CHARLES TAYLOR CUT LOOSE FROM "SALON"

As Matt Zoller Seitz reported in his column in the New York Press yesterday, Charles Taylor, senior film critic for the online magazine Salon, has been fired. Seitz writes:

"What the fuck was Salon thinking when it fired Charles Taylor, intellectually serious film critic and one of the finest, funniest wordsmiths in American journalism? Will Salon, a haven for provocative criticism and fresh cultural commentary, now become yet another unpaid arm of the entertainment business, serving up "features" that are actually long, snarky ads for the latest movies?"

Good, provocative questions for a magazine that prides itself, and advertises itself, on its independent voice, on being beholden to no special interests or agendas. A quick Google search provides no information on the situation, and several questions remain unanswered. What kind of further changes does this firing signal for the tone and depth of Salon's Arts and Entertainment coverage? Can Stephanie Zacharek's similar seriousness as Salon's remaining senior film critic suddenly be interpreted as a big red target on her back? And can Taylor, whose ideas I've sparred with on this site more than once, but who clearly belongs to a rich and thinning tradition of intellectually challenging yet accessible American film criticism, find a place that will regularly allow him the creative freedom and the simple opportunity to provide the kind of top-notch criticism both cineastes and serious filmgoers can appreciate? I've taken issue with Taylor's opinions and approaches to recent films such as Sideways and Million Dollar Baby. But he's also one of the only critics who wrote seriously and thoughtfully about such films as Femme Fatale, Out of Time and Shanghai Knights, honestly assessing their pleasures and their particular artistries when other writers clearly couldn't be bothered. And though I haven't yet revisited the movie myself, his passionate argument in favor of Showgirls, upon the release of its deluxe DVD edition earlier this year, was a provocative, old-school dust-'em-up, a challenge to smug tastemakers and weary audiences to be open to the possibilities in reevaluating an almost universally reviled specimen of trashy cinema. Whether he's right or wrong about Showgirls is almost beside the point. It was just nice to have someone with that sort of forum even pose the argument, and pose it in such a vital, readable and entertaining fashion.

If anyone has any information on the Taylor firing, I'd love to be linked to some resources that I could pass along. When good, even great writers get dumped by newspapers and high-profile Internet magazines in favor of syndicated "reviewers" and other dumbed-down entertainment press operatives, it's cause for alarm, one more membrane of the critic's independent voice that separates filmgoers from studio-generated publicity masquerading as journalism peeled away and discarded. Wherever Taylor surfaces, and my kneejerk hope is that he quickly will, that publication will be lucky to have him within their pages. I only hope that if they're smart enough to hire him, they'll be smart enough to resist the pressures of the culture and the marketplace and let him do the valuable work that he does alongside the best of American film critics.