Fan Fare

Who knew Dwight Kurt Schrute III could sell paper and tweet with Internet wit and humor, too?

At the Toronto International Film Festival’s Filmmaker’s Lounge on Saturday, Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) out-tweeted four other film industry panelists — hard-core tweeters all — in a “Twitter Showdown” hosted by MTV’s Dan Levy.

Each panelist had 60 seconds to “tweet” something witty and original about Roger Ebert’s statements about the film industry. In 140 characters or less.

Wilson was up against David Poland (@DavidPoland), a critic with Movie City News, Eric Kohn, a critic with indieWIRE and Screenrush, Grace Wang (@etherielmusings), TIFF social media coordinator, and Scott Tobias, a critic with The Onion’s AV Club.

Wilson won 4 of the 10 rounds, followed by Eric Kohn, who won 3 of the rounds.

Audiences were able to follow along, but without Ebert tweeting as well the “conversation” would’ve been difficult to follow without being in present in the room. (And for those who don’t tweet, don’t understand online “language”, or don’t know what Twitter is, this was likely even more difficult to follow.)

For the curious, here is a sampling of 140-characters of humor under pressure.

Ebert on the golden age of film criticism:

@rainnwilson: If, by “golden age of film criticism” you mean sheer numbers of pimply, tongue-chewing idiots with blogs, then yes, this is the golden age.

Ebert on Justin Bieber:

@scott_tobias: Uh oh! @ebertchicago just said something about Justin Bieber. TRENDING TOPIC! FAN FICTION! KANYE REMIX!

Ebert on on-screen kissing:

@erickohn: See, this was my problem with the whole Dwight/Angela romance on THE OFFICE. (Just kidding, Rainn! But, seriously, BBC version FTW.)

(Captions: (Top) Rainn Wilson, Grace Wang, Scott Tobias at the TIFF Filmmaker’s Lounge, September 11, 2010. REUTERS/Solarina Ho (Bottom) David Poland, Roger Ebert, Eric Kohn at the TIFF Filmmaker’s Lounge, September 11, 2010. REUTERS/Solarina Ho)