Lagniappe: A Peptic Epstein

Spied on Arts and Letters Daily, an essay about film and culture, and Hollywood, by Joseph Epstein. Lately, I have found Epstein a mite dyspeptic, but he is right on here, back to his Aristides form in the good old American Scholar. I particularly like the way he confirms my current interests (navel gazing, aren't we bloggers?) in reading David Thomson. And his connecting of film-making with money, and the often inverse relationship between moneymaking in film and film as art are well rendered. After reading snatches of Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film while catching updates on the Natalee Holloway case on TV, I now want to subject Thomson's The Whole Equation to the same pattern.

I don't have just a professorial interest in this area, mind you. My daughter is now on a 7 week internship in Hollywood, and I seek to more fully understand. I also have a number of second cousins in the biz, the best known being Katey Sagal, of Married...with Children and the recently axed 8 Simple Rules (fame, notoriety, whatever).