This is how film criticism changed forever: Kael “was on her way out the door at TNR when she penned a lengthy (roughly seven thousand words) essay on Bonnie and Clyde, which the magazine politely declined. Too long, they told her. Her agent, Robert Mills, reached out to William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker; they had published a more free-form Kael essay, “Movies on Television,” earlier that summer. Maybe he’d like to take a look?”