Rex Reed, a critic and journalist identified for his brash, usually acidic takes on movies and filmmakers, died Tuesday at his Manhattan house. He was 87.
William Kapfer, Reed’s longtime good friend, confirmed his dying. No trigger was given. Reed burst on the film criticism scene within the Nineteen Sixties, and was a part of a wave of recent reviewers, Pauline Kael amongst them, who provided a sharper, jazzier various to the extra staid types of evaluation that had been showcased by main retailers. These writers additionally had the nice fortune to reach as cinema itself was present process a change, with the studio system collapsing and one thing sexier, edgier and barrier-breaking rising as a replacement.
Reed’s opinions, in addition to his stylishly written profiles of Hollywood and Broadway stars starting from “Easy Rider’s” Peter Fonda and Barbra Streisand to Ava Gardner and Buster Keaton, have been featured in publications like The New York Instances, GQ, Esquire and Vogue. These moved past the tasteless and laudatory, providing candid and penetrating portraits of artists and celebrities that stand out in an period the place A-listers are guarded by armies of publicists and handlers. His writings have been collected in quite a few books, together with his first, “Do You Sleep in the Nude?”
During the last 4 a long time, Reed, a frequent presences on the New York social scene, penned a column within the New York Observer, the place he usually courted controversy. He helped originate a rumor that Jack Palance learn the improper identify when he handed Marisa Tomei her Oscar, and dismissed Marlee Matlin’s Academy Awards victory for “Children of a Lesser God” as a “pity vote.” His writing usually moved past the incisive into the offensive, as when he dismissed the Korean revenge thriller “Oldboy” by writing, “What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?” Or when he referred to as Melissa McCarthy “tractor-sized” and a “hippo.” Each opinions sparked a web-based furor.
Reed’s criticism might be cruel, however he recoiled on the suggestion he was a crank. “I like just as many films as I dislike,” Reed instructed The New York Instances in a 2018 profile. “But I think we’re drowning in mediocrity. I just try as hard as I can to raise the level of consciousness. It’s so hard to get people to see good films.”
Reed was one of many uncommon critics to step in entrance of the digital camera. He starred within the film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s “Myra Breckinridge,” incomes savage notices, and in addition appeared in such movies as “Superman” and “Irreconcilable Differences.” He was a daily visitor on “The Dick Cavett Show” and “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson,” serving up unvarnished takes on Hollywood and its newest films. No shock, he usually discovered them missing.
