Derrick Bang ’77 cringed remembering his first film review for The California Aggie in 1974: Night of the Living Dead. The horror flick had just played on campus.
“I can tell you, without prejudice, that it is unreadable,” Bang said. “I was too wordy. I was showing off.”
Bang has honed his skills as a critic for the last 52 years. While he has held a variety of jobs over those decades, he has maintained a steady flow of reviews, publishing at least one per week since that first assignment. His longest run is ongoing at the local paper The Davis Enterprise — and an archive of the most recent, back to 2008, are published on his blog.
At the movies
Bang’s interest in film started with soundtracks. When he was young, he already paid attention to the way music was used to enhance the story. This curiosity led him to consider other aspects of filmmaking: When do directors cut a scene? Why choose a two-shot scene or a single-shot scene?
Originally from the greater Los Angeles area, Bang picked UC Davis for the small-town atmosphere. An English major, he started at The Aggie his sophomore year.
“I thought, ‘OK, I think I can do this,’” he said. “I'd been reading movie reviews for a number of years. I had focused on writing in high school.”
Bang quickly became immersed in the local movie scene. He knew the managers of the local Davis theaters (he served as assistant manager of the Varsity for a time), as well as several in Sacramento. And he learned the system: working with Bay Area handling companies that held nearby screenings. These allowed critics to see the movies and publish their reviews by the opening.
He continued to write for The Aggie after graduation, transitioning to the Woodland paper, The Daily Democrat, in 1983. By then he owned The Game Preserve, a game and puzzle shop in Davis, and the Woodland paper had an office across the street.
“Before I started work at the shop I could pop over to the office and file a story,” Bang recalled. “I was doing more than film reviews for them. I was doing TV show reviews; I ran a weekly movie trivia column. That was a fun gig.”
His freelance position was eventually cut — news he received by email.
“I'm fired by email, like right before lunch, and I closed the shop and I walked over to The Enterprise. By total coincidence they were looking for a film critic,” Bang said. “So I was fired and rehired in the span of four hours.”
That freelance position eventually led to a full-time job with The Enterprise, as entertainment editor. The job started in 1997, when he closed his shop.
And though he’s back to being a freelancer these days, his track record survives. He aims to publish every Sunday. What doesn’t appear in the Enterprise, goes on the blog, where he has about 15,000 subscribers.
A changing industry
After 52 years as a critic for local newspapers, Bang has seen how severe changes to the newspaper industry have negatively affected entertainment coverage, something he wrote about in a commentary for the Enterprise earlier this year.
Concluding that the “good ol’ days are gone forever,” Bang outlined the steady decline of local publications and the end of most nearby screenings.
“There are some studios that still offer screenings [in Sacramento], but now it’s rare,” Bang said. “We used to have the option of two or a three a week. We had a screening for Toy Story 5 on June 11 and Disclosure Day on June 8. But then we go back to April 14 for The Sheep Detectives.”
This means if a movie opens on a Friday, Bang could see it on opening day but still can’t publish it on Sunday. (Sunday’s paper prints on Friday.)
Film criticism hasn’t been his full-time pursuit for most of his career. He’s authored — and co-authored — several books, including multiple tributes to Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz. He even worked as a writer for UC Davis for a short time.
But he remains passionate about the movies and is making the changes work for him. This includes working in streaming services like Netflix to his rotation. And his output continues.
“I have always had one review in a local newspaper per week at the very least,” he said. “And that's still true.”