Variety film critic John Anderson and film producer Jeff "The Dude" Dowd (who lent inspiration to Jeff Bridges’ character in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski) made Sundance headlines Wednesday when a heated discussion over festival film Dirt! The Movie led to a flurry of fists in the middle of the Yarrow hotel.
According to blog reports (and one extensive missive from Variety’s Anne Thompson), producer’s rep Dowd had followed critic Anderson following the 8:30am screening of Dirt! in hopes of lobbying for a kinder review; he even brought over Howard Stern veteran Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling to plead the film’s case. A few heated minutes and two or three punches later, Park City had its first physical altercation of the fest.
From Anne Thompson’s Thompson on Hollywood blog:
"Anderson seems not to have hit Dowd very hard. “I didn’t want to hurt him,” says Anderson. “This was nothing close to a fistfight.” Dowd did not resist and there was no blood. Dowd is a big guy and he’s fine. He wants to convene a panel with Anderson, journalists and the Dirt! filmmakers to talk about these issues. Dowd and Anderson have known each other for some 25 years, and Anderson interviewed him for his book, I Wake Up Screening."
Dirt, by the way, is a documentary attempting to rekindle man’s relationship with…dirt. Anderson’s professional assessment of the film, according to Thompson, is that it’s "poor, too simplistic, too redundant." Additional reviews have yet to be posted, but stay tuned to the Tomatometer as critics chime in.
Keep up with all the Sundance happenings over at our Sundance Film Festival 2009 headquarters.
