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Current Critics Circle head Loey Lockerby tells The Pitch, "Things with Shawn did not end well, and the circle is not comfortable discussing it."
In June 2006, those tensions disturbed even the placid waters of KCUR 89.3's Walt Bodine Show, where Edwards had occasionally joined the biweekly movie critics' roundtable.
At first, it was friendly. On the June 2 show, when Edwards mounted a typically spirited defense of the Jennifer Aniston comedy The Break-Up, University of Kansas theater and film professor John Tibbetts snipped, "OK, Shawn. Here he goes!"
Later that hour, Bodine asked the assembled critics, "What is a blockbuster?" Their answers illustrate the divide.
Tibbetts: "It has nothing to do with budget and everything to do with meeting or inciting audience expectations."
Edwards: "A blockbuster is a movie that people are anticipating. It makes probably more than $250 million at the box office domestically."
On June 30, the friendliness died. Kicking off a discussion of Waist Deep, Tibbetts said, "I know Shawn will be able to tell us all about this guy named Tyrese Gibson."
Edwards asked, "Why me?"
Tibbetts: "Because you doubtless know more about him than I do."
Edwards: "I don't know Tyrese."
Tibbetts: "I didn't, either."
Edwards: "Then why you pointing me out?"
Tibbetts: "Well — I guess it's a movie that has hip-hop music — "
Edwards: "What, because it has black people in it?"
Tibbetts: "It has a South Central L.A. street culture going — excuse me."
Edwards' behavior might have been mild in the real world, but it was a deal-breaker on Bodine's show.
"Maybe I shouldn't have done it," Edwards says now. "He said it like it was a surprise that Tyrese was in a brilliant movie, and he asked me about it like I would personally know him."
While he claims to remain on friendly terms with Bodine, Edwards isn't shy about knocking the critics heard on the show. "My biggest pet peeves are, number one: They haven't seen the movies. Get some critics on the damn show that's seen the movies!
"Number two: Get somebody who can talk about it. There are so many errors on that show.
"Number three: Get a fresh perspective. That show should be Russ Simmons and [Kansas City Star film critic] Robert Butler. You know those guys have seen the movies."
After the Tyrese discussion, Edwards wasn't invited back. For some critics, that might have been disappointing, but Edwards is bigger than local radio. He now does occasional commentary for Tell Me More, a National Public Radio show not broadcast here.
Edwards is more complex than his critics give him credit for. He seeks to speak for the regular guy, but he speaks in blurbs. He talks of the streets but also of the studios. He thinks people should relax and take movies less seriously, but he believes in movies' cultural significance so much that, through his documentaries, he is working to establish his own canon. He loves some movies — especially black movies — on their artistic merits but also because of their representational aspects. That Martin Lawrence movie he called "Totally hilarious!" offers, along with its slapstick, a warmly framed portrait of an upper-middle-class African-American family — something so rare in American entertainment, it might be worth celebrating.
Edwards also loves movies because they're big.
None of this is contradictory. It's just Hollywood, where the business of movies is to appeal to the masses, where the works worth enshrining are those that win over regular people, and where the reason it's embarrassing to have described Britney Spears as "a comet" is not because the movie stank but because it tanked.
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