NPR art and film critic Bob Mondello joins the Front Row to discuss his passion for the arts and his career at National Public Radio.
When did you know that you had such gifts for arts coverage and for understanding what movies are about, and communicating that?
I don’t know that I know that yet. I love the arts—I love them to pieces—I have since my mother got me out of my first year of high school to go and see the musical “Oliver,” and I discovered that you get out of class to go see the arts, this is fantastic, so I have this love of the arts that goes way back.
Communicating it is something—listen, everybody does this—you come out of a movie you liked and you can’t wait to tell people about it. Well I get to do it to a much bigger audience, but essentially that’s what I’m doing. I get to go out and talk about the things I love.
I’m really privileged at NPR because 400 movies come out every year, I probably see 300 of them, and I get to pick and choose the ones I actually care about. So I do 50 or 60 reviews every year and I mostly to things I can find some kernel of truth in, some interesting factor in, to talk about. That’s kind of great. I don’t have to do the ones I can’t stand, and lord knows there are plenty of those.
Did you feel that the insights that you have, that that was something that you had to develop?
I have no idea. I’m flattered, you’re saying very nice things about what I do. What I do is I go and see movies, just like everybody else does, and I try to find something in them that is interesting. It’s usually not hard to find that kernel that is intriguing about something when the movie is really good, let’s take for instance, Blade Runner, which opened this past weekend, it’s a fabulous picture to watch. It’s got interesting ideas floating around in it. There’s a lot to talk about. You have to be careful not to spoil things for people.
Everybody I talked to said, “I turned you off as soon as you started, and I’ll come back and listen to you later.” But the general drift of how you talk about something is really that I go into it the same way that anybody else does: I watch the film, I try figure out what I would say to somebody afterwards and then I write it down basically and I mix in the sound that works with it. It is not rocket science.
I don’t think I’m a terribly sophisticated person. I have a gift maybe for phrasing, which I’ve developed over time. Trust me this was not true way back when. I was an English major in college. I learned to write and to write for my voice. So after a while, I guess I sound ok. But seriously, you’re being very flattering about what I do. All I really do is talk about the thing I love. I think almost anyone is going to be articulate talking about the thing they love.
Listen to Bob Mondello’s full interview at the top of the article.
