that I’d arrived at the Home For Retired Film Critics. “Let me show you around.” We wandered through the main dining room- a yellow, sunlit area where waitresses bustled around setting up for lunch. “We serve the finest cuisine for discriminating taste,” she stated proudly. Not wanting to take her word at face value, I snuck off to the side and cornered one of the staff to dish the real dirt. “Breakfast can be difficult with these damn critics,” confided a waiter. “’This tea is a tepid affair.’ Or, ‘These eggs are mediocre.’ ‘The French toast is one-and-a-half stars.’ They live to complain. “
Alma then led me to the screening room where new films are shown nightly. “The critics sit there with their pads and pens, scribbling like crazy in the dark, and run off to their cottages to compose their reviews.” Alma described. “It keeps them vital.” A tour of the cabins revealed bright, airy, pleasant environments, and I recognized a few more people. I spied Barry D’Hatchet, who skewered films monthly for a New York-based magazine and considered “Truffaut tiresome, Fellini frivolous and Bergman a bore.” I also spotted cheery Sue Cherself, who never met a movie she didn’t love and gushed about them for an online site. (It wasn’t until she described Schindler’s List as: “a riotous romp- Spielberg’s funniest production since 1941,” that she was finally let go.)
The grounds were beautifully tended and toward the back sloped down to the shore, which was calming and strangely absent of boats. “No one will bother you here,” Alma said, “and anything you desire or need will be provided for you.”
“What’s the catch?” I asked suspiciously.
She admitted that I might need to sign over any cash and material holdings that I owned. And a little thing called “my soul” to clinch the deal. “I’ll think it over.” I said. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I had $7.50 in my bank account and had signed over my soul 30 years before when I worked for the Necco Candy factory in Boston.
I was blindfolded, led back to the ferry and car, and driven back to Manhattan in silence, mulling over what could have been my fantasy retirement island.
Oh, well, ending up a bitter alcoholic isn’t all that bad.
