This morning's fisticuffs between film critic John Anderson and indie film legend Jeff Dowd continues to reverberate around Park City.
As one Sundance veteran told me, it was a fight straight out a central casting. Two longtime indie film fixtures - John Anderson, known for his quick fuse and sometimes belittling film criticism, and Jeff Dowd, whose vocal support of the films he reps is alternately described as passionate or invasive.
Dowd, who I've known for nearly 7 years and have worked with, is a larger-than-life personality. I can't imagine that one could know Dowd for more than two decades - as Anderson has - and not have a pretty good feel of what makes Jeff tick.
Anderson, meanwhile, has drawn some fire round these parts, for his harsh film criticism and for having posited that nonfiction films on important social topics deserve extra consideration from film critics.
As Anderson wrote here in November 2007:
Strange then that, in the initial reports I heard of today's two-punch altercation in the Yarrow Restaurant, Dowd was said to have been asking for some slack for DIRT: THE MOVIE because it was "an important film."
Speaking to Dowd just minutes ago by phone, he told me that he never made that pitch to Anderson. "I would never ask for extra consideration," Dowd told us. "I would never, ever say that. Going back to the beginnings of Sundance, we saw that movies didn't work when the storytelling didn't work. Only great movies make a difference."
Dowd says that Anderson told him, "Just because a movie has good intentions or is a good cause doesn't make it a good movie." Dowd says that he was pressing his case with Anderson because he believed that the critic was going to write in his review that audiences wouldn't like the film. Dowd tried to convince Anderson that audiences were responding enthusiastically to DIRT: THE MOVIE, prompting Anderson to call those who like the film "sheep".
"Why I confronted him? I'm going to let a critic, a good critic, an important critic, who's maybe a little tired, maybe a little overwhelmed, write the first review out of Sundance and potentially even kill (it's chances) in the eyes of some distributors?"
"The necessity to stop an ill-informed review trumps anything else."
Dowd filled in a few more details from Anne Thompson's piece in Variety earlier today, saying that he was headed to the Yarrow Restaurant anyway, not following Anderson there. His return to Anderson's table with Howard Stern show regular Jackie Martling was because Martlinghad seen the film and loved it. Dowd wanted to present Martling as evidence of his case. Anderson told both men to leave and let him finish his breakfast, to which Dowd says Martling replied, "This thing is more important than you finishing your breakfast in the next few minutes."
It was this line from Martling, Dowd says, that prompted Anderson to get up, approach Dowd, who says he was eight feet from the critic at the time, and give him a punch/shove to the shoulder chest.
After this and a few moments of surprise from onlookers, Anderson then punched Jeff in the face. This second punch, a harder blow than the first, came with no further agitation from Dowd, according to eyewitnesses at the Yarrow that I spoke to.
"He comes back, just fuming, and full force - BANG - right at my lip," Dowd described. "It was a heavy punch. I was pretty surprised that (Anderson) didn't draw blood."
Can't believe Mike Tyson is at Sundance well-behaved and the doc crowd is making all the ruckus!
Posted by: mila | January 21, 2009 at 06:34 PM