Today is Rex Reed’s birthday. When I called him Sunday to ask how he planned on celebrating, we covered the usual—movies, politics, being generally exhausted by many things, and being specifically exhausted by certain things—before returning to a topic that’s increasingly present in our conversations: the end. Specifically, his end.

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“I am beginning to see into the crystal ball, you know, and the end is coming soon.” He confides this as he’s done so many times before. It’s a lamentation of his that I never hope to hear but that I also feel remarkably lucky to receive. His old-school Manhattan drawl has a sharp, theatrical flair, every word carrying the unmistakable lilt of wit and authority—the essence of a critic who knows he’s the star of the show. “It’s all going to be over soon, and I don’t want the last impression to be: Film Critic Found Dead at Computer Reviewing a Bad Movie.” He doesn’t want to be written into history as a curmudgeon, and I know the concern is valid because the first question everyone asks about Rex is, “Is he really that mean?” And then, “Is he really that angry?” He’s not. Reducing anyone in this way is an easy story—and it isn’t the story of Rex.

Rex Reed is the product of a mother who encouraged her only son to move through a world without limits. Rex is the product of a father’s unconditional love, even when his father didn’t understand him—which was often. He is the product of the confidence that grows from both those things: a self-awareness that emerged so early and developed so deeply and has manifested for almost a century as relentless ambition. He is one of the hardest-working people you could ever hope to meet. Despite firm instructions to do anything other than worry about Observer! after breaking his ankle this summer, Rex sent near-daily updates on the status of his assignments, which he takes no less seriously today than when Peter Kaplan hired him as our film critic in 1987. Rex was four days shy of his 49th birthday when his byline first appeared on our pages. By then, he’d written for seemingly every publisher in the city with “New York” in its name—The New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, New York Post—plus GQ, Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily and more. He was an actor, an author and a TV host with every accolade to his name and no plans to slow down. That was nearly 40 years ago.

Rex hasn’t stopped seeking the pleasures of beauty, terror and connection. Though he’s quick to confirm that such thrills have escaped him for decades, when he finally admitted (to himself) that he’d miss the Toronto Film Festival for the first time in 25 years, his heartbreak was palpable.

I am still struggling badly with my foot. It is swollen twice its size, and although I can walk, I don’t think I can travel to two airports and get into taxis and get to the hotel and then prepare to walk 3 or 4 times a day to screenings 3 or 4 blocks apart. I can’t do all of that and drag luggage and press books and a ton of notes around Toronto on one foot. I have been covering that festival for about 25 years, and I really don’t want to miss it, but sensibly and pragmatically, I know I am seriously tempting fate. I do not want to fall and end up in some Canadian hospital.

Rex has lived an almost unbelievable life, but most of what you’ll find, if you go looking, is what he’s said about others. A few of those words have offended some people.

“I think I’ve been severely misjudged. I want to be remembered as somebody who really, really tried to make things better. Or at least respected the things that were good when they happened.”

I can’t think about Rex not being on the other end of the line without a lump rising in my throat, promising to eventually erupt in waves of hot tears—a practically volcanic physical reaction because I know he’s right, that our time is limited, and that I’ll miss every last layer of him terribly when he’s gone. And so he’s agreed to let me record (and publish) our conversations. This is the first.

Well, yes—but not when I was actually writing. Even after I started writing professionally about movies, I did have periods of very good movies. But those people—the directors and actors and screenwriters—are all dead. I saw wonderful movies all through the ‘60s and maybe even a few in the ‘70s, but the greatest movies were all in the ‘40s. There were great movies in the ‘50s, too. It wasn’t a great period in the world, but the movies reflected higher thinking.

I saw Gone with the Wind when I was two years old. Of course, the things that I remember most about it are the things that would affect a child: Bonnie dying on the horse and all of that. Oh, gosh, I was hysterical. The other movie that I saw around the same time was Tarzan’s New York Adventure. There was a terrible storm in that movie, and I kept tugging at my mother and saying, “We have to go and roll the windows up in the car. We have to roll up the car windows because it’s pouring rain!” She said, “It’s just a movie.” But you see how impressionable I was at a very young age.

There were limitations as to how much my mother could tolerate. She didn’t have all the free time in the world to go to movies like some housewives did. And so I didn’t get a chance to see all the things I wanted to see. But when I was old enough to go to the movies by myself, I saw everything. That’s why I ended up living in New York City, working for the New York Times, and doing all of those Sunday profiles. I knew everything all of those people had been in, every role they had ever played,........

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