Matt Zoller Seitz

Last updated

Matt Zoller Seitz
Born (1968-12-26) December 26, 1968 (age 55)
Alma mater Southern Methodist University [1]
Occupations
  • Critic
  • author
  • filmmaker
Spouses
Jennifer Dawson
​
​
(m. 1994;died 2006)​
Nancy Dawson
​
​
(m. 2017;died 2020)​
Children2

Matt Zoller Seitz (born December 26, 1968) [2] is an American film and television critic, author and filmmaker.

Contents

Career

Matt Zoller Seitz is editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com, [3] and the television critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com, as well as a member of the George Foster Peabody Awards [4] board of jurors. He was previously a television critic at Salon.com and The Newark Star Ledger , and a film critic for The New York Times . Prior to this he was a regular media columnist for the Dallas Observer . He founded the film and media criticism blog The House Next Door. Seitz is known as a leader in the creation of video essays, frequently featured on Moving Image Source [5] and The L Magazine, [6] and served as the publisher of PressPlay, a site for video-based film and television criticism. He was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. [7]

Seitz's second book, The Wes Anderson Collection, was published by Abrams Books in 2013. [8] In February 2015, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel was published by Abrams Books. The Wes Anderson Collection was praised for its design and layout, which was intended to suggest the look and feel of an Anderson film and suggest that the reader was being taken on a tour of the filmmaker's imagination. "This book is the future," wrote Michael Sicinski in Cineaste. [9]

Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion written by Seitz and with illustrations by Max Dalton was published by Abrams Books in November 2015.

His latest book, The Press Gang, co-written with Godfrey Cheshire and Armond White and published by Seven Stories Press in 2020, is a compilation of Seitz's long-form film criticism written in the alternative weekly New York Press during the late 1990s and early 2000s. [10]

Filmmaking

He wrote, directed, and edited the feature film Home (2005). [11]

Personal life

Zoller Seitz grew up primarily in Dallas. [2] He was the son of jazz pianist David Zoller (1941–2020). [12] [13]

Zoller Seitz was married to Jennifer Dawson from 1994 until her death on April 27, 2006. They had two children, Hannah and James Seitz. [1] [14] He married his second wife, Nancy Dawson, who was his first wife's sister and the ex-wife of his step-father's son Richard, [15] [16] in February 2017. [17] They divided their time between Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Cincinnati. [18] [19] Nancy Dawson died of cancer on April 27, 2020. Zoller Seitz's father died in November of that year, and his mother in April 2021. [13] [20] Zoller Seitz wrote extensively about his personal experiences with grief and loss in a series of articles published on RogerEbert.com. [21]

Preferences

He participated in the decennial 2022 Sight & Sound Poll, where he selected his 10 favorite films of all time: All That Jazz (1979), Close-Up (1990), Days of Heaven (1978), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Goodfellas (1990), American Dream (1990), Do the Right Thing (1989), Salesman (1969), and A Bread Factory (2018).

Bibliography

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References

  1. 1 2 Seitz, Matt Zoller (November 25, 2010). "All the things that remind me of her". Salon . Archived from the original on April 13, 2019. Retrieved July 23, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Movies on my Birthday: A Partial List". RogerEbert.com. December 26, 2016. Archived from the original on October 31, 2019. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
  3. ↑ "Matt Zoller Seitz Biography & Movie Reviews | Roger Ebert". Archived from the original on August 14, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  4. ↑ "Who We Are". Grady College and University of Georgia. Archived from the original on April 29, 2016. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Moving Image Source". Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  6. ↑ "The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide | Articles & Archives | Matt Zoller Seitz". Archived from the original on May 14, 2009. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  7. ↑ "The Pulitzer Prizes | Finalists". Archived from the original on March 23, 2008. Retrieved September 25, 2013.
  8. ↑ Seitz, Matt Zoller (October 8, 2013). The Wes Anderson Collection. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN   9780810997417. Archived from the original on May 15, 2015. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  9. ↑ "The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel - Pop Culture - Abrams & Chronicle". Abrams & Chronicle. Archived from the original on May 6, 2018. Retrieved October 21, 2015.
  10. ↑ White, Armond. "The Press Gang". Seven Stories Press. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2021.
  11. ↑ "Brooklynschoolyard.com". Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  12. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt (June 15, 2014). "A hard-hitting, investigative look at my dad | MZS". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  13. 1 2 Raggio, Eva; Reyes, Jacob (November 13, 2020). "Dallas Jazz Musician and Composer David Zoller Died on Monday". Dallas Observer. Archived from the original on December 13, 2020. Retrieved December 26, 2020.
  14. ↑ Sepinwall, Alan (April 28, 2006). "Sad, Sad News". The House Next Door. Slant Magazine. Archived from the original on January 7, 2019. Retrieved July 23, 2015.
  15. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (April 27, 2020). "I learned of Jen's death from my brother Rich, who was there when she had her heart attack. Richard met Nancy at Jen's memorial, married her in 2008 and they divorced eight years later. Rich texted me today shortly after I learned the news. He just had a feeling. 2/" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  16. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (June 9, 2023). "I hope to someday re-release my only feature as director, Home (2005), a family project that I did with my late wife Jennifer Dawson (producer, my brother Jeremy Seitz (producer & sound recordist) and Richard Seitz (producer & sound designer), my stepfather's only son" (Tweet). Retrieved June 9, 2023– via Twitter.
  17. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (February 15, 2017). "Me and @brideface after getting married in NYC" (Tweet). Retrieved February 15, 2017– via Twitter.
  18. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (August 20, 2016). "My block in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  19. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (June 25, 2018). "2. I'm going to be moving to Cincinnati to be with Nancy (we were a two-city couple prior to this) and will stay there continuously through the end of the year..." (Tweet). Retrieved January 6, 2019– via Twitter.
  20. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (April 27, 2020). "283. 'She died of cancer.' That's what Nancy wanted me to say. And that's what happened at 5:53 PM on April 27. Nancy's sister Jennifer, my first wife, died 14 yrs ago at 6:01 PM on April 27. Nancy began declining meals and pills shortly after midnight after learning the date. 1/" (Tweet). Retrieved April 27, 2020– via Twitter.
  21. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt. "The Personal Essays of Matt Zoller Seitz". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  22. 1 2 Douglas, James Robert (June 27, 2014). "An Interview with Matt Zoller Seitz". The Lifted Brow. Archived from the original on February 3, 2016. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  23. ↑ The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel. ABRAMS. February 10, 2015. ISBN   9781419715716. Archived from the original on October 30, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  24. ↑ Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion. ABRAMS. November 10, 2015. ISBN   9781419720635. Archived from the original on June 13, 2017. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  25. ↑ Sepinwall, Alan [@sepinwall] (January 27, 2016). "TV (The Book), which I wrote with @mattzollerseitz, is now available for pre-order" (Tweet). Retrieved January 28, 2016– via Twitter.
  26. ↑ O'Connell, Max (April 25, 2014). "Oliver Stone to Get the Matt Zoller Seitz Treatment in New Book, 'The Oliver Stone Experience'". Indiewire . Archived from the original on February 3, 2016. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  27. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (January 26, 2016). "A spread from the ALEXANDER section of THE OLIVER STONE EXPERIENCE, now in the final editing stage" (Tweet). Retrieved January 28, 2016– via Twitter.
  28. ↑ Abrams, Simon [@simonsaybrams] (April 3, 2017). "@mattzollerseitz & I have written a book about @RealGDT's DEVIL'S BACKBONE[...]" (Tweet). Retrieved April 4, 2017– via Twitter.
  29. ↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt [@mattzollerseitz] (January 22, 2018). "From the style guide for the forthcoming book THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS, a team effort by @sepinwall and @mattzollerseitz, due in stores Jan 10, 2019" (Tweet). Retrieved January 23, 2018– via Twitter.
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