Out of the three of them, Seitz has had the most going on in his personal life. His first wife, Jennifer Dawson, died of a heart attack in 2006, prompting Seitz to walk away from doing reviews at the Press. (His last review, an emotional, emphatic rave of “Superman Returns,” is also in the book.) He would go to be the TV critic at New York Magazine and its online counterpart Vulture, as well as become the editor-at-large for this very website. He has gone on to write books on both filmmakers and TV shows.
He would later marry his wife’s sister, Nancy, in 2017, and move to Cincinnati a year later. Unfortunately, Nancy died of cancer earlier this year. These days, he’s been helping his father, jazz pianist Dave Zoller (who was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer in March), produce an album full of covers from Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, as well as work on a documentary that covers his father’s life.
More importantly, Seitz wants it known how much his colleagues were there during that low time in his life. He says, “I love Armond. I love Godfrey. And I’m sure I’m quite aware of everybody who might have a problem with either of them for whatever reason. But they were hugely important to me as colleagues and, also, as mentors of a type. And I found them to be very compassionate towards me as a fellow writer. In fact, both of them were very supportive during that period after I lost Jen, you know. Just because we weren’t writing anymore didn’t mean I never spoke to them.”
And, then, there was Armond.
To say Armond White was the most controversial critic out of this trio would be an understatement. (Seitz says, out of the three of them, White got the most hate mail.) His notoriously contrarian views on films and filmmaking—something that already made him a provocative figure when he was arts editor at The City Sun—was something Cheshire thought would work perfectly on the pages of the Press.
White became the critic readers disagreed with the most—and, yet, couldn’t stop reading. His columns usually went after empty studio junk and overrated films (and filmmakers) that he felt weren’t worth the box-office receipts. (One of my favorite White pieces, which isn’t in the book, had him slamming the hell out of future Oscar winner “American Beauty” while giving a double-rave of Lawrence Kasdan’s “Mumford” and Alan Rudolph’s “Breakfast of Champions.”) Also, as an African-American film critic, he often went after Hollywood for its myriad instances of covert/overt racism.
