Alleged Steve McQueen heckler Armond White expelled from NY Film Critics Circle
theGRIO REPORT - Polarizing film critic Armond White is reportedly being expelled from the New York Film Critic's Circle after allegedly heckling 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen at the group's annual awards program...
Polarizing film critic Armond White is reportedly being expelled from the New York Film Critic’s Circle after allegedly heckling 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen at the group’s annual awards program.
According to Entertainment Weekly critic and NYFCC member Owen Gleiberman, “A lot of the people in the room last Monday night could hear Armond White, but in another sense he has stopped being a critic who anyone can hear.”
In a thoughtful post, Gleiberman said that while he has defended White in the past and finds him to be genial in person, the incident with McQueen was beyond the pale.
“White has the right to believe, and say in print, anything he wants. But disrupting a public event is a squalid form of acting out that has no defense,” he writes.
The CityArts critic allegedly called McQueen “an embarrassing doorman and garbage man” and screamed expletives at him when he accepted the NYFCC’s prize for best director.
White has claimed that he didn’t heckle the filmmaker (calling the accusations a “barrage of lies” ), whose acclaimed film he has dismissed as “torture porn.”
