Roger Ebert Responds to "Incident" at Toronto Film Festival

Tensions run high at film festivals. You don't sleep for days. You eat the wrong food because you need the energy to sustain you through four movies a day, some interviews, travel, and parties. It's hectic. Lou Lumenick of the New York Post knows this first hand, inexcusably whacking fellow critic Roger Ebert with a binder at a screening this week of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire in Toronto. The story, as reported by Lumenick's rival paper, The New York Daily News, was cited by Ebert as "basically accurate" when he finally felt compelled to comment on the story. Here's what happened: Lumenick was sitting in the dark watching the movie, and someone tapped him on the shoulder from the row behind him. "Don't touch me," retorted Lumenick. About ten minutes later the situation repeats itself. A few minutes after that, apparently tapped again, Lumenick stands up and hits the person behind him with a rolled-up binder. That person, of course was Ebert, whose health problems have been so bad over the past few years that he can't speak. Not chooses not to speak because it's hard on his voice, but rather, can't speak because he's physiologically incapable after a series of surgeries for throat cancer. Ebert was tapping Lumenick on the shoulder because he couldn't see the subtitles on the screen and wanted his fellow critic to shift his positioning, allowing Ebert to read the subtitles. But smacking a guy over being tapped on the shoulder? Overreact much? "I think the guy was wrong," Ebert said in his blog. "A film critic of all people should be respectful of the sight-lines of fellow audience members. But in one way I feel sorry for him. He had no idea who was behind him when he smacked me. Now it looked like he was picking on poor me." Continues the dean of film criticism, "I have had my problems, but I promise you I am plenty hearty enough to withstand a smack, and quite happy, after the smack, to tap him again. I had to see those subtitles. There was no pain. The incident is over. Peace."

Comments

[Will Lamkes]

We all know how much fun it is at the Toronto Film Festivals but having small issues like this to rack up your anger and smack a guy, now that is too much movies!
Will Lamkes
Toronto Apartments