The story goes that Wes Anderson, a lifelong fan of film critic Pauline Kael, arranged a private screening of “Rushmore” for the retired film critic in early 1998.
Kael was polarized by the film. Here’s what Anderson wrote in a 1999 New York Times piece he penned himself: “I was a little disappointed by Kael’a reaction to the movie […] I genuinely don’t know what to make of this movie,” she said, and I felt like she meant it.”
According to a 1999 Salon piece, Kael did actually like the film and told others to go see it.
Wes Anderson was on The Hatchards Podcast in London. He spoke about the Kael meeting and how he’s still not sure if she actually liked Rushmore:
I went to meet her and screened “Rushmore,” she didn’t really love it. With her sense of humor, it seemed more fun for her to keep me on my toes. I don’t think she hated it, but she definitely didn’t love it.
Anderson mentioned how he started reading her New Yorker reviews in the 10th grade, and how her books were a guide to finding the right movies to watch and learn about filmmakers:
I was less interested in hearing what she hated. I’m more interested in the things she turned me on to. She panned “Tender Mercies” and “Badlands,” movies that I love, but in her reviews of “Casualties of War,” a movie I love, she compared it to “Grande Illusion,” “Shoeshine,” “The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith.” I love De Palma, I don’t think “Casualties of War” is his best movie, but I’d never seen “Grande Illusion” and Shoeshine.” I met Kael once and that’s when I told her that her De Palma review got me to watch “Grande Illusion,” and she said “that’s what I like to hear.
Anderson then tackled Kael’s insistence to never watch a movie twice. It’s well known that she considered her first reaction as always the one fit to print.
Kael has said that the her first reaction was the truest one, with all senses reacting together to something wholly fresh that was being seen on-screen. After that, the film lost its spontaneous value. Anderson somewhat disagrees:
I love going back to watching a movie again. The thing about Pauline Kael is that she never watched a movie twice. The only odd thing to me about that is wouldn’t you want to see it again? I’ve seen some movies so many times that I can’t watch them anymore because it sort of becomes boring. I love to go into the space of the movie, to enter it, but you when you know what’s going to happen, I get that. Maybe she was such an attentive, focused audience member with great memory that she could practically just watch it again in her mind.
Movies are first and foremost a sensual medium, and Kael wanted her reviews to reflect that immediate quality. She was about "the gut". It was about how a film made her feel. Maybe she should have given “Rushmore” a second shot, it does get better with repeat viewings.