The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted a long quote from City Arts critic Armond White about his reported heckling of 12 Years A Slave direct Steve McQueen two nights ago at the New York Film Critics Circle award ceremony in midtown Manhattan. The quote boils down to White claiming that the remarks attributed to him about McQueen weren’t spoken by him, that Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh reported “a malicious lie,” and that whatever White did say wasn’t intended for general consumption but for those at his table.
City Arts critic Armond White.
White has also described himself as “the strongest voice that exists in contemporary criticism,” and claimed that a “Communist-style” NYFCC committee is apparently determined to deep-six him, at least as far as his NYFCC membership is concerned.
“The comments that I supposedly made were never uttered by me or anyone within my earshot,” White has told Feinberg. “I have been libeled by publications that recklessly quoted unnamed sources that made up what I said and to whom I was speaking. Someone on the podium talked about critics’ ‘passion.’ Does ‘passion’ only run one-way toward subservience?”
White is saying that what he said came from a passionate place, and that the nature of his remarks weren’t subservient in nature. Do the math.