Myron Meisel

Myron (he/him) files for:

Stage Raw

Myron Meisel served as the Los Angeles-based theater and occasional opera critic for The Hollywood Reporter from 2011 to 2015, and thereafter as columnist and critic for Stage Raw. He received an L.A. Weekly Theater Award for Excellence in Criticism in 2015. Previously long retired, in past lives he worked in the film business and as a litigation attorney.

He has also been a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association since 1979, and was a member of the National Society of Film Critics. Former editor and publisher of the auteurist magazine FOCUS!, he was the founding film critic for both the Los Angeles READER (1978) and the Chicago READER (1971) and was longtime west coast editor and film critic for The Film Journal International. His essays on film have appeared in sixteen books, including MOVIES ON TV, AMERICAN DIRECTORS, DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD, THE MOVIE STAR BOOK and KINGS OF THE B’S: WORKING WITHIN THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM, and in Rolling Stone, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Film, Film Comment, Village Voice, Hollywood Reporter, Boston Phoenix, Los Angeles magazine and Movieline, among many others. He has written monographs for the Museum of Modern Art on Blake Edwards, as well as on John Cassavetes and Michael Curtiz. In 1980 Cahiers du Cinema called Meisel “the best film critic in America”, and the Village Voice wrote he was “one of the three best film critics in the U.S. outside New York”.

Myron co-directed, wrote and produced “IT’S ALL TRUE: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles” for Paramount Pictures release in 1993 which was awarded “Best Documentary” by the Los Angeles Film Critics, a special citation from the National Society of Film Critics, and shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination. His other movie documentary projects have included the features I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF: A PORTRAIT OF NICHOLAS RAY, THE CHAPLIN PUZZLE (which reconstructed Chaplin’s unreleased first feature) and SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW: HAROLD ARLEN. He produced the laserdisc restoration of Orson Welles’ OTHELLO for Criterion. Other credits include FINAL EXAM, THE OASIS, BARFLY and EATING RAOUL. In addition, he has worked in many different capacities on dozens of feature films and serves on the Board of Directors of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Myron has been a member of the LADCC since 2014.