Angry Letters: Val Kilmer, Don’t call me stupid, ‘Norbit’
I received an e-mail with the subject line “[biblical word for 'donkey'] faces.” Naturally, I was intrigued. There was no name, and the return address bounced when I tried to reply, giving further evidence that people who write e-mails like this are cowards.
Anyway, here is what it said:
val kilmeris the best freakin actor and who are you to judge when you don’t even act yourself biotch
Of course, if being an actor oneself is a prerequisite for judging acting talent, then this person shouldn’t be judging Kilmer, either. (Saying someone is good is judging, too.) But why introduce logic into a matter such as this?(By the way, I have no idea which review, if any, this person was responding to. I can’t recall dissing Val Kilmer too harshly, but maybe I did.)
Next, if you’ve sent me an e-mail, you’ve seen the warning, in red letters, indicating that I don’t have contact info for any famous people, and that if you ask for such information anyway, I will write back to tell you how stupid you are. Amazingly, despite this warning, in red letters above the e-mail form, I still sometimes get e-mails from idiots who noticed a celebrity’s name on my Web site and concluded that I must therefore know that celebrity personally. And when I do, true to my word, I write back to tell that person how stupid he or she is.
For example, I got this e-mail the other day:
I am currently an Associate Publisher at the Forest Hills Celebrity Magazine. It is a very popular magazine about Queens lifestyle ( New York), a nice fine four color magazine. At any rate I am dying to contact Jon for an inetrview to appear in my magazine. I went to school with him at Queens College and hung out with him at CUPB, a social club. I beleive this would be so fitting because it is a local community publication, it will also help him promote his new movie… Cover story material I am sensing… any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Marty.
The “From” field in the e-mail said Martha Tucker. I responded to Martha with the form letter I have prepared:
[This is a form letter.]
You are very stupid.
The page you just e-mailed me from said this:
“STOP: If you are going to ask Eric how to contact a celebrity, DON’T. Eric has no such information for ANY famous person. If you ask him anyway, despite this warning, Eric will write back and tell you how stupid you are. And he’ll be right to do so.”
And yet, you went ahead and asked me for someone’s contact information anyway. So this is your reply, letting you know, if you weren’t already aware, that you are stupid. Very, very stupid.
Best wishes,
Eric D. Snider
Martha responded, only now her e-mail “From” name was Marty Sunflower. She said this:
Dear whoever you are, ["Whoever you are"? I signed my name to my e-mail, the "From" line says "Eric D. Snider," and the site she wrote to me from was called EricDSnider.com. And she's not sure who I am? This, from the woman who used two names in as many e-mails.]
I must say that you are the stupid one. In my years of researching information, I have never met anyone as arrogant as yourself figures, this is the trash that Myspace is composed of… [What MySpace has to do with anything, I have no idea.] Pity and to think there was hope for the journalistic wannabes…
Thanks for you time and for nothing. a simple I am sorry I cannot help you would have sufficed but know you reduced your self to name calling what are you twelve???? Would that have been to much and to think that you actually made this a form letter?????/ again a very sad representation of journalism.
Marty
Funny, the phrases “stupid,” “journalistic wannabes,” “what are you twelve,” and “very sad representation of journalism” all occurred to me while reading her letter, too….
Finally, my review of Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit” prompted this scathing reply:
I read your review of ‘Norbit’ and terribly disagree. [True to his word, he does disagree in a terrible fashion. Keep reading!] it is on of the main reason’s i don’t trust white movie critics reviews when it come to black films. norbit is the story of relationship, and if you have been anywhere close to this type of personality in one you can identify. with white critics you jugde your expectattion of the character instead of the overall movie itself. you will call a great movie lame and a lame movie great based on how you see it. [Well, yeah. Judging a movie based on how you see it is sort of what film criticism is. That's sort of the definition.] but being number on in the box office speaks for itself. i bet you’ll love ghost rider, or hanabal lechter. movies that i would never pay to go see. [Too bad, because "Ghost Rider" is apparently a great movie, judging by the fact that it's No. 1 at the box office.] i am a pretty good critic when it comes down to movies. and i don’t let my color get in the way of deciding what to see or not see. i also won’t let a actors personal life fuel my judgement of him on the screen. a good actor is a good actor, and the list of movies that you can questionable in eddie’s career some of which i actually enjoyed are not all flops. they may not have sold out box offices but check out the rental store and cable showing see how much money he’s mad from that. and i noticed that you didn’t mention shreck 1,2, or upcoming 3. [Actually, I did mention them, when I said that Murphy's movies "apart from the mostly harmless family flicks" tend to be bad.] i guess you didn’t want to insult mike myere hey?
Most of the outrageously poor logic in this letter should be apparent, but I want to point out something special. He makes the classic argument that being No. 1 at the box office means a movie is great, and then also says that just because a movie flops at the box office, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. He’s right about the last part, of course, but you can’t have it both ways. If being No. 1 is PROOF — irrefutable, case-closed PROOF — that a movie is good, then being No. 100 would have to be proof that a movie is bad.
Also, I should point out that “Norbit” is not a “black film.” Most of its characters are black, but the film has nothing to do with race. Race is never mentioned. There is nothing about the characters that would only apply to black people. They could just as easily have been white, with maybe Ben Stiller playing the two leads. (Wow, imagine how bad THAT would have been.)
February 19th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
You know, aside from sequels and movies based adapted from a popular medium, the only reason any movie is ever Number One is the promotion surrounding that movie. You’ll note that Paramount/DreamWorks spent a month promoting the hell out of Norbit. If Universal spent as much money on the superior Breach as Paramount did on Norbit, Breach would be in Norbit’s #3 spot.
Also, Eddie Murphy is coming off a great performance in Dreamgirls, which people are still buzzing about heading into the Oscars this weekend.
Speaking of that, does Norbit hurt Murphy’s chances of nabbing that Supporting Actor statue?
February 19th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Methinks Ms Marty Sunshine spent her lunch hour having a psychotic break. Or maybe a liter of Jack Daniels. As Martha Tucker, she’s touting her “nice fine four-color magazine” and “Cover story material I am sensing.” (Huh? Do people talk like that in the world of Real Journalism?) And I assume she absent-mindedly just mislaid her good friend Jon’s (Jon who? Stewart? Stout? I can help her if it’s the latter) contact information, since she “went to school with him at Queens College and hung out with him at CUPB, a social club.”
After your form letter response letting her know she is very, very stupid, Alternate Personality ‘Marty Sunflower’ comes out swinging and insulting, like an old hippie chick who had a little too much “lunch” to hit the keys right.
The Norbit guy was just whack, yo.
February 19th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Thank Karen, for the clarification. I hadn’t even thought of Jon Stewart (much less thought that Eric and Jon were acquaintances). I thought she was talking about Jon Favreau!!
February 19th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Oh, I guess I should have mentioned that the subject line of her e-mail was “contacting Jon Favreau.” My bad. My personal bad.
February 20th, 2007 at 9:54 am
The person who wrote the angry letter about ‘Norbit’ sounds racist.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Do you have Greg MacLennan’s contact information? I hear you know him, and he is kind of a big deal.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am
*feverishly bats away images of Ben Stiller from mind*
February 20th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I have a coworker who is also a “person of color” who keeps on trying to convince me to see “Madea’s Family Reunion” by claiming that the movie is hilarious. She is also a fan of the following wretched movies:
“The Nutty Professor”
“Big Momma’s House”
“Diary of a Mad Black Woman”
And so on. When I say that I will never, under any circumstances, willingly see these movies, she says it is because I am white and I don’t like “black humor.” I say it is because I have more than two brain cells, and I don’t like horrible, unfunny movies that try to pass themselves off as humor to retards who can’t understand any joke not delivered by a black comic in a fat suit.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Eric, I’m just curious if you use an entirely separate email address for your different email forms on the site? Do you also keep those email addresses entirely confidential so you can be certain they are not posted anywhere else? Do you also make sure to reply to incoming emails on those accounts from a different email account?
Just want to make sure all of that is true otherwise I would have to agree that the form letter is quite rude as the person may be getting your email address from just about anywhere out on the internets. Sure, that person may still be stupid for requesting a celebrity email address from a random person (someone on myspace apparenetly in this case) but your justification for calling them stupid would not make sense.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Just to satisfy Jeff’s curiosity, here’s the deal: no, emails from the site do not go to a separate email address; they go to the same address that all of Eric’s email goes to. However, they are clearly marked as being sent through the site, so it is very easy to tell if a particular email was sent using the form with the note right above it.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:21 am
Hooray for the return of angry letters!
February 21st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Why can’t someone write a legible, well-thought-out angry letter for once? Why do they always have to be morons? I almost feel bad for these people, but after I think about it, no I don’t. I’m pretty sure the Norbit letter is a fake, since it isn’t possible that someone actually enjoyed Norbit. By fake I mean it was likely a fan writing an intentionally bad hate mail to see it published and ripped to shreds, not that Eric made it up.
February 21st, 2007 at 4:15 pm
“But know”!!!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!!!!!
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 am
You know, Eric, the thing I like about you is that you are always so…correct. It pleases me to see the typos and worthless, incoherent babble of anonymous web surfers attacked with the just, steely precision of your superior intellect. I and other fans of your site — we are the ones who “get it.” I am surrounded daily by the ignorance and ineptitude of the masses, and when I come here, it is like a breath of fresh air! Please continue in your relentless pursuit to dissect every error, every fallacy, every logical gap in the careless responses to your writings by people who will never return to the site — which is unfortunate, as there will inevitably be a lesson waiting for them, a bullet-pointed lesson demonstrating plainly and irrefutably that they are not as good as us. It is without question a worthwhile investment of your time.
P.S. — Please write another book!
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
“If being No. 1 is PROOF  irrefutable, case-closed PROOF  that a movie is good, then being No. 100 would have to be proof that a movie is bad.”
What if there are 100 great movies, each only marginally less good than the previous one?
February 25th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
f being No. 1 is PROOF  irrefutable, case-closed PROOF  that a movie is good, then being No. 100 would have to be proof that a movie is bad.Since you’re dissing his logical flaws, I figured I would point out yours. Being No.1 could be proof that a movie is good without saying anything about what being No.100 would mean. Suppose that a movie must be “good” and “a drama” to be No.1. A “good” movie that is not “a drama” may therefore be No.100.
“Good” can be a required element of No.1 without being absent from No. 100.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Plus it was never specified if the list in question only contained 100 movies. If a movie was number 100 on a list of 100, then I supose it would be the worst. But if it was number 100 on a list of 2000, that would be slightly different. But then take into account a list like the IMDB’s Top 250–is number 250 on that list the worst movie ever? If so, wouldn’t it be number 1 on the IMDB’s Bottom 250 list?
Eh…my head hurts.
And seriously, who the hell enjoyed “Norbit”?
March 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
One word, people: context.
The term “No. 1″ in Eric’s comments refers to the box office, not rank in a quality-based list. Eric’s point is that if the movie raking in the most cash is automatically the best, then number 100 in box office earnings must be terrible indeed.
The equation is familiar: Eric writes a review for what he thinks is a bad movie, provides supporting evidence, and slaps it with a bad grade. Someone disagrees, writes in, and is unable to provide counterpoints beyond “you try to make something better” or “it grossed $[amount] on it’s opening weekend, so it must be good.” Eric frequently points out the flaws in both arguments, in this case, the latter.
I have mixed feelings about the essence of the argument Marty/Martha poses: “I’m not stupid! You’re the stupid one, you… you jerk!!! You should be nicer! And you’re a bad journalist!” It’s mildly entertaining since she did something quite stupid then denied it, but it’s very sad that people actually reason this way.
Hang on, optimism… we’re in for a wild ride.