Quotes from Pauline Kael

When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.

An artist must either give up art or develop. There are, of course, two ways of giving up: stopping altogether or taking the familiar Hollywood course - making tricks out of what was once done for love.

where there is a will there is a way .

Part of growing up is developing a bullshit detector, and kids usually do a pretty fair job of wising each other up.

A country which accepts wars as contests between good and evil is suffering from the delusion that the morality play symbolizes real political conflicts.

TV accustoms people to not expecting much.

There's no way I could make the case that Animal House is a better picture than Heaven Can Wait , yet on some sort of emotional-aesthetic level I prefer it.

Nobody really controls a production, now; the director is on his own, even if he's insecure, careless, or nuts.

Boobs on the make always try to impress with their high level of seriousness (wise guys, with their contempt for all seriousness).

We don't have time to catch up with the future that is here.

Pryor's comedy isn't based on suspiciousness about whites, or on anger, either; he's gone way past that. Whites are unbelievable to him.

The trouble with this kind of Hegelian prose is that the reader is at first amused by what seem to be harmless metaphors, and soon the metaphors are being used as if they were observable historical tendencies and aesthetic phenomenon, and next the metaphor becomes a stick to castigate those who have other tastes, and other metaphors.

There are too many scenes where you think, It's a bit much. The movie crowds you; it doesn't give you room to have an honest emotion.

The first prerogative of any artist, in any medium, is to make a fool of himself.