Means a lot, I really appreciate it. This one was fun to do, fun to write up, fun to surf through people's responses.

For me Ellison's thing about killing stupid people is just shtick. If he was ever remotely serious about it ... well, I don't believe he ever was. I'm pretty sure it's about shocking audiences, waking them up.

It's a mistake to call Ellison a liberal -- unrepentant hardcore radical is more like it. It's pretty interesting because many things about him, including the general affect of dyspeptic old codger, misanthrope and semi-reformed skirt-chaser, suggest right-wing political beliefs. If anything, his views have hardened in the other direction. He didn't bring this up in our interview, but after seeing the first cut of Nelson's film, Ellison apparently told him to find some women & people of color, because the movie was all white. That's where critic Carol Cooper came in, who is African-American (and has fascinating views on Ellison). Of course Ellison then had to make a crude joke about it at the screening: "If she were a crippled lesbian, we'd be 4 for 4!"

My take after meeting him is that the eruptions of anger and misanthropic outbursts are genuine, in that they're part of his personality and not entirely under his control. He can manage them to some degree (he was sweet as pie with me throughout the conversation), and can often steer them into areas where they outrage some people and amuse others. But their content is not so important. He may be expressing legitimate views, like about the writers' strike or whatever. But he's mainly letting off steam.

Nelson (who is very laid-back) and Ellison will make a great comedy duo if they take this movie on the road. Nelson told me the Q&A's are always hair-raising experiences, since he never knows what outrageous things will come out of Harlan's mouth in advance. The effect of Ellison raging while Nelson tries to calm him down is very funny, and their friendship is oddly touching.

Thanks for that, sgheller. That's pretty fascinating. I dimly knew about BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, et al. being heirs to the Zyklon-B manufacturer, but didn't know the whole historical trajectory. It's pretty clear that the novel/movie must be based on those circumstances, although the fictional story is a little different. (In a very minor spoiler, I will say that Zyklon-B plays no role in the plot.)

To reflect the recent news reports on how and when Minghella died. There's no mystery, only a reminder that anytime you or a loved one goes into the hospital for a "routine" operation, the Great Beyond is always waiting on the other side of the curtain. Thanks for the comments, people.

I appreciate the civil criticism, and more than anything the "close reading," as we used to say in college. Furthermore, it is indeed a crappy sentence. Still, I wrote it and I guess I'll stick with it. It's a political season, and to admit a mistake is universally interpreted as a sign of weakness. Do you intend to surrender to terror in Iraq?

You know, Lev, I noticed that the subtitles to the song lyrics were pretty weak, but it didn't bother me much. Sometimes it distracted me a little: What French rhyme are they trying to translate, etc? But not much.

The bigger picture is that the strange, sweet-sour, resuscitated-gay-Truffaut thing that Honore is trying to do won't suit everybody, and I'm OK with that. His audience isn't large in France, let alone elsewhere. But don't blame him on the Americans; this will be the first of his films that reaches any appreciable US audience, if it even does that. Neither "Dans Paris" nor "Ma mere" even did $100K here. This will likely do a little better b/c it's with IFC, but not a lot better. So we're still talking about a guy who's way off the radar screen.

Christophe Honore is not the problem, when it comes to the limited audience for French films in America. Not when pictures like La Vie en Rose and Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils d'orchestre) gross in the millions, while Desplechin, Anne Fontaine, Claire Denis, Nicolas Klotz, Brisseau, Bourdieu and numerous others can't draw flies.

I simply wasn't sure about Goenka, and felt like I shouldn't say anything definitive without knowing more. I still feel a little leery of anybody who says "my way or the highway," and I think it's true that he puts his method forward as the only legitimate form of Vipassana (vs. Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and other Western teachers, I guess), which also gives me the whim-whams.

That said, the power of this meditative practice couldn't be clearer in the film. I'm certainly willing to listen to arguments that Buddhist-type meditation (Goenka says his technique is non-religious, and he's taught Christians, Hindus, etc.) offers something that other contemplative approaches do not. But I would need to see some strong evidence of that. On a related note, it strikes me that Vipassana is actually pretty different from zazen, as the former is pretty tightly focused on physical and mental sensation and the latter is more "just sitting." Yes? No?

Personal confession: Someone close to me spent more than 25 years in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement, and I got to know much more about it than I ever wanted to. I'm willing to believe that technique has benefits too, but the whole Maharishi outfit struck me as A) dominated by some pretty nutty notions, and B) pretty close to a certain word that journalists can never write because it's considered libelous. Just my opinion! Not the opinion of Salon! Goenka does not sound like the Maharishi, but the latter also insisted that his way was the only true path, and that you had to give up other spiritual or meditative practice. Hence, my general leeriness, caution, skepticism, whatever. But you can't grow up in Berkeley without at least learning some basic background on this stuff, and I'm grateful for that.