THE LAST GREAT FILM CRITIC

There are certain voices you never expect to hear on your voicemail. Rex Reed was one of them.

The first time he called me from The Dakota in New York City, I remember thinking: this cannot possibly be my life.

This was Rex Reed.

The Rex Reed.

The man I had watched on television growing up. The critic I had read in the pages of magazines during the great era of Esquire, New York magazine and the infamous pink newspaper now only available online, The Observer.

The sharp-tongued, impossibly witty film critic with the Southern drawl, the larger-than-life personality and the unmistakable prose style that could either elevate an actor into immortality or leave them crawling for cover.

When I first began publishing Mr. Reed nearly 15 years ago in Sheridan Road magazine, I was honestly somewhat stunned that I was even speaking to him. What began in our regional luxury magazines soon became a regular weekly presence in The North Shore Weekend, where his reviews appeared for many of the final years of his life alongside The Observer.

Even after years of working together, I never called him Rex. To me, he was always Mr. Reed.

I still find it extraordinary that one of the most famous film critics in America became part of the weekly rhythm of this newspaper.

I also consider it one of the great privileges of my publishing career.

Mr. Reed was exactly who you hoped he would be.

He left long voicemails. He called to discuss layouts, deadlines, Toronto screenings, photographs, and illustrations. Once he emailed me to say a caricature we ran made him look like “a chinless wonder,” before quickly adding that it reminded him fondly of the old caricatures from Esquire magazine “of years ago.”

That was Mr. Reed.

Even his complaints were wonderfully written.

And beneath the famous wit and acerbic reputation was something else many people never saw: a deeply sentimental man who never stopped caring about the work.

As his health declined in recent years, the emails and voicemails became increasingly personal. There were broken bones, blood transfusions, surgeries, falls, computer disasters, and endless apologies for delayed copy.

“Seven weeks in bed and I’m almost out of my mind,” he said in one voicemail after breaking his ankle. And then, almost immediately: “I’m going to try to have something for you tomorrow.”

As I write this more than a week after his passing on May 12 at age 87, that sentence says more to me now than almost anything else.

Mr. Reed never stopped being a working writer.

Even while aging, hurting, and increasingly isolated, he still cared deeply about the next review, the next issue, the next deadline, and whether the photo beside his column properly captured the actor he was writing about.

I once watched an old Dick Cavett interview with Jerry Lewis, who had just endured several brutal reviews for a recent film. Cavett asked him who he considered a fair critic. Without hesitation, Lewis answered—Rex Reed. Not only fair, he said, but the best critic he had ever read.

That always stayed with me.

Because despite the reputation, despite the controversies, and despite the sharp opinions, people who truly loved movies understood that Rex Reed did too.

And perhaps that is what I will miss most. Not simply the reviews, but the voice itself.

The long messages. The theatrical complaints. The stories. The opinions. The humor. The humanity underneath all of it.

In an age where so much writing feels cautious, anonymous, and forgettable, Rex Reed remained unmistakably Rex Reed to the very end.

And what an honor it was to publish him.