'Life of movie critic isn't always boffo,' Sept. 15, 1989

"The Critic"

"Outtakes" movie column

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner

"You must enjoy the trash of so many movies you can't recognize wholesome entertainment when you see it. ... I don't place much value on your reviews."

That letter arrived after I panned a relentlessly bad film aimed at family audiences called "On Our Own." These kinds of letters come in the mail every so often. The other kind, the ones in which people say they appreciate what you write, pass my way about as often as Halley's comet. It comes with the territory, I suppose. When you write opinions in a business concerned primarily with facts, you're bound to take lumps.

Misconceptions abound concerning the business of journalism -- a broad enough word, I think, to cover movie criticism. No matter what, people will always believe reporters are biased, left-wing Commie sympathizers. They also assume we'll go for the sensational over the mundane at every opportunity.

Welcome to The Occasional Critic

For 11 years -- 1985-96 -- I was the film and TV writer/critic for the Standard-Examiner newspaper in Ogden, Utah. I wrote a LOT of movie reviews, columns and interviews/profiles of filmmakers during that time.

My children were too young at the time to 1) be interested in what Dad did for a living, so I've decided to risk 2) they still won't be interested. My plan is to collect some of what I did over the years, at random, so they can see what the old man did to put food on the table -- something precious few people are still able to do in daily journalism as it exists today.

Also, since I left journalism in 2008, I wrote a monthly movie review for The Ogden Independent for about a year -- an alternative newspaper founded and edited by my old pal Steve Conlin. I've dropped a few of those reviews in here, too.

Who knows, maybe I'll discover fairly quickly I'm not interested in reading these things either. For the time being, I'm committed to clogging up space on the 'Net.