Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is an American journalist and Critic at Large for the New York Times. Morris is a former full-time writer for the website Grantland. He won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his 2011 work with The Boston Globe--the fifth film critic to win the award--citing "his smart, inventive film criticism, distinguished by pinpoint prose and an easy traverse between the art house and the big-screen box office"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCritic
CountryUnited States of America
views interpretation
Anything produced and then exhibited for public view is open to interpretation.
art book pieces
A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.
people rooms bunch
I love to go to the movies with people, but a lot of the time it's me in a room with a bunch of other movie critics, which is fine.
nice gauges needs
I don't need the audience, but sometimes it's nice to have a gauge - not so I know how I feel, but so I get what is or isn't working for moviegoers.
views voice important
I just have to be able to follow and enjoy the writer's voice and the writer's point of view. Liking what the person has to say is not really important to me.
criticism social critics
I like Nora Ephron. She wasn't a critic in the strictest sense of the word, but she did a lot of social criticism. She was so funny and so in the right place at the right time.
sad-love gay two
Brokeback Mountain is a sad love story about two people who can't be together, and the reason that they can't be together is because being gay is a stigmatized thing. It would be interesting to have the same movie in which the two guys weren't in the closet and there was no shame about them being gay and they couldn't be together for other reasons. I still feel like we're a long way from that happening.
thinking people looks
Ultimately the social change has to come from the people who make the movies, so the people who make the movies have to look at the landscape and say to themselves, "Well, you know, these things are changing, and I'm okay with their having changed, and I think it's okay to start reflecting those changes through the movies we make."
caring thinking people
I don't see a lot of studio executives caring at all about what the culture is telling us. They think they make the culture. They're not out taking the temperature of things and using the results of whatever sort of cultural surveying they're doing to make movies. They're interested in doing things that people are already comfortable with, and taking those properties and filling them.
responsibility way addresses
I do feel a responsibility to address things that are problematic, but I don't have to go out of my way to do that.