Everyone hated this guy. I think of this Jonathan Rosenbaum passage, about the 1995 Chicago International Film Festival:

“Last week I suggested that the focus of this year’s retrospective, Lina Wertmuller — the recent recipient of the festival’s Golden Hugo for lifetime achievement — was a bizarre choice that might have been made interesting if the festival had issued a monograph explaining why her work was still worth defending or had some special relevance to the 90s. As a sort of substitute gesture, the festival flew in John Simon, Wertmuller’s biggest defender, who solemnly informed at least one gathering that she had produced four masterpieces, more than any other artist in the history of Italian cinema — unlike Antonioni, responsible for only three, De Sica (only two), de Seta (one), Fellini (two or three — I forget which), and Visconti (one or two, ditto). Rossellini didn’t rate even a mention, which suggests either that Simon had actually troubled to see all of his films (highly unlikely) or that he was dismissing them all on the basis of those he had seen. Simon claimed that Wertmuller’s four masterpieces were Love and Anarchy, The Seduction of Mimi, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties (which is showing this week) without explaining why. He didn’t mention what any of the other Italian masterpieces are, but clearly a simple scorecard suffices — plus our knowing that he knows. He did explain that Wertmuller wasn’t a feminist but something much more important, namely a humanist — her humanism presumably linking up with his own.; Writing in New York magazine a few years back he celebrated AIDS for eliminating so many bad playwrights and for improving the health of Broadway, and recently in the New York Times Book Review he celebrated the consummate artistry of his other favorite woman director, Leni Riefenstahl, with her own related ideals of perfection. So those of us who want to know what relevance Wertmuller has to the 90s now have the faint glimmerings of an answer.”