Biography

Vincent Canby

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Vincent Canby was born on July 27, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer, known for After All (1998), The Irv Kupcinet Show (1953) and Working in the Theatre (1976). He died on September 15, 2000 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

Chief film critic for the New York Times beginning in 1969.
Exposed the practice of advertising agencies, via the New York Times, for using misleadingly edited versions of film reviews to promote certain titles.
Canby never married but was, for many years, the companion of Penelope Gilliatt.
Canby is mentioned several times in the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (2004). His notorious New York Times review of Heaven's Gate (1980) in its original form is singled out as the most damning of its many negative reviews; producer David Field criticizes the decision to withdraw the film and re-edit it as "it was an admission that everybody thought Canby was right". Canby's equally negative review of the shortened movie is quoted later ("like a fat man who's been on a crash diet, thinner but not appreciably different").

[on the rats in Willard (1971)] They are no more scary than fat, friendly hamsters, except for one or two shots when they are seen by the hundreds - and hundreds of anything might be a scary sight, even hundreds of bishops.
Heaven's Gate (1980), which opens today at the Cinema One, fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter (1978), and the Devil has just come around to collect.
Loose Cannons (1990) runs only 94 minutes but goes on for hours and hours and hours.
[reviewing The Hunt for Red October (1990)] The movie finally is never very convincing. Even the special effects aren't great. Mr. Connery, however, wears the movie as if it were a favorite old hat. He makes it look good.
[reviewing Superman (1978)] For me it's as if somebody had constructed a building as tall as the World Trade Center in the color and shape of a carrot. Rabbits might admire it. They might even write learned critiques about it and find it both an inspiration and a reward, while the rest of us would see nothing but an alarmingly large, imitation carrot.

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