Richard Corliss, one of Time’s two major film critics (the other being the incomparable Richard Schickel), has died at the age of 71.
For TIME, he was an indestructible, inexhaustible resource. He wrote some 2,500 reviews and other articles for the magazine, including more than two dozen cover stories. He covered, at various times, theater and television, wrote about theme parks and Las Vegas shows, contributed cover stories on topics as far afield as yoga and Rush Limbaugh. And as TIME’s longest-serving movie critic (and perhaps the magazine’s most quoted writer of all time), he was a perceptive, invaluable guide through three and a half decades of Hollywood films, stars and trends…
His reviews were authoritative but never intimidating; he had an encyclopedic knowledge of film, but never flaunted it. His prose was zestful and sparkling — it simply jumped off the page…
He was a workaholic, who loved writing in the wee hours and pushed deadlines to the breaking point — but always came through with pristine prose that left his editors in awe. He pulled countless all-nighters in his office, catching a couple of hours sleep on his couch, then emerging bright-eyed in the morning, sometimes with a fresh shirt brought up to the office by Mary. (When, every once in a while, the clutter of books and videos that were always piled high in his office suddenly disappeared — that was usually Mary too, having come round in the evening to help him clean out.)
