“I’d go easy on the sympathy angle for Night,” a guy has advised me. “I’ve seen Lady in the Water and it’s an utterly fascinating portrait of a man’s fragile, out-of-control ego. As a story, it’s worthless. As a director, Night used to be able to create a sense of apprehension with the best of them. Now, he can’t even summon that.” Hold up…I didn’t say anything about the film, or my support or sympathy for it. I said I respect Michael Bamberger‘s book about Night, and Night’s courage in exposing himself so nakedly. “[Disney chief] Nina Jacobson nailed everything wrong with the movie and Night did nothing to fix it,” my correspondent continues. “When you cast yourself as a writer whose ‘great thoughts’ will be ‘the seeds of change,’ that a young man will hear these great thoughts and become president and lead a great reform, then you are setting yourself up for ridicule. And when you make the movie’s bad guy a film critic, a man who would be ‘so arrogant as to assume the intent of others,’ you are setting yourself up for a stake-burning. But then, he will be able to delude himself that the critics have it out for them because he dared to agitate them. And I say all this as someone who wanted to like the movie. God knows Hollywood needs original voices telling original stories. But, clearly, Night needs to listen to other voices besides the ones rattling around in his head.”