Re: Joel Siegel Tribute on Good Morning America

moviePig wrote:

Basically Smith himself made my point on his website back when the
incident happened: "Look, I don't hate the guy. Shit, I'm glad he
survived his fairly recent bout with cancer. But his behavior in that
screening was unconscionable and professionally unethical, not to
mention childishly disruptive. And while I might get laughed at for
saying this... well, I just expected more from Joel Siegel."

And we perhaps should suppose that, under earlier and less stressful
circumstances, Siegel himself might've expected more from Siegel...

And to repeat what I said at the time--He announced it walking out of a
*critical* screening:
If someone decided to say it in front of a theater audience, yes, that
would be acting like a jackass, and most of us, when we do, tend to
sneak our theater walkouts quietly, out of some imagined etiquette for
our fellow sufferers--
Announcing it at as a joke to fellow professional peers, OTOH, was
playing on the idea that everyone else in the room was probably thinking
the exact same thing right now on similar bases of professional reasons,
and were more likely to silently understand his motivations than
question them.
(Eg., why it's funnier for standup comics to heckle each other's
routines than for an audience heckler to ruin it for the audience.)

All right, I can sort-of handle that possibility (even though I mostly
liked CLERKS 2). Of course, I'd also have to assume that Smith, who
doesn't strike me as a jackass would've been blind to the
interpretation you suggest... but that too is certainly possible,
since it was his offspring/movie.

(Er, that was = "Accusations of Siegel being an attention-jackass if he'd done it in a regular theater, which he hadn't.")

I wonder if there was any consensus
on Siegel's outburst from the other critics present...

It got attention, since most critics have an unspoken policy of not walking out on a movie except in extreme circumstances, and even then have to point it out in the review as professional etiquette/journalistic ethics. (And it doesn't hurt the pan review, either.)

Gene Siskel claimed he only walked out on two movies in his entire career, and made sure to mention it in his reviews, which has since given them a sort of mystique. (One was "Black Sheep" with Chris Farley, try and guess the other one. :) )
I seem to remember a Roger Ebert walkout once, too, but I'll have to look up my old Hated^3 copy.

Derek Janssen
ejanss@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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