A local artist is looking to take a bite out of The New Yorker — by continuing a weeks-long hunger strike until the magazine runs a retraction for an article he didn’t like.
Painter John Perry — who yesterday completed the 17th day of his fasting protest — says he just couldn’t stomach an August 2010 piece in the venerable mag detailing a dispute between him and 1980s film icon John Lurie.
In addition to the hunger strike, Perry has been heading from his Yorkville pad to Petrosino Square Park in SoHo, near Lurie’s home, each day for more than two weeks and sitting for at least eight hours a day to publicize his protest.
He says The New Yorker improperly characterized him as a stalker by claiming he went after Lurie in a long campaign of calls and messages. Now he has refused to take another bite of food until the mag takes it back.
“I just want some acknowledgement from them that the evidence . . . is not completely in accord with what was written in the piece,” Perry told The Post.
“The last thing they want is for me to drop dead out here, because then someone will look over that article with a fine-tooth comb,” he said. “It will call into question their renowned fact checking.”
The New Yorker is adamantly standing by the story, which quoted Perry as saying things to Lurie such as: “Scumbag, one day you’ll be gone and this Earth will be delivered from the virus of your existence.”
“The piece was thoroughly reported and fact-checked, and is a fair representation of both sides of the story,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick. “We looked into [Perry’s] complaints carefully and found nothing to correct or retract. As concerned as we are about his health, we can’t print something we don’t believe is true.”
Sources at The New Yorker say many of the story’s descriptions of actions that appear to be stalking — such as tracking Lurie to the Caribbean — came from Perry himself.
The article described how the men became fast friends but were torn apart in 2008 when Perry asked Lurie — a musician who starred in the iconic 1986 Jim Jarmusch film “Down by Law” — to appear in a TV pilot for a painting show Perry hoped to pitch to PBS.
According to the article, Lurie left the shoot early, angering Perry and spurring the feud.
The explosive piece also angered Lurie. “The article had no regard for the truth or the damage it would cause to the lives of those involved,” he told The Post.
He said when he learned of Perry’s strike, “First I laughed, then I was sad.
“He’s conducting a hunger strike a half block from my house to prove he’s not a stalker,” Lurie noted.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Todd Venezia