20. Martin Scorsese (film director, historian, and preservationist):
“What is [film] criticism? That’s a question. I don’t know. It’s a hard job. Sometimes you can’t see the film if you’re too close to it, if you have your face pressed against the screen. It’s hard to get the broad overview of a film. It’s like trying to see the whole battlefield. You [critics] are the foot soldiers.”

19. Thelma Schoonmaker (film editor), on Scorsese:
“He was in fine form today. You’re very lucky. The Oscar loosened something in him.”

18. Dave Hickey (art critic), as seen in Chris Petit’s 1999 film “Negative Space”:
“The difference between high art and low art is about nothing but the audience. So when Manny [Farber] looks at a movie, no matter what it is, it’s fucking high art.”

17. Esther Iverem (critic and author), on Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It“:
“I really felt like that film was made for me–painting me in a sensitive, human way.”

16. Donna Daniels (publicist), on the disproportionate number of female publicists:
“A publicist is a nurturer, and nurturing just comes naturally to women.”

15. Sam Sifton (New York Times culture editor), looking at the list of people who participated in the Institute’s panel discussion of film publicity:
“Ms. Daniels, Ms. [Diana] Loomis, and Ms. [Cynthia] Swartz–I’ll bet they’re a treat.”

14. Mark Urman (TH!NKFilm), on campaigning for actors’ awards:
“When it’s Ryan Gosling [to promote], that’s one thing: He doesn’t need much grooming; he doesn’t want much grooming. But if you’re shlepping Penelope Cruz hither and tither, bringing her anywhere near a camera, the hair and makeup [cost] is $5,000 just for her to say ‘Hello’ to anyone other than her nanny.”

13. Urman:
“It’s hideous to me that someone living in Sodom and Gomorrah can see a movie on a studio backlot–or in Indiana–and then write a review in a New York paper. And don’t even get me started on blogs. I’m fond of saying, ‘Blogs aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.’”

12. Stephanie Zacharek (Salon), on the blog revolution:
“You feel like there are a million bloggers out there gunning for your job.”

11. Rachel Boynton (documentarian):
“You [critics] need to get a dose of reality here. You guys are some of the most powerful people around! The only publicity I get is from people like you!”

10. Richard Pena (New York Film Festival):
“When [the Times] sends Larry Van Gelder to review ‘Flowers of Shanghai,’ it’s like, ‘Why not just send the delivery guy?’”

9. Scorsese:
“Repertory [cinema] is gone, more or less. It’s gone.”

8. Dave Kehr (film critic), asked for advice on how to persuade studios to restore, release, and preserve vintage titles:
“What can you do? Well, you can write a letter to [Universal Studios president and COO] Ron Meyer and tell him what an idiot he is.”

7. Frederick Elmes (director of photography), on the differences between film and DV:
“Oh, boy. It’s a complicated world these days.”

6. Urman, on the difficulty of marketing transgressive films in Peoria:
“The Christians, they’re very smart. They’re not gonna get you publicity like they did in the old days.”

5. Slavoj Žižek (cultural theorist and film critic), as seen in “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”:
“When we spectators are sitting in a movie theater, looking at the screen–at the very beginning, before the picture is on, [when] it’s a black, dark screen–are we basically not staring into a toilet bowl and waiting for things to reappear out of the toilet? Is this entire magic of spectacle showed on the screen not a kind of deceptive view, trying to conceal the fact that we are basically watching shit?”

4. Manny Farber (film critic), as seen in “Negative Space”:
“The millennium doesn’t interest me that much. Something is gonna destroy half the earth. The end is inevitable anyway.”

3. David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image):
“Well, these [panel discussions] have been pretty depressing. I’m very pleased to announce that tomorrow we’ll be having a therapist come in.”

2. Mel Brooks (as heard in Ernest Pintoff’s animated short “The Critic” from 1963):
“I don’t know much about psychoanalysis, but I’d say this is a dirty picture.”

1. Diane Kaiser Koszarski (author), on biographical subject William S. Hart:
“I think he’s hot.”

Honorable Mention:

Warrington Hudlin (filmmaker):
“Your challenge as critics is to make sure your cultural reference point goes beyond America.”

Michael Atkinson (film critic), to Rachel Boynton:
“How can you not have an agenda? As a writer, I would say the politics come first–particularly with documentaries. The agenda should be: Pay attention to the truth. Pay attention the bodies on the ground.”

Boynton:
“It’s not wise for a filmmaker to argue with a critic.”

Stuart Klawans (film critic), on his style of reviewing:
“I’m always pushing form rather than content in ‘The Nation’–because that’s what I think those readers need. The first priority for me is to entertain.”

Scorsese to film critic Pablo Villaça, who’d said that the director’s work had inspired him to quit medical school and devote himself exclusively to cinema:
“You should’ve become a doctor! What’s the matter with you [laughing]? Kids these days!”

Pena:
“If Cambridge, Massachusetts, can’t support [repertory cinema], who can?”

Scorsese:
“The film enthusiast can make [his] own repertory. I spent a lot of time recently looking at Shohei Imamura: ‘Vengeance is Mine,’ ‘The Insect Woman.’ And ‘The Pornographers’: That one, after the fourth viewing, I thought, ‘Okay, finally–I’m there now. I get it.’ I always think of Imamura’s films as being like a slap in the face–like, ‘Look! Over here! Right over here in the gutter!’”

Peter Scarlet (Tribeca Film Festival):
“Basically, we [festival programmers] are like glorified drug pushers–we meet the kids in the schoolyard, start ‘em on the soft stuff, get ‘em hooked, and pretty soon we become their regular suppliers.”

Karen Cooper (Film Forum):
“I hate to make it sound like a porno theater, but we run a grindhouse!”

Rochelle Slovin (Museum of the Moving Image), on the film museum as institution:
“What is the necessity of the fetishized object? Where is the space for the nonfetishized museum, especially when [film] is a commercial medium? That’s at the heart of what my own personal conundrum has been. When you [critics] are writing your feature pieces about your favorite movies and you‘re talking about Dorothy’s red slippers and Fonzie’s jacket, you have to go further and ask yourself: ‘What is my relationship to this stuff?’”

Michael Lynne (New Line Cinema):
“When [a film] is bad, we kinda know. We’re not stupid.”

Atkinson:
“The intent [of the filmmaker] is more or less irrelevant. What counts is what comes out [on the screen].”

Scarlet:
“If you’re the maker of a foreign film and you accept an invitation to go to Sundance, it’s a little like getting a last-minute reservation at a trendy restaurant. You get a nice dish for you and your companion, you wear something sexy, but it turns out you’re seated at the tiny table right next to the restroom. I won’t even get into the aromas and whatnot.”

Scorsese:
“I wish everybody liked all my movies. They don’t. That’s life.”