Robert Horton has been a film critic in Seattle for many years, yet he mysteriously retains the blush of youth. A member of the National Society of Film Critics and the host of the radio show “The Music and the Movies,” he was the longtime film critic of the Seattle Weekly and the Daily Herald (Everett, Washington) and a regular contributor to Film Comment and other magazines. He is a board member and “Programmer-Historian in Residence” at nonprofit Scarecrow Video and the leader of Scarecrow Academy. From 2005 to 2014 he was the curator and host of the monthly Magic Lantern series at the Frye Art Museum. Books include Frankenstein (Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press, 2014) and Billy Wilder: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2001); his work was also included in Best American Movie Writing 1999 (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999), For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers (St. James Press, 2000). He has appeared on The Today Show, and is a member of the Critics Choice Association. In 2016 he received a Fulbright Specialist grant to Romania. (More below.)
When it comes to getting up and talking, Horton is a Smithsonian Journeys guest speaker (including presentations on Hollywood history aboard cruise ships), and from 2010-2014, and again in 2021-23, a traveling lecturer in Humanities Washington’s Speakers Bureau. From 2012 to 2015, he taught at Seattle University; in 2019-2020, at Seattle Film Institute; and in 2013, he taught in the Architectural Association summer school in London. As a member of the FIPRESCI jury of international critics, he has been on juries at film festivals in Odesa, Ukraine; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Seattle; Mannheim-Heidelberg, Germany; Hong Kong; Berlin; Indianapolis; Guadalajara; Montreal; and Palm Springs.
For many years he was a weekly guest on KUOW radio; somehow, some of these appearances are accessible on this website.
For the Museum of History and Industry’s “Celluloid Seattle: A City at the Movies,” Robert was pleased to act as curator. The exhibit ran from Dec. 2012 to Dec. 2013.
With Elliott Gould in Port Townsend, 2008
In his role as an onstage interlocutor, Horton has interviewed the likes of Debra Winger, Steven Soderbergh, Eva Marie Saint, Peter Greenaway, Buck Henry, Peter Fonda, Elliott Gould, and many others.
His interview with director James Longley is included on the Iraq in Fragments DVD, and he did the liner notes for the DVD of Tous les Matins du Monde.
He is the co-author, with Mark Rahner, of Rotten, a zombie Western comic book from Moonstone (art by Dan Dougherty). Look for it at a comic book store near you — or here. The trade paperback of the first six issues of Rotten can be ordered here.
Magic Lantern series, Frye Art Museum
He has also been president of the Seattle Film Society, a film teacher, and an annual guest at the Port Townsend Film Festival. He was a mainstay of the original incarnation of Film.com and has written for many publications online and off, including Newsday, the Chicago Reader, and the Seattle Times. He grew up in Seattle, is married, and is now weary of saying all this in the third person.
To contact: thecropduster@gmail.com
Twitter: @citizenhorton
For a list of past lectures at the Frye Art Museum, click here.
An Amazon.com Author Page.
All original material on this website © 2008-2022 Robert Horton.
FIPRESCI Jury at 2018 Odesa Film Festival red carpet, boldly walked in brown shoes.
The Crop Duster 
[…] zombies that I couldn’t pass up. The graphic novel Rotten is authored by Mark Rahner, Robert Horton and Dan […]
[…] house organist Jim Riggs. I hadn’t seen it before and loved it. In introducing it film critic Robert Horton spoke of its poetic, lyric, expressionistic and sometimes dreamlike qualities. Jim also highlighted […]