Reed moved to New York City after graduating from LSU, hoping to find success as an actor. Instead, he was hired to work at the publicity department of
20th Century Fox. In 1969, he said his job there was to "write those puffy things about
Elvis Presley and—you know—
Fabian, and tell everybody how great they were when I wouldn't be caught dead seeing their movies myself. [...]
Cleopatra came along and rocked the company financially. We were saving on rubber bands and paying
Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton to float down the Nile while everybody back at Fox was taking salary cuts, and I was the first one to go—the little guy at the $75 salary, the most dispensable item in the company. I was fired." Later in the decade, he provided many interviews for
The New York Times and
New York, which at the time was the Sunday magazine of the
New York Herald Tribune. In 1966, the year in which the
Herald Tribune folded, he was hired as one of the music critics for
HiFi/Stereo Review (now
Sound & Vision), where he remained until 1973.
Critic Before becoming a film critic for
The New York Observer, Reed was a film critic for
Vogue,
GQ,
The New York Times, For thirteen years, he was an arts critic for the
New York Daily News, and for five years was the film critic for the
New York Post. Reed served on the jury at the
21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971, and the
33rd Venice International Film Festival in 1972. Reed was not given a ticket to the world premiere of
Last Tango in Paris at the 1972
New York Film Festival as the festival considered him a columnist for the
New York Daily News, rather than a regular film critic, as well as describing him as "[not] a friend of the festival". On October 27, 1974, reviewing
Frank Sinatra's performance at
Madison Square Garden, Reed called him "a
Woolworth rhinestone" and wrote that "his public image is uglier than a first-degree burn, his appearance is sloppier than
Porky Pig; his manners are more appalling than a subway sandhog's and his ego bigger than the Sahara (the
desert, not the
hotel in Las Vegas, although either comparison applies). All of which might be tolerable if he could still sing. But the saddest part of all is the hardest part to face about this once-great idol now living on former glory: the grim truth is that Frank Sinatra has had it. His voice has been manhandled beyond recognition, bringing with its parched croak only a painful memory of burned-out yesterdays." Years later, Reed recalled that Sinatra "was sloppy" and "looked like he'd slept in his clothes. Sinatra was mad at me, but what did he do? He lost 25 pounds!" In 1986, after
Marlee Matlin won the
Academy Award for Best Actress for
Children of a Lesser God, Reed wrote that Matlin had won because of a "pity vote", and that a deaf person playing a deaf character was not really acting. in 2009) to a conspiracy theory regarding her win of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in
My Cousin Vinny. After
Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1992 for her work in
My Cousin Vinny, Reed said publicly that she had not actually won the award, and that presenter Jack Palance had accidentally read the wrong name off the card he was reading. When it was pointed out that the card had only one name on it, Reed changed his theory to say that Palance had read the wrong name off the
teleprompter, and claimed (without evidence) that the Academy went along with it because they would have been embarrassed to admit that mistake in front of a huge viewing audience. Reed was publicly rebutted by the accounting firm
Price Waterhouse, who said that if a presenter ever announced the wrong winner, a PwC representative would go on stage and state that the wrong result had been announced, before either stating the correct result or giving the information to someone on stage to correct it. This is what happened in 2017, when
La La Land was mistakenly announced as winner of Best Picture instead of the true recipient,
Moonlight.
Roger Ebert said that Reed's conspiracy theories were false and unfair to Tomei, and that Reed owed her an apology. In a 2005 review of the South Korean movie
Oldboy, Reed wrote, "What else can you expect from a nation weaned on
kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the
Seoul airport as souvenirs?"
The Village Voice, which reported that "online forums erupted in protest" at the review, then mocked Reed by imagining him applying similar logic to films from other countries. In a 2013 review of
Identity Thief, Reed made several references to
Melissa McCarthy's weight, referring to her as "tractor-sized", "humongous", "obese", and a "hippo". Film critic
Richard Roeper said, "This just smacks of mean-spirited name-calling in lieu of genuine criticism." The review was referenced at the
85th Academy Awards in February 2013 by host
Seth MacFarlane, who joked that Reed would review
Adele for singing "
Skyfall" at the ceremony. In a column for
HuffPost,
Candy Spelling likened Reed's review to bullying. Reed stood by his comments and stated his objection to the use of serious health problems such as obesity as comedy talking points. He dismissed the outrage as being orchestrated for publicity, but praised McCarthy for not getting involved in the matter, calling her "completely classy". In a 2017 review of
The Shape of Water, he referred to people with disabilities as "defective creatures". Reed is a member of the
New York Film Critics Circle contained significant factual inaccuracies in his summary of the film, and exhibited a dismissive attitude towards anyone who disagreed with his negative opinion.
L Magazine's Henry Stewart noted: "his review is literally about 50 percent inaccurate—factually, objectively wrong." His professionalism was also called into question when, in addition to the factual inaccuracies, some felt he was needlessly insulting and mean-spirited towards those who enjoyed the film. In 2013, Reed reviewed
V/H/S/2, despite walking out of the film within its first 20 minutes. As a result, his review was brief and incorrectly summarized
Jason Eisener's segment of the horror anthology. Some felt that Reed was unprofessional, and journalist Sam Adams stated that Reed was "making a mockery of a noble profession while intelligent critics scramble for crumbs all around him". In 2017, Reed's review of
The Shape of Water incorrectly referred to writer and director
Guillermo del Toro as "Benecio del Toro" (apparently both confusing the director with actor
Benicio del Toro, and failing to spell the latter's name correctly), and wrote that he was from Spain; the director is from Mexico and the actor is from Puerto Rico. The same year he included the film
Get Out on his list of 10 Worst Films of 2017, and later sardonically stated in a
CBS Sunday Morning interview, "I didn't care if all the black men are turned into robots." A writer on
Sunday Mornings website noted that there were no actual robots in the film.
Acting career Reed has acted occasionally, such as in the movie version of
Gore Vidal's
Myra Breckinridge (1970). Reed also appeared in the films
Superman (1978, as himself),
Inchon (1981) He appeared frequently as a judge on the TV game show
The Gong Show in the late 1970s. ==Personal life==