Guillermo del Toro has taken up permanent residence in a folding chair outside a Los Angeles cinema, where he reads every negative review of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's «Digger» aloud and rebuts it, by name, into a bullhorn, in sessions that have already run past nineteen hours.
The director arrived before dawn with a thermos, a stack of printouts and a hand-painted sign reading «DARING, BOLD, CINEMATICALLY COMPLEX.» He has since refused all offers of food, water and sleep, telling the assembled crowd that a film this ambitious deserves a defense of comparable length. «I will remain in this chair until the last detractor has been personally corrected,» he said, adjusting the bullhorn. «I have cancelled three productions. This is now my production.»
By the second day the sidewalk had become a small industry. A neighboring café began selling «Del Toro Defense Blend» by the cup, a queue of film students formed to take notes, and the cinema's manager erected a rope line after the crowd blocked the box office. Two rival directors reportedly arrived to mount their own chairs in solidarity, then left when they learned the shifts ran through the night.
Del Toro has also begun grading each critic's review out loud on a scale of his own invention, awarding points for vocabulary and deducting them for what he calls «entirely petty headlines.» A local print shop now runs a standing order for his rebuttal sheets, which he distributes to passersby by the armload. «Love it or not,» he told the crowd, «you will hear why.»