Robert Greenwald, filmmaker and hawk-eyed consultant kicker-outer

So Robert Greenwald--the relentless filmmaker who drops agit-prop benchmarks like Outfoxed and Uncovered on the left's doorstep every few months or so--is back in the news regarding a little kerfuffle about his latest documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost. Evidently, Greenwald tossed a Wal-Mart "consultant" out of the film's downtown premiere after he spotted him pointing a cell-phone camera at the screen. An altercation ensued, which all took about eight hours to explode in The Times:

"Get out of here," Mr. Greenwald yelled, according to the director and a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. "This is a disgrace."

The spokeswoman, Mia Masten, said she and two consultants had bought tickets to the screening "to find out what they were saying so we can correct it." Ms. Masten said the consultant who was asked to leave, John Marino, was trying to call her because she was running late.

"Why would we record it?" she said, "We bought tickets."

Yeah, well, anyway. The whole thing sounded kind of like a vainglorious PR pissing contest, so The Reeler fired off an e-mail to Greenwald to straighten some things out. And it went something like this:

Does the Times article portray the altercation accurately? YES

If so, how did you conclude that Marino was shooting the screen? someone, didnt know who he was, was holding a cell phone far from his face, towards the screen, no way to talk that way.

Who notified you? i noticed it was going to ignore it, after that, someone told me he was walmart

How would you respond to critics who say the event stemmed from your chasing publicity on the eve of the film's release? ha ha, ha. walmart told the press, not me.

Now, I would never choose sides around here, and I would sooner set fire to a Wal-Mart than set foot in one, but can anybody tell me how or why the world's largest retailer--a notorious penny-pincher so obviously desperate to make inroads in New York City--would spend at least $30 on tickets to pirate a film on a camera phone when it just can order a copy for $13? I really do not get it.

At any rate, Greenwald's distributor is considering a lawsuit: "'You can't just go in and record a movie,' [Rick] Jacobs said. 'Wal-Mart should know. They are the largest seller of DVD's in the country.'" And probably camera phones, as well--which is lucky for them, considering how many you would need to record the whole film.