Saturday, August 13, 2005

Uncle Roger layeth the smacketh down

Last February, comedian (and I use the term advisedly) Rob Schneider took Los Angeles Times film critic Patrick Goldstein to task for describing Schneider's 1999 film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo as "sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider fired back at Goldstein in a full-page ad published in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter:
"Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."
In his review of Schneider's just-released sequel, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, the dean of American film critics, Roger Ebert, gets in the last word. Quoth Uncle Roger:
Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, Ray, The Aviator, Sideways, and Finding Neverland.

As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
And, as Ebert points out, Goldstein has garnered plenty of recognition, in spite of Schneider's claims. Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement. By contrast, Rob Schneider has won... well... the right to keep his career afloat by making lame, unfunny trash.

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