Jay Scott

Jeffrey Scott Beaven (October 4, 1949 – July 30, 1993), known professionally by his pen name Jay Scott, was a Canadian film critic.^[1]

Scott was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a Seventh-Day Adventist,^[1] whose doctrine virtually prohibited movies.^[2] Scott studied art history at New College of Florida in Sarasota,^[3] and later took acting classes at the University of New Mexico.^[4]

Moving to Canada in 1969 as a draft evader, he settled in Calgary and began writing film reviews for the Calgary Albertan a few years later.^[1] He won a National Newspaper Award in 1975 for a review of Theatre Passe Muraille's stage production The Alberta Cowboy Show,^[4] and moved to Toronto when he was hired by The Globe and Mail in 1977.^[1] With The Globe and Mail, he wrote an entertainment gossip column for his first year, before transferring to become a film reviewer.^[4]

With the Globe and Mail, Scott became Canada's most influential film critic,^[1][2] winning two more National Newspaper Awards for his writing,^[1] and is still widely remembered as one of the best and most influential film critics in the history of Canadian journalism.^[5] He has also been credited as the catalyst for a major shift in the newspaper's own arts reporting style in his era, from a staid, strictly repertorial style toward more distinctive, colourful writing.^[4]

He was also the host of Jay Scott's Film International, a film series on TVOntario,^[3] and published three non-fiction books on both film and art: Midnight Matinees, Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin, and The Prints of Christopher Pratt.^[3]

From 1967 to 1980, he was in a relationship with Mary Bloom, whom he had met while studying in Sarasota.^[3] After his divorce from Bloom, he came out as gay and began a relationship with Gene Corboy.^[3] He was diagnosed HIV+ in 1986.^[4]

He died of AIDS-related causes in 1993.^[6] He wrote for the Globe and Mail until his death, and had been working on a book about Norman Jewison.^[1] On the night of his death, TVOntario pulled a scheduled rerun of Film International to broadcast a tribute to Scott, including a screening of one of his all-time favorite films, Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.^[1]

Roger Ebert eulogized Scott as a "supremely well-informed critic who was able to translate his knowledge into superb prose that transmitted his passion for the movies."^[1] Clint Eastwood sent an unsolicited $5,000 donation to Toronto's Casey House AIDS hospice in Scott's memory.^[7] At the 1993 Toronto International Film Festival, filmmaker John Greyson dedicated his Special Jury Citation for Zero Patience to Scott's memory.^[8]

A collection of his reviews, Great Scott! The Best of Jay Scott's Movie Reviews, was published posthumously in 1994; proceeds from the book sales were donated to the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research.^[9]

In 2009, the Toronto Film Critics Association established an annual award for emerging talent in the Canadian film industry, the Jay Scott Prize, in Scott's memory.^[10] The winner of the award receives $10,000.^[11]

He is the subject of an essay, written by current Globe and Mail film critic Barry Hertz, in the 2024 book A Nation’s Paper: The Globe and Mail in the Life of Canada.^[4]