Hollywood Bitchslap vs. Nick Swardson
I recently found an article where comedian Nick Swardson and the website HollywoodBitchslap.com had a bit of a tiff. Swardson responded to some negative coverage and Chris Parry, the executive editor, responded in less-than-kind. You can see the argument here.
Now I’m not trying to defend Swardson’s work. I thought The Benchwarmers and Grandma’s Boy were pretty unfunny, which is surprising since Swardson’s stand-up is pretty funny. What irks me about this fight is that while Swardson’s letter is professional and addresses the argument against him point-by-point, Hollywood Bitchslap shows an incredible amount of arrogance that should turn just about everyone off from their site.
My problem with Parry’s argument is that he’s clearly trying to assign a personality and an intent to Swardson that doesn’t necessarily exist within Swardson’s comments. For instance, Parry sees that Swardson’s claim of writing Malibu’s Most Wanted is somehow bragging about working with Jaime Kennedy, when actually Swardson is just refuting the claim that he only works on Happy Madison pictures.
It’s actually kind of sad to see Parry get so out of sorts about the e-mail because Swardson’s reply is fairly innocuous and polite. There are a few harsh moments, but this isn’t Uwe Boll we’re talking about here. No one is getting challenged to a fight and at least Swardson is responding to their claims. But Parry is clearly upset that critics aren’t protected from some imaginary wall. Now I’ll grant that most artists don’t bother responding to critical reviews, but it’s not because critics are somehow higher than artists. Critics are lower than artists. Even the lowliest artist is higher than the highest critic because the critic can’t exist without the artist. The inverse of that is not true.
I once received an e-mail from a writer/director who didn’t like my review of his film Hook’d-Up. I simply responded with what I believe every critic should respond with when confronted by an angry artist: You actually MADE the movie. And Parry clearly lacks an understanding of the difficulty of that accomplishment. It’s not simply churning out 85 pages. For a film to make it through from pitch to projection is fairly incredible when you account for all the places it can get held up and die. That’s not to say that all films should be applauded but rather all films, no matter how terrible you may find them, should at least be respected on a basic level. Filmmaking is HARD and any critic worth his or her salt knows that we have the easy jobs. We sit and watch a finished project and then write up an opinion based on that finished project. The quality of that opinion depends on the critic, but our work is still dependent on that of somebody else.
What’s sad here is not that Swardson lowered himself to respond to his critics. What’s sad is that Parry clearly wants to create an enemy where one doesn’t exist. I know the site is called “Hollywood Bitchslap”, but when you try to create acrimony with an artist, then you’re not bitchslapping anymore. You’re just picking fights.
I’m not defending Swardson’s cinematic works. I’m not even completely defending Swardson’s e-mail to the site. What angers and confuses me is how an internet film critic got such a bloated opinion of himself and his job. To paraphrase the latin saying: Who bitchslaps the bitchslappers?
