In a podcast conversation with Keith Uhlich at The House Next Door, the group blog whose Blogger URL contains his name, Matt Zoller Seitz has announced that he’s giving up writing print criticism. This formal declaration comes two weeks after Seitz made some critical comments about the conflict between print and web criticism at the Moving Image Institute; two weeks before that, Seitz writes in the podcast’s comments, he gave notice that he was leaving his post as back-up critic for the New York Times, meaning his piece on the jazz in film series at MoMA will be his last for that publication. In the same comment, Seitz says he’ll be replaced by Nathan Lee, who intimated in last week’s Rotten Tomatoes interview that all those Saturday afternoons devoted to sex and Madame Bovary had paid off in a new position at a major publication.

The House Next Door will carry on under Keith Uhlich’s leadership. Seitz, who says he’ll continue to post on the site, is also planning on devoting the summer to making a puppet movie––and anyone who will be in Dallas in July and August who wants to get involved with production is invited to send him an email through the site. I’ve excerpted a portion of the transcription of the podcast, in which Seitz succinctly explains his decision to move on from the print world, after the jump.

I certainly wouldn’t mind sticking around and continuing to write pieces, but in all honesty I write a lot more slowly than I used to, and I have a lot less patience with print than I used to. When I’m writing, when I’m doing pieces in print, that are print only, I find my mind starting to wander, and I’m thinking about movies. I’m thinking about watching movies and making movies and I’ll go off and start storyboarding the puppet movie. [...]

And I’m also gonna be making some really short apropos-of-nothing documentaries on whatever the hell I feel like doing them on, and I’ll probably post those on The House as well. I mean, I’m certainly not gonna go away. I’m just not gonna be writing straight out print reviews, certainly not very often. I’m just at the point where I feel like I need to try to concentrate my energies, which are not as profuse as they used to be, on things that I think have a reasonable shot at making me happy. Print does not satisfy me in the way that it once did. In fact, it feels too much like work. And I want to do things that feel like play. And maybe turn ‘em into work, you know? The ideal is to have your job be something that doesn’t feel like a job, and that was the case for me for years with print criticism. It’s not the case anymore.