A Broad’s Laugh: On Pauline Kael by Richard Kramer (Los Angeles Review of Books)

And there was one more moment between us. She called me. She was in the hospital, although she didn’t say that. Her voice was weak, this writer whose voice was always so strong, all brass section, all parade. ‘What will become of all of you?’ she asked. ‘What will you do with no good movies?’ How do you answer that? I tried to keep it cheery. ‘Have you heard about this movie In the Bedroom?’ I had seen that, a few weeks earlier. It was the first movie that came to mind. ‘Oh, someone sent it to me,’ she said. For a moment she sounded like herself, confident, more than a little bossy, sexy in her very personal way.’It’s just a piece of shit, honey. That’s all it is. That’s all anything is, mostly.’ Then I could hear her starting to fade. ‘Except for Sissy Spacek, of course. Who has ever been like her? Or Diane Keaton! Or Streisand, in Yentl. God, I adored that strange girl in Carrie —’