Kiss Kiss Bang Bang!

Hi everybody!
Just came up with an idea for a children's Santa Claus book; more on that, later!
I finally came across a copy of KISS KISS BANG BANG by Pauline Kael, and am reminded of what a complete film critic she was.
The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael was actually bron in California. She was preceeded in film criticism by novelist Graham Greene, and her contemporary competition was Andrew Sarris, but in short order Kael became the nation's pre-imminent film critic. Kael brought vigorous, exhaustive and compulsive discipline to an ill-defined art.
In KISS KISS BANG BANG, Kael actually observed the whole process of putting the film THE GROUP (1966) together. In Kael's capable hands, it's like watching the scene in WITNESS when the Amish are putting up a barn from scratch. But Kael adds in slave labor, termite-ridden wood, rusty nails, splinters; in short, she de-glamorizes arguably the most glamorous industry ever.
Kael was not a perfect critic: she completely conflates the successes of BONNIE AND CLYDE, for example. However, few critics could articulate the glories of 1930s B movies while extolling the virtues of 1960s renegade filmmakers with more evident flourish than our lady Kael.
She tries to explain what happened to the careers of Marlon Brando and Orson Welles, but self-destructiveness has its' own tragic logic.
I cherish all of Kael's books and cannot recommend them enough!
Too tired to keep on rambling: gotta go! Be good!
Brad