Andrew Sarris persists and endures

By Dave Kehr (www.davekehr.com)

A number of websites, including Movie City News and Sean P. Means’s “Movie Cricket” blog in the Salt Lake Tribune (where Andrew is named “Number 57″ among “The Departed”), have been reporting that Andrew Sarris has been fired from the New York Observer. Not true, says Molly Haskell. Andrew, along with a dozen other writers at the rapidly sinking weekly, was taken off staff on Monday, but he will continue to write on a freelance basis, exactly as Rex Reed does currently. Not great news, but — particularly in the current context — not a catastrophe. Andrew’s day job, teaching at Columbia University, is not in danger.