Earlier today I was hit with another “I can’t even” from another HE reader with the same old “why can’t you just focus on movie dreams and echo-fantasies while putting real-world unpleasantries aside?” I’ve lost count but let’s imagine this is the 47th such reply…

As a film obsessive since age 4 or 5, HE has labored to engage with everything worthy or even half-diverting in the movie kingdom (except for Marvel/D.C. and low-rent horror). I’ve been doing so 24/7 for 17 years straight (and 23 years if you count the Mr. Showbiz & Reel.com columns). There isn’t a single particle of “Hollywood fantasy meets metaphorical transportation” that I haven’t personally swooned over or attempted to grapple with…many decades under the influence.

Then again you’ve presumably noticed that the double-ass whammy of the pandemic + the white-liberal Robin D’Angelo virus are major political & psychological currents in the film industry right now, and that THINGS HAVE CHANGED in a way that begs comparison with what Paris suffered through in the early-to-mid 1790s.

Did you watch the Soderbergh Oscars by any chance? If you were a resident of Prague in late August ‘68, you’d be saying “God, enough with the focus on Soviet tanks already!” As an HE friendo remarked a while back, the building is on fire and you’re thinking it’s just a warm day.

There’s no separating the spaghetti from the sauce.