Meet the Critics
Myron Meisel

Myron Meisel has been a LAFCA member since 1979. Former editor and publisher of the auteurist magazine FOCUS!, he was the founding film critic for both the Los Angeles READER (1978) and the Chicago READER (1971) and was longtime west coast editor and film critic for The Film Journal. His essays on film have appeared in sixteen books, including MOVIES ON TV, AMERICAN DIRECTORS, DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD, THE MOVIE STAR BOOK and KINGS OF THE B'S: WORKING WITHIN THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM, and in Rolling Stone, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Film, Film Comment, Village Voice, Hollywood Reporter, Boston Phoenix, Los Angeles magazine and Movieline, among many others. He has written monographs for the Museum of Modern Art on Blake Edwards, as well as on John Cassavetes and Michael Curtiz. In 1980 Cahiers du Cinema called Meisel "the best film critic in America", and the Village Voice wrote he was "one of the three best film critics in the U.S. outside New York". His work continues to be reprinted worldwide, has been translated into at least six languages, and quoted or cited in over 1000 books.

MYRON co-directed, wrote and produced “IT'S ALL TRUE: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles" for Paramount Pictures release in 1993 which was awarded "Best Documentary" by the Los Angeles Film Critics and special citations from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences and the National Society of Film Critics. His other movie documentary projects have included the features I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF: A PORTRAIT OF NICHOLAS RAY, THE CHAPLIN PUZZLE (which reconstructed Chaplin’s unreleased first feature) and SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW: HAROLD ARLEN. He produced the laserdisc restoration of Orson Welles' OTHELLO for Criterion (finally released on Blu-Ray in 2019). In addition, he has worked in many different capacities on dozens of feature films.

Myron serves on the board of directors of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. He also received a career award for Excellence in Theater Criticism at the last L.A. Weekly Theater Awards. He began in showbiz in 1962 as a performer and started his professional writing career in 1965.