Francis Ford Coppola on film critics

Aaron Hillis at The Village Voice talks to Francis Ford Coppola about his new film, Tetro, and gets some intriguing comments out of the director about film critics:

For me, the role of the critic is to teach me how I can make the next one better. I realize what my flaws are. ... There are obviously good critics and bad critics—who, just because the movie isn't like anything they've seen, immediately call it a "muddled mess." If you do a Google search for "muddled mess," you'll see that that's the common phrase they use when they don't want to come out and say what's muddled about it. People are a little bit like sheep, and unable to accept or take anything to heart unless they can link it to something that was successful before. ... If a movie comes out and it's really fresh and new, it's not like anything else....