JULIAN SCHNABEL'S GOT NO GOOD MANNERS

Julian Schnabel's anti-Israel screed called "Miral" hasn't done well at the box office (only $66,000 bucks according to the charts) and got just as bad reviews, which is very fortunate. But alas, Schnabel's taken to this very rudely, and at a screening, he cursed at the film critics:

Artist-director Julian Schnabel today blasted critics of his controversial new film, “Miral,” hinting at a conspiracy underlying some of the movie’s poor reviews.

“I actually think that there’s a plan to undermine this thing because people wish that it would go away,” Mr. Schnabel said after being asked whether some of the harsh reviews of “Miral” were politically motivated. A politically charged film about three generations of Palestinian women, the story is adapted from a semiautobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal, who wrote the film’s screenplay.

“And people don’t want to get fired from their jobs,” said Mr. Schnabel, one-time enfant terrible of the New York art world and director of critically acclaimed films such as “Before Night Falls” (2000) and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007), which earned four Oscar nominations (including best director).

“There’s a woman that was fired from her place, Nina Rothe. She wrote a beautiful review of this movie,” explained Ms. Jebreal, the stunning Palestinian journalist with whom the divorced Mr. Schnabel now lives in New York.

She can't be that stunning if she supports that anti-Israel garbage!

And Schnabel would do well to take a mirror check before he accuses reviewers of political motivations, though it actually has happened in the past with left-wing critics, Roger Ebert included, basing their opinions on their political standings.

According to the film review aggregation site “Rotten Tomatoes,” 80 percent of the reviews of “Miral” have been negative.

“I went to the Angelika theater the other day,” reported Mr. Schnabel, “and I said, ‘Why are you here? The reviews are terrible.’ And they said, ‘We don’t believe in the reviews. This movie is great.’ So I said, ‘(Expletive) the critics,’ and everybody went ‘Yeahhhh!’”

The point here must be Schnabel's own method of reacting to the critics' pans, which is definitely disgusting, ditto the audience's embrace of his language.

Schnabel's also done us a courtesy of citing a few showbiz persona we don't need to waste our time on anymore:

Mr. Schnabel then recited aloud a “review” sent to him by actor Josh Brolin [...]

“And he’s not the only person that can write intelligently about this movie, so I don’t need the critics,” Mr. Schnabel said, citing other supportive notes, from actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Johnny Depp, as well as directors Paul Haggis and Jonathan Demme.

I fail to understand just how actors and directors count. And if they're going to back up this offensive anti-Israel mishmash for him, then I think I can do without their work. I was recently trying to watch some recordings of 21 Jump Street, where Depp first became recognizable, but the only really great thing about that TV series is co-star Holly Robinson Peete. I'm not much into westerns today, but even if I were, I doubt I'd care to watch Brolin in The Young Riders, one of his early roles, either. And I think I could also do without any of the works of Hoffman, Haggis and Demme too.

In fact, here's Michael Medved's column from 2002, where he writes about showbiz stars risking their popularity for politics. When he first wrote it, he probably had no idea just how much that would be.