Jay Scott

Jay Scott was the pen name of Jeffrey Scott Beaven (October 4, 1949 – July 30, 1993), a Canadian film critic.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska Scott was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a Seventh-Day Adventist, whose doctrine virtually prohibited movies. Scott studied art history at New College of Florida in Sarasota.

Moving to Canada in 1969 as a draft dodger, he settled in Calgary and began writing film reviews for the Calgary Albertan a few years later. He won a National Newspaper Award in 1975, and moved to Toronto when he was hired by The Globe and Mail in 1977.

With the Globe and Mail, Scott became Canada's most influential film critic, winning two more National Newspaper Awards for his writing, and is still widely remembered as one of the best and most influential film critics in the history of Canadian journalism. He was also the host of Jay Scott's Film International, a film series on TVOntario, 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.

From 1967 to 1980, he was in a relationship with Mary Bloom, whom he had met while studying in Sarasota. After his divorce from Bloom, he came out as gay and began a relationship with Gene Corboy.

He died of AIDS-related causes in 1993. He wrote for the Globe and Mail until his death, and had been working on a book about Norman Jewison. 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 favourite films, Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

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