In Memoriam: David Ehrenstein

(1947 – 2025)

It was quite a while ago when I realized how long it had been since I saw David Ehrenstein on Facebook, so far as I knew the last redoubt of his online presence. Afterward, over a length of time I’m too ashamed to estimate, sometimes I’d think, “Where is David? Why isn’t he commenting anywhere anymore, this isn’t like him.” I thought about trying to run him down, or quietly messaging to see if my friends had heard from him. But some sort of anxiety or hesitation stopped me. What if he didn’t want to talk to me, what if he was angry, etc.?

So if you read no further, if you get nothing else out of this post, I want to say: That friend who’s disappeared from the web, the one you miss but hesitate to contact? Do it, get in touch. Find out where they are and how they are. I tell you this because the witty, erudite film critic David Ehrenstein died early yesterday, and I hadn’t talked to him in years. Much less had I told him that I missed him and his unique, no-holds-barred opinions. Even if he’d told me I sucked for taking so long—and I don’t think he would have, for David’s writing always showed a keen grasp of why people can be so stupid—even so, now I’d be able to say he knew I appreciated him. I hope he knew that anyway, because appreciate him I did.

I say I hadn’t talked to him, but technically I never did. I knew David from the online world of blogs and comment sections that revved up in 2005, when I arrived, just a little bit late to the party. Film blogs had a heyday that lasted maybe ten years or so. David popped up in the comments of one of my posts, for no more reason than that I had somehow written something that interested him. For a long time afterward, he was one of the most consistent commenters I had, and one of the most knowledgeable and bitingly funny. Mine was far, far from the only online place he frequented, and he had his own site, Fablog, which sadly seems to be gone. That whole era and what one friend called its “cocktail-party bonhomie” seems a long way off now, but David was one reason it was great fun while it lasted.

I seldom managed to write anything about a movie David hadn’t seen. He had such far-reaching taste; he loved French films of any era, Japanese cinema, almost anything romantic or witty or gorgeous or campy. He’d spin stories of the many, many film people he’d known, and refer tartly to the difficulties of growing up black and Jewish and gay. He had published Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1927-1997, and before that he had written The Scorsese Picture: The Art and Life of Martin Scorsese. David’s husband, the late Bill Reed, was mentioned from time to time, with the deepest affection; together they had written the 1982 book Rock on Film.

I’ve always said that critics are ultimately defined by what they love. If you want the most accessible way to explore who David Ehrenstein was, you can read the essays he wrote for Criterion, each about a movie that mattered to him. I’ll quote just one, his piece on Yasujiro Ozu’s 1959 Floating Weeds:

Nothing is “unimportant” in Ozu’s view. The story is not meant to stand as an “exceptional” dramatic incident, but rather as part of the context of the ebb and flow of life. “Unimportant” people and actions are part of this ebb and flow. In fact, so are the places and inanimate objects surrounding them. And so we are treated to lovingly photographed shots of banners blowing in the wind, gardens dripping with rain, empty small town streets. They punctuate the action, signaling the beginnings and ends of scenes. But they are also there to be seen for themselves in a manner that can only be called poetic.

Admittedly, one reason David and I fell out of touch was that David could be…I guess the word would be obstreperous. Tact was something David simply did not value, at least online. Once, years ago, David left a comment on a friend’s blog post that was so inflammatory (and possibly actionable), my friend didn’t just delete David’s comment or take down the post—my friend took down his entire blog. For about 48 hours, if memory serves, at any rate until sufficient time had passed for the smoldering embers of the comments section to sputter out. Save David, who was entirely unrepentant. No, I won’t tell you the blog or the topic, but if you were there, believe me, you remember.

Yet, I look back at so many things David said that annoyed the shit out of me at the time — David was not a fan of Obama, or mainstream Democrats, or all kinds of things that I still believed in, back then — and I wish I could tell him the stuff he was right about. He would have loved to hear it.

I’ll end with my favorite story that David ever told in my blog comments. It was on a post about Mae Clarke, who gained fame in the pre-code era and who worked for a long time, but never quite became a star. Mae had some memorable roles, but she remains most famous for being on the receiving end of a breakfast grapefruit, wielded by James Cagney in The Public Enemy—“I wish you was a wishing well,” you remember the scene.

So in her final years Mae lived in the Motion Picture and Television Fund house in Los Angeles. David had a friend who was also winding down his days in the home, and David would visit him. It was a pleasant place, said David, depending on your attitude. Mae’s attitude, bless her, was not good, and she was not popular.

One day they were having lunch in the Home’s dining room when a little commotion arose. David and his friend asked the next table, what’s going on?

“Mae Clarke’s complaining about the soup again,” came the answer. And from another nearby table someone roared, “THEY SHOULD DROWN HER IN IT.”

“Tough crowd,” was David’s verdict on the Motion Picture Home. I still laugh, remembering this story, and David.