Why I Write
The short answer? Blame Kim Newman.
If you’re an As Luck Would Have It regular, you’ll know of the immense influence the BBC’s Moviedrome series had upon me both as a film fan and as someone who writes about movies. Much though I owe to Alex Cox, Nick Freand-Jones and Mark Cousins, these gentlemen aren’t the only reason I decided to take the road less travelled. At least one other man can take the credit/blame for convincing Richard Matthew Goodwin Luck that a career as a film critic might be fun. His name? Kim Newman.
As someone who’d read Empire pretty much since its launch and whom occasionally cast an eye over Sight & Sound, I knew of Kim and was a fan of his entertaining , hugely informed reviews. But there was one piece in particular that won me around to the idea of writing about films for living; an essay in Empire’s ‘anthology of new film writing’, Movie Heaven
A superb - if financially ruinous - free gift (the editor Philip Thomas would later tell me the magazine lost a bundle on this little book), 1995’s Movie Heaven featured essays by the writer/director Philip Ridley, the Labour MP Gerald Kaufmann and the then piping hot Nick Hornby. Several EMAP regulars were also involved, including Tom Hibbert, Mark Ellen, Andrew Collins and Kim James Newman.
Kim’s piece, Tales Of The Overeducated Underemployed: Learning To Write About Films For Money, was an account of his apprenticeship as a movie critic. The countless rejection letters, the all-too-occasional opportunities to work, the dire films one’s obliged to cover on account of being a junior - Kim covered it all, together with tales about the difficulty of heating a god-awful flat plus the headaches that can arise if one your neighbours nicks your giro.
An unromantic look at a unusual career choice, you may already have guessed that, almost as soon I finished Kim’s article, I decided that a film critic’s life was for me!
And you know what? It was all pretty much as Kim said it would be. For a while, I kept a file of my rejection letters, only to bin it once the contents ran to three figures. I also wrote for a raft of titles that lasted but one or two issues; I had whole pages of feature ideas ripped off by people whose lack of class didn’t even run to a rejection letter, and - just like my hero - I took to walking into town to see films so I could throw the bus fare away on such luxuries as electricity.
And then, after years of having my face pressed up against the glass, the pane shattered and the pain disappeared. For a good 15 years, writing wasn’t only a good living but it allowed me to visit a range of countries and to meet people who, like Kim, had had a profound affect on me.
Speaking of Kim, though I’ve seen him at any number of screenings and events, I’ve never gone over to him to explain precisely how much he and that essay mean to me. This is in large part because the pair of us have watched far too many films and are well aware that, if someone comes up to you and says you changed their life, there next move is usually to pull a gun.
Overeducated? Maybe. Underemployed? Certainly. But regretful? About writing for a living? Not in the slightest. Now if I could just travel back in time to have a word with Tim Berners Lee about the ramifications of the World Wide Web on the lot of the freelance journalist…
Hello Richard, we've never met but move in the same circles somewhat (being both Movie people and wrestling when the time suits). Just wanted to say that Kim's essay is also EXACTLY the reason I became a critic (well that and a few other things), The whole 'prepared to write about things that other people wouldn't' sort of appealed to me. Andrew Collins piece about disaster movies in that same volume also affected me (though my brain could be wrong on that the actual piece....)