When I saw Joan Collins move through the crowd toward Rex Reid, by default, I felt that sickening feeling you get when you’re friends with a famous critic known for mixing unfiltered opinion with unbridled literary taste that — like nuclear fusion — creates a lot of unpredictable energy.
Joan, coiffed and bejeweled, approached with a startling smile and raising a manicured finger toward Rex.
“Hi, Joan,” he said in a Louisiana voice.
She shook her finger and smiled wider.
(Was she crazy?)
“Rex, you naughty boy,” she cooed in British, patting his cheek.
(Yes.)
“I should be so angry with you.”
“Oh, Joan,” he laughed.
She then kisses him while expressing her displeasure at his review of her recent solo evening.
He didn’t think he said anything bad.
(Although there was this line: “You can accuse her of holding on beyond her prime, but if you meet her in a dark alley, bring Mace.”)
Then they hugged. They have been friends since the 1960s.
It was as if I was trapped in a loop strain.
Rex Reed, who died Tuesday at the age of 87, was the last of the great American cultural writers of the 20th century, and was as famous in his own right as the celebrities he often described. He grew up among a class of active literary cultural observers that included Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, and Patricia Bosworth. In publications such as New York Times, Respected, GQ, Vogue magazineand then, for Reid, continued for decades in New York ObserverThey held up a mirror to the zeitgeist of the second part of the American century.
Reed’s profiles of mostly movie stars from Warren Beatty to Marlene Dietrich had literary heft and chemistry that produced dazzling stories at once clever, corny and culturally insightful: pastrami at midnight and the mood of stars filming Barbra Streisand’s first TV special at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (she never spoke to him again); Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the ill-fated film in Rome Cleopatra; And the clinically devastating image of segregationist Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, describing baseball bats that were provided to young workers in fried chicken restaurants, to keep out black customers. (Maddox swore never to speak to a reporter again, much to Reid’s pride.) His first book containing collected writings, Do you sleep naked? It was a bestseller, as were subsequent books.
A handsome movie star, he appeared in the infamous 1970 version of Gore Vidal’s film Myra Breckenridgeplays the male counterpart to transgender Raquel Welch. He sat on a plane with Melina Mercury, hopped into Studio 54 with Liza Minnelli, and maintained lifelong domestic friendships with Golden Age Hollywood stars like June Allyson, Gene Simmons, Polly Bergen, Angela Lansbury, and Ally McGraw.
His writing can be caustic. stubborn. I mean sometimes. He was completely unrepentant. His covenant with his readers was to enlighten and entertain them, and to tell them as he saw it, supported by experience and taste. It wasn’t loyalty to the people or the hundred million dollar movie production he was writing about. He believed that strongly‘What critics do is: supervise the audience.
Not long ago, critics of legacy media wielded great influence. We, on the receiving side, are accustomed to imagining: “Why He does Do we need critics? Why can’t everything be as it is? howlingWhere the audience only evaluates what they like?
Spoiler alert. The world Rex leaves is a world surrounded by everyone speaking their opinions and truth directly to everyone else. Influencers whose qualifications are the number of people they convince to follow them. Critics are no longer the guardians of box office or sales. Experience is out. Treating your specific medical condition is in. Be careful what you wish for.
Deborah Grace Weiner is a culture writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Town & Country, and numerous other publications. The Wall Street Journal named her book about lyric poet Dorothy Fields one of the five best books about American songwriters. I have known Rex Reed for over three decades.
