Frank Rich
(born June 2, 1949) is a liberal New York Times
columnist who focuses on American politics and popular culture. His column ran on the front page of the Sunday Arts & Leisure section from 2003 to 2005; it now appears in the expanded Sunday Week in Review section.
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FRANK RICH TICKETS
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Early career
Rich graduated from
Harvard in 1971, where he was editorial chairman of the
Harvard Crimson
, studied American History and Literature, and lived in
Lowell House. Before joining the
New York Times
in 1980, he was a film critic for
Time
.
Theater criticism
Rich first garnered attention from the theatre community with a lengthy essay about the
Stephen Sondheim musical
Follies
he wrote for the
Harvard Crimson
during its pre-Broadway run in Boston. In his unusually astute study of the work, he predicted the legendary status
[vague] the show eventually would achieve, and the article "fascinated" director
Harold Prince and "absolutely intrigued" Sondheim, who invited the undergraduate to lunch to discuss further his feelings about the production.
[1]
Rich's theater reviews were collected in the book
Hot Seat,
published in 1998. One of the running themes in the book is his attempt to disprove the popular perception of the power of the chief drama critic of the
New York Times
. In an addendum, he lists a dozen or more shows which racked up long runs despite his negative reviews, as well as many shows that got raves from him but didn't last more than a few weeks.
Media and political criticism
Rich writes regularly for the
New York Times
(and thus the
International Herald Tribune
) on the mass media and public relations, particularly on their coverage of US national politics. He makes regular references to a broad range of popular culture — including television, movies, theater, and literature — and draws connections to politics and current events. In a January 2006 appearance on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
, commenting on the
James Frey memoir scandal, he expanded on his usage in his column of the term "
truthiness" to summarize a variety of parallel ills in culture and politics.
[2]In 2005, Rich received the
George Polk Award [3] given annually by
Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting.
Rich wrote the book
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina
, which criticized the American media for its support of the
George W. Bush administration's policies following the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
As a political commentator, Rich is often criticized by
Bill O'Reilly, host of
The O'Reilly Factor
on
Fox News Channel. Rich is openly critical of Fox News, accusing it of having a
conservative bias.
[4] O'Reilly cites Rich's 2007 award from the
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) as proof of his bias.
[5] On his radio broadcast of
April 16,
2007, O'Reilly called Rich a hypocrite for having accused
Mel Gibson of
anti-semitism.
In 2004, Rich dismissed
Mel Gibson's film
The Passion of the Christ,
as "nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots", and praised
Christopher Hitchens' description of it as "a homoerotic 'exercise in lurid sadomasochism' for those who 'like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.'"
[6]
The October 14, 2007
Times
featured
Stephen Colbert guest-writing most of
Maureen Dowd's column. In that article, Colbert satirically wrote: "Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all
George Bush’s fault,
the vice president is
Satan, and
God is
gay. There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too."
[7]
Personal life
Rich is married to Alexandra Witchel, who also writes for the
New York Times
, and has two sons (including humorist
Simon Rich) from his previous marriage to Gail Winston. He lives in
Manhattan. In 2000 he published the memoir
Ghost Light
where he chronicled his childhood through to his college years in 1950s
Maryland with a focus on his lifelong adoration of the theatre and the impact it had on his life.
In the late 1990s, he met
Alan Conway, a
con artist pretending to be
Stanley Kubrick, and arranged to interview him, believing Conway to be the famous film director. Upon contacting
Warner Brothers, however, Rich discovered that the man he met was an impostor. The incident is dramatised in the 2006 film
Colour Me Kubrick
, in which Rich is portrayed by
William Hootkins.
Books
- The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson.
ISBN 0394529138.
- Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993.
1998. ISBN 0-679-45300-8.
- Ghost Light: A Memoir.
2000. ISBN 0-375-75824-0.
- The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.
ISBN 1-59420-098-X.
References
- Chapin, Ted, ''Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies''. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2003. ISBN 0-375-41328-6 pp. 116, 193-95
- http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/oprahshow2_ss_20060126/4
- George Polk Awards for Journalism press release
- This Time Bill O'Reilly Got It Right
- Patti LaBelle, Tom Ford, Kate Clinton Honored at 18th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York
- "Mel Gibson Forgives Us For His Sins", ''New York Times,'' 7 March 2004.
- A Mock Columnist, Amok