That was the first question I heard after The New York Times hired me as a film critic in the final weeks of 1999. A reporter from Variety found my home phone number and gave me a call — the late-20th-century equivalent of sliding into my DMs.
It was a reasonable thing to ask, and the simple answer was that I was a freelance book critic and youngish father of two small children. I had seen a lot of movies — plenty of people in those days had seen a lot of movies — and reviewed none of them for any publication. I was almost as puzzled as the guy on the phone about my sudden career swerve, and immeasurably more frightened. How could I be vain, dumb or deluded enough to believe that this was a job I could actually do?
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