21 Facts About Rex Reed

1.

Rex Taylor Reed was born on October 2,1938 and is an American film critic, journalist, and media personality.

2.

Rex Reed became a public figure in his own right, making regular appearances on television and occasionally acting in films throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

3.

Rex Reed has been a longtime writer for The New York Observer, where he authors the "Talk of the Town" column.

4.

Rex Reed earned his journalism degree from Louisiana State University in 1960.

5.

Rex Reed moved to New York City after graduating from LSU, hoping to find success as an actor.

6.

Rex Reed has acted occasionally, such as in the movie version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge.

7.

Rex Reed appeared in the films Superman, Inchon and Irreconcilable Differences.

8.

Rex Reed appeared frequently as a judge on the TV game show The Gong Show in the late 1970s.

9.

Rex Reed additionally served on the jury at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971, and guest-voiced as himself on the animated series The Critic.

10.

Rex Reed appears in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism explaining how important film critics were in the 1970s, and complaining about the proliferation of unqualified critical voices on the Internet.

11.

Rex Reed was not given a ticket to the world premiere of Last Tango in Paris at the 1972 New York Film Festival as the festival considered him a columnist for the New York Daily News, rather than a regular film critic, as well as describing him as "[not] a friend of the festival".

12.

Rex Reed is a member of New York Film Critics Circle and, because his reviews appear on the Internet, a member of New York Film Critics Online.

13.

Rex Reed's voice has been manhandled beyond recognition, bringing with its parched croak only a painful memory of burned-out yesterdays.

14.

In 1986, after Marlee Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Children of a Lesser God, Rex Reed wrote that Matlin had won because of a "pity vote", and that a deaf person playing a deaf character was not really acting.

15.

When it was pointed out that the card had only one name on it, Rex Reed changed his theory to say that Palance had read the wrong name off the Teleprompter, and claimed the Academy went along with it because they would have been embarrassed to admit that mistake in front of a huge viewing audience.

16.

Rex Reed was publicly rebutted by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, who said that if a presenter ever announced the wrong winner, a PwC representative would go on stage and state that the wrong result had been announced, before either stating the correct result or giving the information to someone on stage to correct it.

17.

Rex Reed stood by his comments and stated his objection to the use of serious health problems such as obesity as comedy talking points.

18.

Rex Reed dismissed the outrage as being orchestrated for publicity, but praised McCarthy for not getting involved in the matter, calling her "completely classy".

19.

Some felt that Rex Reed was unprofessional, with journalist Sam Adams stating that Rex Reed was "making a mockery of a noble profession while intelligent critics scramble for crumbs all around him".

20.

In February 2000, Rex Reed was arrested for shoplifting after leaving a Tower Records in Manhattan with compact discs by Mel Torme, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae in his jacket pockets.

21.

Rex Reed, who had just purchased two other CDs, says he forgot about the other three CDs and his offer to pay for them was refused.