Pollack Out

This post marks the end of my seven-year tenure as editor-in-chief of Book and Film Globe. I, Neal Pollack, the Greatest Living American Writer, am leaving the only job I’ve had this century to become Senior Editor of The U.S. edition of The Spectator, the world’s oldest magazine. It’s exciting and terrifying and also definitive proof that you can reinvent and revive your career after you receive your AARP card. What a run we’ve had here.

I owe a tremendous debt, though no actual money, to Ken Kurson, Kevin Sanders, Melody Kurson, and the entire Sea of Reeds Media team for taking a chance on a decaying media personality and recovering drug addict and giving me far more professional responsibility than I’ve ever had before. Despite having no actual plan and no idea what I was doing, I’d like to think that I smacked it out of the park, or at least hit a solid ground-rule double. I assembled, on purpose and also by accident, a real Dirty Dozen of contributors, the most eccentric crew of writers this generation has seen. We covered everything.

When I took over the site, the intention was to cover films and the movie industry, and to continue publishing book reviews like BFG has been doing since the 1990s, or maybe the 1890s. I also decided to add streaming TV into the mix, which turned out to be a good idea when the pandemic hit and all anyone  did was watch TV for about two years. But this wasn’t just a review conglomerator. We wrote about important issues, watching as the film and TV industry buckled under the pressure of COVID restrictions and labor unrest, as the book industry battled censorship from the left and the right, and as studios and streaming services merged and unmerged.

Then came the ultimate threat, AI, which still intends to swallow us all within a decade, or a couple of years, or maybe next week if it decides to. But whatever happened in the world–and a lot happened–BFG just kept plugging along, letting you know what was in the theaters or on your iPad, who said what on Twitter, and, maybe most crucially, what HBO had decided to call itself that week.

Now it’s all over, and I have nothing but memories, wonderful friendships, and a notch on my belt that says I’m a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading our site and listening to our podcast as I did creating it all. Off to my next role, where I will do my best Christopher Hitchens imitation, or P.J. O’Rourke imitation, or A.J. Liebling imitation. Or maybe I’ll just be myself. Thanks for everything.

Pollack out.