Jerry Seinfeld under fire for Oscar intro

By Seth Schuyler Mar 5, 2007, 18:58 GMT

Jerry Seinfeld EPA/JASON SZENES

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is belatedly being bashed for disrespecting documentary filmmakers and giving them short shrift when he handed out the Academy Award for best documentary feature at least week's Oscars. 

The popular comedian's Seinlanguage wasn't much appreciated by John Sinno, producer of "Iraq in Fragments," one of the nominees in the category.  He has sent an open letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asking for an apology.

"With his lengthy, dismissive and digressive introduction, Jerry Seinfeld had no time left for any individual description of the five nominated films," Sinno wrote. "And by labeling the documentaries 'incredibly depressing,' he indirectly told millions of viewers not to bother seeing them because they're nothing but a downer."

"Although we all appreciate humor in our lives, Jerry Seinfeld's remarks were made at the expense of thousands of documentary filmmakers and the entire documentary genre," wrote Sinno, whose verite doc about how the war is affecting the average Iraqi lost out to " An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's global warming opus.

Seinfeld's introduction prior to handing out the feature documentary prize consisted of an extended  stand-up about  the unpleasantries moviegoers confront at the Cineplex these days, which many critics of the broadcast hailed as one of the evening's more humorous moments, and saw as an audition on his part to be next year's Oscar host. 

To Sinno, however,  it wasn't funny when Seinfeld "revealed his love of documentaries, as they have a very 'real' quality, while making a sour face."

To be nominated for an Academy Award "is one of the highest honors our peers can give us, and to have the films dismissed in such an offhand fashion was deeply insulting," wrote the producer. "The Academy owes all documentary filmmakers an apology."

A spokesperson for the Academy had no immediate response.

Sinno had another beef with the Academy, which announced prior to the Oscar telecast that the number of cities where documentary films must screen to qualify for an Academy Award is being increased by 75 percent. "This will make it much more difficult for independent filmmakers' work to qualify for the Best Documentary Feature Award, while giving an advantage to films distributed by large studios."