Joel Siegel, Good Morning America's resident movie critic, walks out on Kevin Smith's Clerks II:

DON’T joke about women, donkeys and bestiality if you expect Joel Siegel to watch your movie. That’s what director Kevin Smith found out when the pun-loving “Good Morning America” film critic stormed out of a press screening of Smith’s “Clerks II,” which opens Friday - an act that’s sparked a vicious war of words between the two.

“Time to go!” roared Siegel to his fellow critics. “First movie I’ve walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!” His tirade came 40 minutes into the long-awaited Weinstein Company sequel to Smith’s 1994 cult classic about two foul-mouthed Long Island convenience store clerks who razz customers and goof off.

In the scene that sent Siegel to the exit, the characters graphically discuss hiring a woman to [perform sexual acts I can’t even describe here at LIBERTAS because they’re only the sorts or things that a sick, lonely, and probably institutionalized person would think of - and also Kevin Smith]. Siegel told Page Six: “It was so foul and mean and repulsive. I finally realized I could not say anything positive . . . I wasn’t ready for this kind of smut . . . I hope he doesn’t make any more movies.”

Can't say I blame him--the longest 72 hours of my life was an evening six or seven years ago when a friend brought over his DVD of one of Smith's earlier movies, Dogma. Unlike, say, the charismatic thugs and losers who inhabit the average Tarantino movie, these were not characters I'd want to spend any time with whatsoever. I couldn't wait for the movie to end--and I can't blame Siegel (whom I no huge fan of either, for what its worth) for bailing out himself--especially during a scene with "comedic" dialogue focused on bestiality.

Update: Debbie Schlussel wishes she had "walked out of the Detroit 'Clerks II' critics screening at the point Joel Siegel did in New York":

Siegel, ABC's "Good Morning America" film critic, walked out of the movie when characters were talking about paying a woman to perform oral sex on a donkey. Unfortunately, I stayed and saw the part where a man actually does that--and anal sex with the animal, too.

Where is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--and Moviegoers--when you need them? This is the deviant "cultural" level to which America has declined. I hope it's the nadir, but I fear we will decline much further. I'm no prude, but I know what sick is. And Clerks II is the epitome of it.

Read the rest. And/or simply skip the movie.