Still, the power of his position forced him to consider the consequences of his often-glib writing, a requirement he describes as an important boon.

“What made a difference was finding little movies and writing about them...sometimes a small independent movie that couldn’t get an ad in the paper would benefit from the added publicity,” he says.

Nevertheless, Mitchell says that the “grueling” Times schedule had started to wear on him, and he does not plan to return to a regular print schedule very soon.

“I felt like I needed a break,” he says. “I’d been doing it for a long time. It’s not always a 9-to-5.”

LIFE AFTER TIMES

After a lecture during Mitchell’s VES class last year, I lingered with my friend Sarah, chatting with the course’s head TF. Mitchell soon drifted by, and we walked through the light spring day to the Red House, next to Brother Jimmy’s.

Over an appetizer of squid cooked in its ink—which proved rather awful—I discussed comics with Elvis. I told him of my affinity for Alan Moore’s seminal series, Watchmen, and he suggested another book: Frank Miller’s Sin City. As it turns out, the latter was a fantastic comic book and made a pretty good movie.

The man’s got an eye for what movie audiences want, and prospective employers have noticed; Mitchell has been busy in the year since his departure from the Times. He’s been named a consultant for Columbia Pictures, a Sony subsidiary, and will soon begin scouting talent and new films in New York for the studio.

Steve Elzer, the VP for media relations at Columbia, was contacted for this article but declined to comment, citing the need to speak to Mitchell first.

Mitchell also says he’s talking to VH1 about doing some “interview and film-type stuff” for them.

Asked if he would become the next Dee Snyder, the former Twisted Sister frontman turned Behind the Music commentator, Mitchell replied, “No.”

Mitchell has also continued his two radio gigs. He has been the entertainment critic for NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon since the start of the program in 1985, and his nationally-syndicated weekly film talk show, The Treatment, has been running for nearly nine years.

He’s also been omnipresent at film festivals all over the world, “more festivals than I ever knew existed,” he says. For example, he has been named “Guest Curator” for this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, to be held in June.

Many of these appearances include speeches, such as the one he gave while serving on the board at Sundance, which mocked the types of films that the festival tends to favor. He mentioned several elements characteristic of winning Sundance films: “an acoustic guitar playing mournfully,” “actors from every country trying out Southern accents,” “a generically bittersweet rapprochement,” and “a long scene in a car with a lot of talking.”

Asked to name a prototypical Sundance-type plot, he pointed to the works of Arthur Miller. “[He] could have written Sundance movies,” he says. “Death of a Salesman, if you set it in a trailer park, could have been [one].”