Joel Siegel vs. Kevin Smith

The Movie: Clerks II
The Creator: Kevin Smith
The Critic: Joel Siegel

In the Red corner, hailing from Red Bank, NJ and sharing both my first and middle names, Kevin Patrick Smith!

In the Blue corner, fighting out of Los Angeles, CA and having one of the worst mustaches in the business, Joel Siegel!

Ok, here's the deal. At a press screening last night of Smith's movie Clerks II, Joel Siegel made a scene. Clerks is apparently rude, crude, and just downright wrong at times, but that's expected. Did you see the first one? But apparently it was too much for one critic, and at the 40 minute mark, Siegel stood up, said "Time to go!", and while walking out of the movie, loudly proclaimed "This is the first movie I’ve walked out of in 30 fucking years!" Wow, that mustache got pissed!

Just for the record, this is Joel Siegel:
So, being the role model that he is, Kevin Smith had an incredibly articulate rebuttal. Ok, so it's not articulate, he just cusses a lot, but I'll tell you what, it's pretty damn funny. It puts most of Zach's rants to shame (sorry Zach). By the way, if you're offended by cuss words, stop reading now. Here's a taste of Smith's rebuttal from his website:

(After explaining the situation in much greater detail than I did)

Now, I don’t need Joel Siegel to suck my dick the way he apparently sucks M. Night’s, gushing over his flick before he’s even seen it; but shit, man - how about a little common fucking courtesy? Never mind the fact that when you’re paid to watch movies for a living and the only tasks required of you are to a) sit through said movies and b) write your thoughts about them before your deadline, walking out before a movie’s over is pretty unprofessional. [...] You never… NEVER disrupt a movie, simply because you don’t like it. Cardinal rule of movie-going: shut your fucking mouth while the movie’s playing. They even ask you to do so in the pre-show run-up to every flick (”Cell phones and pagers off, no talking during the show”). This guy went beyond talking, even; he was making a spectacle of himself as he left. I’ve now spoken to three folks in attendance last night, and all have said that Siegel WANTED everyone to know how disgusted he was, and that he was leaving. If you want to share your displeasure with everyone, that’s fine, dude; just do it AFTER the movie, not during. Some folks were enjoying themselves. I don’t come down to your job and slap the taste out of your mouth for coming up with a line like “‘Shark Tale’ Is a Halibut Good Time”; so don’t fuck with my stuff WHILE IT’S STILL SCREENING.

Here's the whole post. Read it all, it's worth it.

To conclude, I'd like to say that, as Smith acknowledges actually, this is actually a very good thing for this movie. It's target audience member will think this is great. "A movie that is so offensive that a movie critic, who's sees a LOT of movies, gets up and walks out? When is it playing?!" I had no inclination to see this movie before I heard about this, but now I'm starting to wonder just what it is about this movie that got the moustache so infuriated? So this incident, while obviously offensive to the moviemaker, can only help the movie.