Movie Stars Write Back

Movie stars are human, too. Cut them, they bleed. Write something snarky about them or their onscreen pals, they write back.

Consider the examples of movie star/humans Rob Schneider and Owen Wilson.

Both recently responded in print to critical barbs. Schneider placed his retort as a paid ad in Daily Variety; Wilson's appeared in the letters section of the latest issue of New Yorker magazine.

Schneider took issue with a Jan. 26 Los Angeles Times column by Patrick Goldstein about how the movie studios, in the journalist's view, had abandoned bankrolling prestige films in favor of TV remakes and "hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a film that was 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."

Seeing as how Schneider cowrote and starred in Deuce Bigalow, as well as its upcoming sequel, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, the Saturday Night Live graduate was not amused.

In his ad, drafted as an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider argues that if Deuce Bigalow was not an Academy Award nominee, well, then the L.A. Times columnist isn't exactly Pulitzer material, either.

"Maybe, Mr. Goldstein, 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!," Schneider writes.

Schneider further says that in his online research--yes, research--he couldn't find evidence of Goldstein ever winning anything. "Absolutely nothing," he writes.

But as it turns out, Goldstein may actually have more mantle material than Schneider, who is still awaiting his first major Industry accolade, at least according to IMDb.com's scorecard. (Schneider did earn three Emmy nominations as part of the SNL writing staff in the early 1990s.)

(Schneider's no stranger to putting pen to paper over a perceived slight. Last year, when he was rejected for membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, he sent an open letter to the group. "Dear [Academy executive director] Bruce Davis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences," his reply began. "All I wanted was the free DVDs! Jesus Christ! That's the only reason anybody joins the Academy, for the free DVDs!")

Since Schneider's ad was published Feb. 3, it's been pointed out that Goldstein is indeed an award winner, so honored by the Publicist Guild.

But to the New York Times, Goldstein confirmed Schneider's main assertion. "The Pulitzer has still eluded me," he told the paper.

In a postmortem interview with the Times, Schneider didn't sound angry at Goldstein, just intent on exacting a bit of revenge. Said Schneider: "I wanted to embarrass him in a fun way."

It appears Owen Wilson, meanwhile, wanted to stick up for a friend in a fun--but pointed--way, in response to a New Yorker think piece on Ben Stiller, not to mention Ben Stiller's career and visage.

"His face seems constructed by someone playing with the separate eyes, noses and mouths of a children's mix-and-match book," David Denby writes in the Jan. 24 New Yorker.

Denby expounds on the subject: "His forehead is high; his eyes sink into caves; his long jaw somehow breaks into a wide, sharklike grin." And expounds some more: Stiller has a "big head," is "[not] a conventionally good-looking actor," and makes for "an odd-looking suitor."

To put a fine point on it, Denby notes that "amazingly" Stiller has become an A-list movie star, although "he's never done much for me."

Denby's assessment didn't do much for Wilson, lauded in the same article as "enjoyably sleazy."

"I've acted in two hundred and thirty-seven buddy movies and, with that experience, I've developed an almost preternatural feel for the beats that any good buddy movie must have," Wilson writes. "And maybe the most crucial audience-rewarding beat is where one buddy comes to the aid of other guy to help defeat a villain. Or bully. Or jerk."

And so, Wilson, who has appeared in seven movies with Stiller including last year's Starsky & Hutch and Meet the Fockers, takes Denby to task for "dismiss[ing] or diminish[ing] or just plain insult[ing] practically everything Stiller had ever worked on."

Wilson takes the critic further to task for the dissection of Stiller's appearance and ethnicity. (Denby refers to Stiller alternately as "the latest and crudest version of the urban Jewish male on the make" and the embodiment of "the anxious-Jewish-male persona" and the "fumbling Jewish male.")

In his letter, Wilson writes that he wishes he could stand up for Stiller the way an audience--"howling for blood"--would expect from a buddy movie costar. "But that's Jackie Chan's role," he concludes.

Denby told the New York Post he found the letter "funny," and something to be expected of movie stars/humans.

Said Denby in the paper: "If you take a shot at someone as a critic, you have to assume that someone is gonna hit back."

Or write back.