Joel Siegal vs. Kevin Smith: The Unhinging

Posted on July 19, 2006

Richard Johnson of Page Six reported on a feud between Post film critic Joel Siegel and Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and Clerks 2.

Siegel hated Clerks II so much that he walked out of the screening, declaring the film to be "smut." But that wasn't all -- he yelled "Time to Go!" and tried to get the other critics to leave the screening, as well. Smith was not amused.

"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 foul-mouthed Long Island convenience store clerks who razz customers and goof off.
Yikes. What was Siegel thinking? I mean if the whole donkey thing was so offensive to him, the polite thing to do would have been to quietly start sending furious text messages to PETA. Yelling in the middle of a film is likely to induce another patron to start text messaging Homeland Security about the unhinged nut job who's trying to incite a riot during the film screening of Clerks II.

Smith responded on his MySpace blog: "Getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor. This is the guy who stole his mustachioed-critic shtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back."

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