So you’re blaming the writers, who have a terrible deal, for the loss of work that people with an even worse deal are suffering. But you’re not blaming the people who are giving them all the terrible deal. You’re blaming the people who are trying to make things better in the long run. Should they just do noting and…

It was for the wives!

It used to be that any day of the week you could choose between Prognosis Negative, Sack Lunch, Muted Heart, or Chunnel. Now it’s just Death Blow all the time, while classy foreign faire like Rochelle Rochelle only plays in big cities.

I always say that boring films are better in the theatre.

This is the same argument people make about seeing gay people kissing. They think they’re having it shoved in their face, while the gay people just think they’re living their life. You think it’s a provocateur action, because you’ve made it all about you.

Did he actually creep on the female actors?

I’m sure everybody could use more money, so why put any job in a position on a list? The writers are currently on strike, so whatever anyone else working for Disney makes isn’t important to this conversation. Comparing these things is just a diversionary tactic so you don’t have to focus on the issue being discussed.

It will get the Freaks and Geeks treatment some years from now.

Can’t believe this hasn’t happened. But I’ll bet they wouldn’t get along and would clash on key creative decisions. Sure, they seem very similar, but they’re so alike that they’ll see their least favourite traits in each other. McFarlane won’t budge for something and the relationship would dissolve instantly.

Never gonna top it.

To be fair, I didn’t really understand what you were getting at, and had to infer a lot and give you the benefit of the doubt.

I think you’re just quibbling with semantics (one of my favourite things). Would you agree that the business created the conditions that necessitated a strike?

That particular story was about how everyone in society has worth, even someone as low as a telephone sanitizer (you’ll recall that the society died of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone booth), but in this context I’m rethinking the lesson.

Insane.

It’s like having an ex who you used to have really good sex with.

They reunited without him because he didn’t want to play with them anymore. He was a total prick, screwing them out of songwriting royalties and generally treating them like day players in their own band. What exactly have they done and said that Byrne didn’t deserve?

This just isn’t true. Compare a character like Johnny from Mean Streets to Jake Lamotta from Raging Bull. Or Rupert Pupkin from King of Comedy to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Or Leonard from Awakenings to Jimmy from Goodfellas. These are very different characters. De Niro is known for his subtlety. He’s not Daniel…

Anything else in his career is dwarfed by his masterful line reading of “You blew it!” in Copland.

Salsa should be made in San Antonio.

Anderson is like the painter Mondrien. I always thought his whole deal was painting different coloured squares until my wife showed me some of his earlier work. It wasn’t fully abstracted, but was still stylized. You could tell that it was supposed to be a tree or a car or whatever the subject was. We went to an…