New York Observer film critic Rex Reed (who we’ve profiled here before) famously called Melissa McCarthy “tractor-sized,” a “female hippo,” and a “screeching, humongous creep” in his review of Identity Thief. He already declined to apologize once, in the process calling her “Melissa Manchester” by accident, but now that Melissa McCarthy is out promoting her new movie The Heat (which looks terrible, incidentally), she gets to get asked about Rex Reed calling her fat all the time! An exchange that I imagine goes something like:
DOES IT HURT YOUR FEELINGS WHEN SOMEONE CALLS YOU A BIG FAT HIPPO, MELISSA MCCARTHY?
WHY YES, RANDOM JOURNALIST I JUST MET ASKING ME THIS QUESTION FOR THE SEVENTH TIME TODAY, IT KIND OF DOES, THANKS FOR ASKING!
Specifically, McCarthy told the New York Times that if she’d read the review when she was younger, “it may have crushed [her].” (Don’tmakeacrushjoke don’tmakeacrushjoke don’tmakeacrushjoke…)
So naturally, Us Weekly had to ask Rex Reed about McCarthy’s response to his initial review that he already declined to apologize for. And Rex Reed, being a guy known for being gleefully un-PC and famous for falling asleep during screenings and writing reviews anyway who called Melissa McCarthy Melissa Manchester last time he was asked about it, well, try to guess if he apologized:
“I can only repeat what I have said before — that I do not have, nor have I ever had, anything personal against people who suffer from obesity… what I object to is the disgusting attempt to pretend obesity is funny. It is not remotely humorous, and every obese comedian who ever made jokes about the disease are now dead from strokes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. As a critic whose opinions are constitutionally protected by law, I stand by all of my original remarks about Melissa McCarthy’s obesity, which I consider about as amusing as cancer, and apologize for nothing.”
After which he dropped the mic and walked off the stage flipping the crowd the bird with both hands as they chanted “HATE HATE HATE HATE…”
Let’s be honest, if you have to reference the constitution to explain why you were being a dick, you should probably just accept that you were being a dick. No one’s telling you that you can’t say what you like under the law, just that, you know, you could probably write a plenty mean review without calling the star schoolyard names because of how she looks. Though I do respect the sheer gangsterness of saying “Look, I wasn’t trying to say that she’s fat, I was saying that she’s fat and she’s about as funny as cancer.”
That’s like Player-Hater’s Ball Lifetime Achievement Award right there.
[banner picture credit: Bobby Bank, WireImage]