Film critic responds to director’s rant
The film critic on the receiving end of a rant by a director at Tuesday’s inaugural AACTA Awards after giving the film a negative review has told Encore that there was no personal attack to the director.
During the AACTA Awards, A Few Best Men director Stephan Elliott attacked The Age’s Jim Schembri over the critic’s review of the film, accusing Schembri of personal attacks. The attack was removed from Nine’s broadcast of the show.
Schembri on behalf of himself and The Age told Encore: “We respect Stephan Elliott’s right to bite back at negative reviews. However, we never engage in personal attacks in film reviews and cannot see how referring to him as ‘having proved himself worthy of so much better’ constitutes one.
“Also, journalists must never feel any obligation whatsoever to “support” Australian films, only good ones. Stephan Elliott showed with Easy Virtue how talented and accomplished a director he is, and we look forward very much to his next film.”
Schembri went on to congratulate the production for marketing the film well, something the critic felt Australian films lacked.
“Despite what we thought of A Few Best Men, we applaud how well-marketed the film was. Poor marketing has dogged the Australian film industry for far too long and it was heartening to see such a critical issue being taken seriously.”
A Few Best Men’s opening weekend is the highest grossing opener of the past 12 months, surpassing Red Dog’s $1.8m, to take $1.9m.
The incident on Tuesday night was not the first time Schembri has been on the receiving end of an awards-night attack. At the 2008 AFI Awards Jimmy Jack, writer of feature film The Black Balloon read Schembri’s review of the film as he accepted the award for best original screenplay before saying “Fuck You Jim Schembri.” That was also removed from Nine’s broadcast of the show.
