Nathan Rabin

Nathan Rabin () is an American film and music critic. Rabin was the first head writer for ''The A.V. Club'', a position he held until he left the ''Onion'' organization in 2013.An Update from the AV Club
''The AV Club'' April 26, 2013 In 2013, Rabin became a staff writer for ''The Dissolve'', a film website operated by Pitchfork Media."Introducing The Dissolve, A New Film Site"
, Pitchfork Media, May 30, 2013 Two of his featured columns at ''The Dissolve'' were "Forgotbusters" (looking back at films that were among the top 25 box office earners in their release years but had not had cultural or popular endurance) and "Streaming University" (reviewing documentaries that were available through sites such as Netflix and Hulu).

On April 29, 2015, Rabin announced he had parted ways with ''The Dissolve''. He later returned to ''The A.V. Club'' as a freelance writer.

In April 2017, Rabin announced that ''The AV Club'' had canceled his My World of Flops column, and that he was establishing his own Patreon-funded website, Nathan Rabin's Happy Place.

Early life and education

Rabin grew up on the north side of Chicago.

Career

He coined the phrase " manic pixie dream girl" as a cinematic archetype in 2007. He was a panelist on the short-lived basic cable show ''Movie Club with John Ridley'' on American Movie Classics. In 2007, he began My Year of Flops on ''The A.V. Club'', where he reevaluated films that were shunned by critics, ignored by audiences, or both, at their time of release. As of January 2008, the year was finished, but he continued the project as a bimonthly feature. Other ongoing features Rabin wrote for ''The A.V. Club'' include Dispatches From Direct-To-DVD Purgatory, a tongue-in-cheek look at DVD premieres; reviews for TV shows like '' Louie''; Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club, a humorous exploration of trashy books about entertainment, and Ephemereview, which offers critiques of sub-reviewable pop-culture detritus.

Rabin released his memoir in 2009, ''The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture'', (2009) which was published by Scribner. ''The Washington Post'' gave the book a negative review, calling it a "...failed project brought to you by pop culture." while ''The New York Times'' wrote, " abinhas packed he Big Rewindlike a cannon, full of caustic wit and bruised feelings" in its more positive review.Memories of a Train Wreck Diverted
The New York Times, July 21, 2009 The book uses novels such as ''The Great Gatsby,'' musical recordings such as ''The Charm of the Highway Strip'' by The Magnetic Fields and other pop culture items as a springboard to discuss its author's tragi-comic adolescence as a guest of a mental hospital, a foster family whose patience and generosity he jokes "knew only strict, unyielding boundaries" and the Jewish Children's Bureau group home system, as well as his career with ''The A.V. Club'' and the short-lived film review show ''Movie Club With John Ridley'' on which he appeared. The book ends with a chapter about Rabin's unsuccessful audition to fill in for Roger Ebert as a guest critic on '' At the Movies.'' Scribner also published a book version of '' My Year of Flops'' (2010).

On April 23, 2013, ''The A.V. Club'' announced that Rabin, Tasha Robinson, Genevieve Koski, and Noel Murray would be leaving to start a new web-based project with former staffers Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps. On May 30, 2013, this project was revealed to be ''The Dissolve''. In addition to criticism for ''The Dissolve'', Rabin also wrote the biweekly feature Forgotbusters, a reexamination of now-culturally obscure Hollywood films whose box office grosses were among the top 25 of any film released in their year.

He has also written books on the Insane Clown Posse, Phish, and "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Personal life

Rabin is Jewish. He is married to Atlanta native Danya Maloon; they have two sons together. He lives in Marietta, Georgia with his family.

In a 2009 ''AV Club'' article about the 1996 baseball comedy film '' Ed'', Rabin described himself as "a longtime Chicago White Sox super-fan", although in a 2021 blog post he confessed to having lost interest in following sports since his adolescence. In 2024, he announced that he had recently been diagnosed with autism, moderate ADHD and bipolar II disorder.

Books

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References

External links

Nathan Rabin's Happy Place
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabin, Nathan
1976 births
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American memoirists
American film critics
American humorists
American male journalists
American male non-fiction writers
American music critics
American writers with disabilities
Jewish American journalists
Jewish American memoirists
Jewish American non-fiction writers
Jewish humorists
Living people
The Onion people
People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
People with bipolar disorder
Writers from Chicago
Autistic writers
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni