“You’re an embarrassing doorman and garbage man. Fuck you. Kiss my ass.”
Yeah, probably not the best way to treat an honored guest in any situation, but when film critic (and I use that term loosely at this stage) Armond White heckled 12 Years A Slave director Steve McQueen at the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony it caused a firestorm that has yet to burn out. White has denied it besides plenty of anecdotal evidence against him, and the NYFCC went into damage control mode. For those who have been paying attention, White has done this sort of public grenade-tossing before, and it's always an embarasssment not only to the NYFCC but to critics as a whole. The only question was what the group would ultimately do about it? Could they do anything about it? Today they finally came down with a decision, booting White out of the NYFCC for good while suspending New York Post (I use the Post as a dish rag, so...) critic Lou Lumenick for a year. Lumenick had been implicated for revealing the tallies of awards votes.
What's the saying? There's no such thing as bad press? White is no doubt relishing in all of the attention this is getting him, just as his reviews every week are designed to draw a reaction rather than to inform his readers. So this will no doubt give him more ammunition to launch into even more heated denials of his guilt. I'm more interested in seeing how his employer over at CityArts will respond, or if they even care. Probably not.
To get NYFCC member Owen Gleiberman's opinion of the whole ordeal, check out his piece at EW here.
