With the exception of the time he blew the surprise ending of Twitch of the Death Nerve, I enjoy J.R. Jones’s reviews almost as much as my own. That said, there is one element to his review of Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic [“So Funny You Could Cry,” November 11] that needs to be clarified. In the review he makes a reference that the Chicago Film Critics Association has asked its members to “stop snorting and laughing dismissively during press screenings.” A few months earlier another local critic–not a member of the group–had written a review in which he talked about seeing a film at a public screening and his relief that he would not be forced to endure the snorts, snickers, and dismissive laughter emitted from his lowly colleagues in the screening room. While sending out an e-mail to the group on an unrelated matter, I added a slightly sarcastic postscript in which I reminded our members not to do any of those things. Unfortunately, mild sarcasm doesn’t really translate well in e-mail form, and since no one seemed to have seen the original article in the first place, the joke basically died and was, I had thought, long forgotten.
