The names Jeff Dowd and John Anderson may not leap out of the page at you, but their feud actually remains one of the most notable in terms of filmmakers vs critics. Jeff Dowd - also known as "The Dude" in the movie business - is an American film producer and publicist who actually inspired the famous "Dude" character from the Cohen brothers' movie The Big Lebowski. He's had his fingers in all kinds of movie pies over the years, including being the publicist for Dirt! The Movie - an American documentary about human beings' relationship with the earth and soil. John Anderson was the Variety film critic assigned to watch this movie at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and remained utterly unmoved by what he had seen, strolling away from the early screening to go and eat his breakfast and ready to publish a negative review. Dowd - passionate as he is - continually pestered Anderson about his opinion, begging him not to print a review that would be dumping on an important film about the environment. Anderson repeatedly told Dowd to back the hell off, before completely losing it and thumping The Dude twice in the face. Director Nicolas Winding Refn discusses this incident on the DVD commentary for his film Bronson - another movie that was playing at the festival where The Dude got whacked. Refn claims that this assault inspired a new phrase among the film critic circle, with several people claiming that Anderson had "done a Bronson", and behaved like the animalistic being in Refn's movie when he threw a punch at Dowd. The moral of the story is - don't interrupt John Anderson during his breakfast. Ever.
