HomeThe Unbearable Lightness of Blogging. And Cannes.
May 30, 2008, 02:28 PM | by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Categories: An EW Exclusive!, Cannes Film Festival, Celebrity Scandals, From Our Staffers
Now that I'm back in New York after Cannes, agitated discussions about the comparative merits of Gwyneth Paltrow in Two Lovers (she's pictured, left, at the movie's Cannes premiere) and whatever the new Clint Eastwood movie is going to be called have already receded in anticipation of agitated discussion about the comparative merits of You Don't Mess With the Zohan. But I have one last bit of festival scoop for you.
So I'm having dinner with a friend-and-fellow-movie-journo, who tells me with amusement about a Cannes item he had read on Gawker in which New York Times critic Manohla Dargis had stormed away from a mobbed, delayed 10:30 p.m. Cannes press screening of Two Lovers declaring she's "not going to wait an hour for f-----g [director] James Gray."
So I set about tracking down the item, which wasn't on Gawker but instead on New York Magazine's arts and entertainment blog, Vulture. Vulture had picked up the gossip from Defamer. Defamer had taken a New York Post blog item by Lou Lumenick describing a storming, cursing "major U.S. critic." Defamer had identified the critic as Manohla, only to follow up with an update reporting that Manohla had denied that she was the stormer. Then Vulture added its own update. Then Defamer joked/snarked/wondered — just yesterday — whether the critic was Rex Reed.
After the jump: the identity of the mystery critic is revealed!
Dear reader, the storming, cursing critic in this international incident was me. And since I'm giving PopWatch readers a spectacular scoop, let me tell you what happened next: I extricated myself from the angry mob at 9:30 p.m., took myself out to dinner, had a nice bowl of pasta and a glass of wine, and returned an hour later to a crowd, albeit smaller, still waiting for f-----g James Gray. I got into the screening easily. And the theater was at least a quarter empty.
I'm happy I could break this news to you. As they say in beer ads, read blog items responsibly!
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