Roger Ebert Explains Festival Whack-Job

Thu., Sep. 11, 2008 4:45 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

Jesse Grant/Getty Images

So used to using his thumbs, Roger Ebert thought nothing of tapping a guy on the shoulder.

But the fellow film critic whose attention he tried to get—who, according to Ebert, was blocking his view of the subtitles during the premiere screening of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire at the Toronto Film Festival—didn't take kindly to being touched by any of Ebert's famous digits.

"In my medical condition I cannot speak, I tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and gestured him to move over a little," Ebert, who has been battling thyroid and salivary gland cancer for the last couple years, wrote today in his Chicago Sun-Times column.

"He said, 'Don't touch me!' and remained in position. I tapped him lightly again. "I said—don't touch me!" He leaned further into the aisle, as if making a point of it. I tapped him a third time, and he jumped up and whacked me on the knee with whatever it was."

Nice, real nice. The New York Daily News, which identified the finicky moviegoer as New York Post critic Lou Lumenick, reported that the weapon in question was a festival binder, although Ebert said that it also could have been a rolled-up program.

Either way, the man showed no fear.

"He sat down, and I defiantly tapped him again, not as lightly, but not too heavily, just to show I wasn't intimidated," Ebert wrote.

Security intervened briefly, he said, after which Lumenick was allowed to return to his seat and no other smackdowns occurred.

Lumenick hasn't commented on the matter.

Although Ebert feels that the Daily News blew the incident out of proportion by reporting on it, the former Ebert & Roeper host admitted to feeling like his journalistic peer was in the wrong—though not necessarily for hitting him.

"A film critic of all people should be respectful of the sight lines of fellow audience members," he wrote.

"But in one way I feel sorry for him. He had no idea who was behind him when he smacked me. Now it looked like he was picking on poor me. I have had my problems, but I promise you I am plenty hearty enough to withstand a smack, and quite happy, after the smack, to tap him again. I had to see those subtitles. There was no pain. The incident is over. Peace."