Kevin Smith vs. Joel Siegel

Call Out: At a press screening for Kevin Smith's latest flick, Clerks II, "Good Morning America" film critic Joel Siegel decided he'd had enough of the jokes about bestiality and stormed out in a hurried huff. Forty minutes into the Monday (July 17) viewing, Siegel yelled to his fellow critics: "Time to go!'' and "This is the first movie I've walked out of in 30 fucking years!'' and promptly exited the theater, having apparently had enough of the scene in which the films stars order a donkey show.

Response: Rather than be devastated by the reaction from a critic who "stole his mustachioed critic schtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back," Smith was "delighted by this news...As Paul Thomas Anderson once said of the man, getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor," he wrote in his MySpace blog. But he was a bit peeved about the way Siegel exited the theater. "Walking out before a movie's over is pretty unprofessional," he wrote. "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."

Face-off! This morning, Smith and Siegel squared off on radio's Opie & Anthony Show, and Siegel defended his actions, saying that "the description of the act was so descriptive and so repulsive I just realized there isn't any way in the world I can say anything positive about this." Smith, meanwhile insisted that Siegel should have sat through the entire flick, or at least not made a scene when leaving. "I've never walked out on a movie," he said, "but if I have walked out of a movie I haven't been like, 'Hey everybody! I'm walking out on the movie, look at me and my mustache!'" Listen to the Smith-Siegel radio battle! (MP3 from viewaskew.com)

Talk: Was Siegel unprofessional or is Smith being oversensitive? COMMENT

On the Web:
Kevin Smith on MySpace
Joel Siegel's page at ABC