Great Moments in Roger L. Simon

After reading this, I can’t resist a quote from Brian Kellow’s excellent Pauline Kael bio.   It’s particularly entertaining if chased with Simon’s witless-old-fart rambling about how there hasn’t been a good movie released since Chinatown:

One evening that January she had shown up at the Brodway Screeing Room to see Paul Mazursky’s new comedy, Scenes from a Mall, costarring Woody Allen and Bette Midler.

[…]

The lights went down, and Scenes From A Mall began.   It was abysmal — a shocking comedown from a director she had always believed in, a director who had continued to develop his craft and vision over more than twenty years.

She was seventy-one, and she was tired and in failing health — and the movies weren’t worth the time and effort anymore.   She notified The New Yorker of her decison: her review of the Steve Martin comedy L.A. Story, in the magazine’s February 11, 1991, issue, would be her last.

You have to give Simon this — he compelled someone associated with an out-of-context quote often cited by conservative pundits to retire!  The fact that Simon isn’t being deluged with contracts to write screenplays is, of course, the sign of a blacklist.

I’m not proud of this, but I actually watched Scenes From A Mall — I had a video store contact who could get me anything for free, what can I tell you. Let’s just say that a famously silly turn to conservatism and Pajamas Media are exactly what one could have expected from a guy who thought that running jokes about annoying mimes were the height of wit in 1991.

UPDATE: I should also note that I would never have claimed that Perry was the frontrunner had I know he was employing Simon.   This blog regrets the error.