Kevin Smith Vs. Joel Siegel

I can't believe I'm jumping into this pissing contest, but since I was at the Clerks II screening that started all the fuss I feel I need to, especially since some of what I've read really doesn't jibe with what I saw and heard.

I would imagine that anyone who clicked on this post has a general idea what's up, but for those who've managed to avoid hearing about the catfight, the short version is that on Monday, July 17, movie critic Joel Siegel of ABC's Good Morning America and Eyewitness News, walked out of a New York screening room in the middle of Kevin Smith's Clerks II, and Smith is spitting mad.

This is how the New York Post's Page Six described the incident:

"Time to go!" roared Siegel to his fellow critics. "First movie I've walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!" His tirade came 40 minutes into the long-awaited Weinstein Company sequel to Smith's 1994 cult classic about two foulmouthed Long Island convenience-store clerks who razz customers and goof off.

OK, as it happens, I was sitting next to Siegel in the front row of the Broadway Screening Room, which seats about 40, and he did get up in the middle of a lengthy scene in which Randal (Jeff Anderson) is booking a Tijuana donkey show as a going-away present for Dante (Brian O'Halloran). The quote is right (except that I didn't hear him say [bleeping] anything), but neither "roar" nor "tirade" accurately describes what I heard and saw. He got up, said what he said — nothing more than what's quoted above — and left: no door slamming, no lingering in the half-open door letting light into the room, no haranguing from the side aisle.

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