Because I did the right thing and focused on seeing two films I needed to see — The Greatest, which played at the Library at 11:30 this morning, and Humpday, which I saw and quite loved at a Racquet Club screening that began at 2:15 pm — I missed the noon dustup between John “knuckle sandwich” Anderson and Jeff “the Dude” Dowd.

The dining table in the Yarrow hotel’s restaurant where Variety critic John Anderson was allegedly sitting before standing up and face-punching Jeff “the Dude” Dowd earlier today.

As I’m seeing Shrink at 6:15 pm, I don’t have time to talk to investigate and re-report the episode chapter-and-verse. Here are reports from Variety‘s Anne Thompson, Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth and MCN’s Kim Voynar.

It’s not permitted to hit someone, but we all know how we sometime get when we’re tired and stressed from over-work. I think it’s very decent of Dowd not to have pressed charges. And of course, it’s very good for Dirt! The Movie, which is what the fisticuffs were more or less about.

I suggested a year or so ago that it might not be a bad idea to have an organized Movie Critics Fight Club, in which anyone who disagrees with the view of a critic would put on a pair of trunks and try to defeat the critic in the ring. Gloves, no bare knuckles. Whoever lost would be wrong and whoever won would be right by the law of divine ordinance. I offered to fight somebody over In The Valley of Elah…well, not really. I said I’d fight a New York critic who hated it, but I wasn’t sincere because I wouldn’t want to bang my hands up and not be able to write. I’m just saying that the concept of fighting for your film-loving (or hating) make sense on a certain level.