Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis is in the building. Or at least he is, metaphorically, in the Harvard building. This spring, Elvis Mitchell is a visiting lecturer on African and African American studies and on visual and environmental studies. In that capacity, he is teaching Afro-American Studies 183, “The African-American Experience in Film: 1930-1970” and Visual and Environmental Studies 173x, “American Film Criticism.” What makes this guy so special? Well, besides his quick and ready wit and encyclopedic understanding of the media world, Mitchell is currently one of the three head movie critics for The New York Times and is the entertainment critic of NPR’s “Morning Edition with Scott Simon.” Mitchell’s resume also includes a gig as the host of the Independent Film Channel’s “Independent Focus,” on-going freelance writing for Rolling Stone and part-time work as a production executive at Paramount Studios. He also has an amusing admiration for Pootie Tang.
1.Let’s start with the obvious: Why did you decide to teach at Harvard?
Well, the answer is just as obvious: Because I was asked. I’ve been asked to go to a couple of places before. I’ve been asked to go to the [University of Texas at] Austin, and that was just too big a trip to get back and forth to do that, but it was something I’ve been getting nibbles about since, basically, a few months after I got hired at The [New York] Times, and I just wanted to wait until the time was right. I met [DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr.] in London in the Summer of 2001 and was invited to do the Alain [LeRoy] Locke lectures, and after that he just asked me what my interest level would be, and we just worked something out.
2. Can you explain Zabreski Point?
Can I? Yes. Will I? No. Work it out for yourself.
3. That’s quite a movie.
Hey, I had [my class] watching Last Year at Marienbad. Some things you just gotta go, “What?” You just gotta jump in and get yourself as wet as possible.
4.Are there any deserving people you think were ignored at the Oscars this year?
Yeah, I certainly do. I thought that Raising Victor Vargas was one of my favorite movies of last year. That definitely deserved some real attention, and I thought for sure, had it made enough money, which meant, had it been promoted right, it would have gotten an Oscar Nomination for best Original Screenplay, because it’s a great screenplay. It’s a really beautifully realized and lived in piece of filmmaking.
5. You have really impressive hair. What hair-care products do you use?
Well, you caught me with my pants down on that one. Umm, Kiehls. I like Kiehls stuff. It works really great for me.
6.Where does the name Elvis come from?
My mother loved Elvis Presley. I incidentally have a twin sister, and I’m not making this up—Lisa. She’s older, so she got the better name.
7. What’s your favorite film festival and why?
Toronto. One thing I like about Toronto, and I’ve been going for a long time, is that people from the city of Toronto go to the festival. It’s a real film lover’s city. It’s not like something like Sundance where people need to get a really expensive pass, and people come from around the country really to do business there. Toronto is a festival in a city for movie lovers, and I love just being in line with people, talking to them about what they’ve seen. It’s a way you can really immerse yourself into a film festival—stand in line with people, find out what’s exciting for them and go to those movies.
8. What movies of the next year are you looking forward to?
Oh, yeah, there’s always something. I have to say, I’m really looking forward to Kill Bill Vol. 2. All the terrible twos I guess. I’m looking forward to the second Spider Man movie. It’s got one of my favorite villains in it—Dr. Octopus. I think this summer is gonna be fun. I’m a sucker for the big summer pictures, and that balance is pretty great to me. And who knows what the surprises are gonna be at Cannes this year, with Quentin Tarantino on the Jury. It should be a very interesting year.
9.Who are your heroes, generally?
My dad’s one of my heroes. He’s a big hero for me. I wrote a piece about him for Fashions of the Times, the [New York] Times Sunday magazine. He worked two full-time jobs. He left the house when it was dark and came home when it was dark—in winter and summer, it didn’t matter. He worked so I could do what I wanted to do. He is a really heroic figure to me and never complained about work a day in his life, and is, at this point, the happiest retired person in the history of retirement. That’s my idea of heroism.
10. Who are your favorite directors?
Boy, there are so many of them. I like the Coen Brothers. I like directors who work a lot, who are basically improving constantly. I thought it was a great year for women directors last year. Niki Caro did such an amazing thing with Whale Rider last year. I could sit here forever and name directors. I mean, all the Coppolas. I think Sofia did a spectacular, truly intimate comedy drama, which, I think, is incredibly hard to pull off. In its way, it feels like a real behavior version of a Billy Wilder movie, which is, I think, incredibly remarkable to be loose-limbed, and yet be about a depth of feeling you don’t really expect a comedy starring Bill Murray to potentially have.
11.What types of movies do you find most fun to watch?
That’s easy—good ones. Good ones are the most fun to watch.
12.What are the worst movies you’ve seen this year, and what’s makes them bad?
I think the fool’s-gold standard has to be Battlefield Earth. It’s like watching the world’s most expensively mounted high school dinner theater play. That one’s pretty hard to top.
13. What makes a good or bad movie?
I think work. Although, in the end, people work just as hard to make a good movie as a bad movie, and you don’t want to be too glib about it because it does represent a huge chunk of time and money. The same ten hours you spent watching those movies [Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, The Postman and Wyatt Earp], people spent a lot more than that trying to get those movie made, and you know how heartbreaking that can be.
14. What makes a good movie review?
Okay, honesty. You can’t be disingenuous. You have to step up and say: This is what this movie is, this is why it works or doesn’t work, this is why I like it if it doesn’t work, it works and I don’t like it. You have to be honest about who you are, and that means admitting you have huge blind spots for a certain kind of movie and there are other kinds of movies you are almost actually allergic to but you gotta fess up to that. I can tell you a movie I
thought was funny—I wouldn’t say it was any good, but I thought it was funny—Pootie Tang. I laughed a lot at that movie, and I admitted it in the piece, and you can make your case for it, but you can’t say the movie’s
any good, I mean in any conventional sense.
15. Does being African-American influence the way you see films?
It influences everything in my life, of course it influences the way I see movies. You know, I can still step outside in New York and not get a cab, and so am I not gonna go to a movie theater and see a bad movie because
the cab driver didn’t stop for me? That’s entirely possible, I mean race affects everybody. It affects the way movies get made, it affects casting and my experiences in this country has affected everything I do, including seeing movies.
