Everyone’s a critic, as the familiar mantra goes, but the new ecology of blogs and bulletin boards and the democratisation of opinion that they have permitted means that critics themselves aren’t immune from being publicly criticised. We can’t possibly complain when this happens: if you give it, you have to be able to take it. Just as we’re not necessarily nice or right, nor are they.
It’s rare for the criticised themselves to fight back publicly, but that’s exactly what Harvey Fierstein – who has written the book and stars in a new Broadway-bound musical version of A Catered Affair, based on a Paddy Chayefsky teleplay that was turned in to a 1956 film starring Bette Davis, Ernst Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds – has done. [Click below to continue reading]
Reviewing its out-of-town try-out in San Diego, LA Times critic Charles McNulty wonders aloud, “Should we really be trawling for such mediocre source material without a sharp revitalizing vision? Chayefsky’s expiration date passed long ago, yet Fierstein serves up the saga as though it were fresh milk.” He concludes, “The stern lesson to take away, however, is that not every movie can — or should — be transformed into a musical. Some, like Chayefsky’s sad-sack dramas, are better left to the wee hours of late-night television, when the flickering images of the past are all we need to distract us from our insomnia.”
Though, as Fierstein points on in his blog on MySpace, “four of the five reviews that I’ve seen are just fabulous”, he doesn’t let the good ones speak for themselves. He decides to answer the bad one (and a certain point that even the good ones raise, too). “In life there is always one badly behaved guest at the party and in this case it was the reviewer from the L.A. Times,” he writes, and continues. “The man begins his piece by telling us that he hates the original film, hates the original teleplay, has no respect or even like for the work of Paddy Chayefsky, dislikes social drama in general, and downright loathes me. He then wastes the rest of his newspaper’s space trying to justify his loathsome opinion. I’m sorry, friends, that’s not reviewing, that’s simply proselytizing.”
Some, of course, have long accused Harvey himself not so much of writing but proselytising gay causes, too – and here he takes issue, too, even with the favourable reviews, that accuse the character he has created for himself of being (in his own words) “post-Stonewall” and therefore “not true to the period of the piece”. Pointing out previous instances where he was, in his opinion, unfairly taken to task – but always turned out to be right – he insists, “I was right because, before I put pen to paper, I do my research. I don’t create just out of my own opinion. Only a lazy intellect assumes that he/she already knows everything about a subject via incidental heresay. Before I write I read, I interview sources, I examine and probe. Only then can I put my name and reputation behind what I write.” In this case, he acknowledges that though the criticisms of the characterisation of his own part were given with good intentions – “The funny part is that these opinions, like most advice, were not given to harm, but to help me make a better piece” – he firmly rejects them: “I tell you ON RECORD that I did my research and I firmly stand behind my portrayal of that character as true and real.” He therefore concludes to the favourable critics, “So, I thank them for their advice, but encourage them to know whereof they speak before prescribing cures”.
It’s all very well to take on your critics. But more worryingly, Fierstein sounds so sure of himself that he won’t listen to anyone. Michael Riedel poses the question in the New York Post, “Is there anything to be gained by attacking a critic?” and answers, “On the one hand, it calls attention to a review that otherwise might have gone unnoticed by theatergoers in New York. On the other, Fierstein’s made sure the theater industry knows that McNulty was the only naysayer in the bunch and, therefore, should not be taken as the final word.” But Fierstein seems to insist on providing his own final word. That’s not necessarily ever a good idea when it comes to journalists.
