Hi, this is Mark Kermode. Thanks, Dan Liddiness Kermode on film podcast. Or if you're watching on YouTube, thank you for watching this podcast. I'm here with Jack Howard.

Hello, today we're going to be talking about reviews. Do they matter? What does it mean to get a review if you are a film critic?

Should anyone care what somebody else thinks about their work?

Does validation matter? Does validation matter?

Does criticism matter?

All here on the Kernmode on film podcast.

The thing I wanted to talk about, which is slightly more serious than perhaps some of our other conversations,

although actually knowing us, it'll very quickly descend into Friperian name calling,

is I've been thinking a lot about the issue of reviews, and I'll tell you for why. So, as you may know, I had a book

published quite recently. Well, I mean, it was published in September, September the 11th,

auspiciously. We'll always remember the day. Exactly, yeah. For that reason. So it was a book that I wrote

about film music and it took a really long time to write. It was 10 years. It was late. It was literally

10 years late. It was meant to come out in 2015. And I couldn't write it and I couldn't write it

because I thought the subject was too big and I kept starting and then I just fail and I did

loads of research but I couldn't

get it into any shape. Anyway, in the end, I ended up writing it with Jenny Nelson, who was my

producer at Scala Radio because we had been writing the Scala show every week. And Linda, my wife said,

well, look, if you can, you know, why don't you just do it with Jenny? You know, you'd have never have any problem working with her.

She will bash the ideas in shape. She did. And two years after I started working with Jenny, the book was out. And then I've been the last three months on a book tour, which is now pretty much finished. It's pretty much done. Congrats. Thank you. and this seems like a long walk up the golden path

but the reason I say this is because much done. Congrats. Thank you. And this seems like a long walk up the golden path.

But the reason I say this is because I have rarely been as anxious as I was about what the

response to the book would be.

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