Matt Zoller Seitz: "I'm Out"
Matt Zoller Seitz, who we featured last week as part of our regular series "Behind the Blog," has announced that he is to quit print journalism. Seitz, who is the founder of the highly respected group blog The House Next Door, was the second-string film critic at The New York Times but has now decided to give up print criticism in favor of becoming a filmmaker. The news comes exactly two years after the tragic death of Seitz's wife, Jennifer Dawson, who produced Seitz's debut feature as writer-director, Home.
Over at The House Next Door, you can either read, stream, or download a conversation between Seitz and his friend and co-editor at The House, Keith Uhlich, in which they discuss Seitz's decision to quit his reviewing gig. Here's an extract:
"Well, the short of it is: I'm out of print criticism. I've been thinking about it for a while and for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I've been doing it for seventeen years now as of May of this year... I've always enjoyed it, but I just don't want to do it anymore. Part of the reason for that is that I don't write as quickly as I used to and I don't have as much time to do it as I used to. But the more important thing is that, according to the actuarial tables, I'm probably about halfway through my life, if I'm lucky. And there's a lot of things that I would like to do, and I haven't done them yet. And I want to get started on it."
Uhlich will be taking over from Seitz as the main curator at The House Next Door, but Seitz will continue to contribute to the site though his efforts will mainly be focused on a film he is making this summer "with a lot of special effects, green screens, miniatures, sort of taking me back to my childhood, I guess. It involves puppets and stuffed animals, and it's sort of a chance for me to indulge my fantasy of being George Lucas and Jim Henson at the same time." He will be shooting the film in Dallas in July and August, so if you'd like to help out with the production you should email Matt [reeling AT aol DOT com] to offer your services.
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