NEW YORK – MARCH 30: Critic Rex Reed attends the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts annual Spring Gala in Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center March 30, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)
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Rex Reed, a longtime New York Observer journalist who gained notoriety with his brutally honest approach to film criticism, has died.
Reed died Tuesday at his Manhattan home after a brief illness, publicist Sean Katz told The Associated Press on behalf of the writer’s friend, William Kapfer. He was 87. Reed’s exact cause of death was not given.
Born Rex Taylor Reed on Oct. 2, 1938, in Fort Worth, Texas, Reed earned his college degree from Louisiana State University in 1960 and wrote for the likes of Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, The Daily News and the New York Post before landing his longtime job at the Observer in 1987.
“I like just as many films as I dislike,” Reed said in a 2018 New York Times interview (via The AP). “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.”
Portrait of American film critic & journalist Rex Reed, in a blazer, cravat, and trousers, as he sits barefoot in a wicker chair, partially in the water, at an unspecified beach, Malibu, California, 1973. (Photo by Ellen Graham/Getty Images)
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Reed was not afraid to speak his mind, no matter the caliber of filmmaker or actor he was critiquing. Some, like Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, considered Reed’s brutal reviews of his films a badge of honor.
“My favorite [criticism of] Mother! is Rex Reed, [of the New York Observer, who] called it the worst movie of the century,” Aronofsky told students during Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & TV lecture in 2017 (via The Hollywood Reporter). “For me, [that] is a victory. I mean, finally I got to the top of the list. You know, he hated Black Swan [which], was an ugly duckling for him.”
Forbes compiled a list of some of Reed’s famous criticisms in October 2023, which included Reed’s torching of such high-profile films as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Killers of the Flower Moon, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future, Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.
Like Aronofsky, del Toro took the criticism of his film with a grain of salt and noted on X the obvious errors Reed made in his review of the film, including with the way he credited him.
Rex Reed’s Criticisms Extended To Individuals Beyond The Screen
Reed was also highly critical of actors’ looks and accomplishments. Among his targets was deaf actress Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar for Best Actress for her turn in the deaf-themed film Children of a Lesser God.
“A day after I won the Oscar, he went ahead and thought he’d tell the world that winning the Oscar for me was the result of a pity vote and that I didn’t necessarily deserve the Oscar because I was a deaf person playing a deaf role, so how is that considered the best?” Matlin told the eponymous host of The Anderson Cooper Show in 2013. “So, obviously, he didn’t understand what acting was all about.”
Despite his caustic criticisms, Reed was looked upon fondly by colleagues including Merlin Curotto, who wrote a tribute to the writer in the Observer on Tuesday.
“I was his editor at the Observer for almost a decade. In that time, he became one of my closest friends — though I suspect he had that effect on more people than anyone realized,” Curotto wrote. “The Rex Reed I knew bore little resemblance to the curmudgeon of popular imagination. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say he was that, but he was so much else besides.”
Rex Reed, Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cinema (Photo by M. Von Holden/WireImage)
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In addition to his more than six decades of reporting, Reed authored eight books and occasionally appeared in films. Most notably, Reed appeared as himself in the Christopher Reeve version of Superman in 1978. In addition, Reed voiced himself in a pair of episodes of the ABC animated comedy series The Critic in 1994 and 1995.
Reed also appeared as a guest on a variety of talk shows throughout the years, hosted by the likes of Joan Rivers, Phil Donahue and Merv Griffin, and made more than two dozen appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Reed also served as a panelist on host Chuck Barris’ game show comedy The Gong Show from 1976 to 1980.