Every Movie is a Miracle

They say that everybody has two professions: whatever they do for a living, plus being a film critic. For sixty years, Leonard Maltin has happily combined both. Starting when he was 13, Maltin turned a childhood love of movies into a career as a film historian, writer, interviewer, teacher, and one of the country's most visible and beloved movie reviewers. For thirty years he was the film expert on TV's long-running Entertainment Tonight. He has written, edited, or contributed to scores of books and videos including the seminal histories The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang, The Great Movie Shorts, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, and the highly collectible Walt Disney Treasures DVD series. Most visibly, from 1969 to 2015 he published the essential Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide. This book grew out of a fifty-year friendship between Maltin and interviewer Nat Segaloff. In late 2024, the pair held a series of discussions covering Maltin's life, his philosophy of reviewing, his passionate love of film, and his many behind-the-scenes Hollywood adventures. The result is a freewheeling and thoroughly involving exchange about the state of movies past, present and future.

Leonard Maltin's 50-year (and counting) career has included his annual Movie Guide and other New York Times bestselling books, along with 30 years of regular segments on Entertainment Tonight, movie introductions on Turner Classic Movies, and countless other television, radio, and in-person appearances. He also teaches the most popular course at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. His website is www.leonardmaltin.com. Nat Segaloff has been a movie publicist and critic (not at the same time), teacher, broadcaster, narrator, and TV producer. Among his books are biographies of Arthur Penn, William Friedkin, Stirling Silliphant, Paul Mazursky, John Milius, and Harlan Ellison, and definitive histories of The Exorcist, Scarface, and the Rambo franchise. His website is www.natsegaloff.com.