I realize it seems like a funny noun, but to me a drawl is a distinctive regional accent with its own idiosyncratic, often flattened-out vowel sounds. Carr, who grew up in the middle-class Twin Cities suburbs (between Hopkins and Minnetonka, he says) has one of the strongest Minnesota accents I've ever heard. It's really a part of his public persona at this point, and has followed him from Minn to DC and then New York.

I've heard the Twin Cities is a great place to live, btw. But the weather scared me a lot. We don't really get winter anymore in NYC.

As for this: "Has Carr used journalism to do what journalism is designed to do, ie, uncover injustice, educate, enlighten or entertain?"

In his career, he's 4 for 4, repeatedly and over many years. In this book, absolutely positively the last three, in spades. And arguably the first one too.

To state the obvious, some readers (including fromPhilly) may conceive a completely sour view of David Carr, his book and its reporting project, and this article. So be it. Carr told me about one old friend whose identity he kept concealed because the guy "thought the book was a stupid idea, and thought it was poorly executed. Other than that, he thought it was great."

But a couple of readers have nailed it: Carr's book stands out among addiction-and-recovery memoirs precisely because of its rigorous methodology, which as far as I know is unique. (I sure hope I made that clear enough in the piece.) He took three decades of training and experience as a reporter and applied those skills to telling his own story. That story is in no way unique, as several readers have noted. It is more extreme than some people's, but certainly not all. That too is the point. In rigorously reporting his personal history of addiction, abasement, desperation and gradual recovery, and in facing with honesty what he learned about his past in the process, he has performed a valuable service, one distinctively suited to his talents. You don't have to agree. But as Carr told me, he received 1,200 emails after that excerpt ran in the Times magazine, most of them from people struggling with addiction and eager for some ray of light, some branch to cling to.

How does Carr telling his own story invalidate or supersede anyone else's? I would imagine that the opposite might be true for many readers. Carr is well aware that as a white man from a stable family background he had certain advantages others don't possess. But he made it back to normalcy and even success from a very deep, dark place, and that requires a lot of work even if you're a Rockefeller (which he's certainly not).

One reader suggests that "other people" wouldn't get the chance to start over with an arrest record and a past drug habit. I don't know what that means. Carr wasn't a reporter for the New York Times when he got sober. He was an unemployed, overweight, drugged-out Minneapolis punk, a total failure in every aspect of life. He didn't get the Times job until 2000, after about 12 years of sobriety and 10 years of working at alt-weeklies in Minnesota and D.C.

I know I shouldn't react to personal-trolling items, but I'm not an "interviewer" because I have a slight personal acquaintance with the subject? Hello? Would it be more ethical if I concealed that fact? It would be pretty tough to hold down my day job reporting on the film business -- or David's gig reporting on media, or any other reporting beat -- if that were the standard.

Qua bridge player, I mean. But the character of Vicky's fiance is something else entirely. He's a shallow post-Ivy MBA caricature who is presented, not with much wit or originality, as belonging to a social world that hasn't existed for at least 30 years (and more like 50), one where white people of the right sort get together for social bridge games on Friday nights. There's no suggestion that he gives a crap about bridge, per se; if it seemed like he did, I would have no complaints.

Similarly, I felt like the whole thing about Cristina wanting to shoot on film was just chucked in there to explain the existence of a darkroom, used so artfully in the Scarlett-Penelope kiss scene. I would put down money that someone told Allen during pre-production that he needed to supply a reason why some 23-year-old was bothering to develop film in a darkroom, because most people don't. Possibly I didn't spell out clearly or thoroughly enough that this movie has a highly consistent feeling: It feels as if the script were set in 1964, but then they didn't have the money for all the wardrobe and production design and just dragged it awkwardly into the present.

Oh, and the guy who wants to rent the movie just on the promise of some lesbo action? He's *really* going to be disappointed. The scene is like 8 seconds long, and nobody disrobes or anything.

1) OK, fine. As I think I make clear, this movie is exceedingly unlikely to be a big hit. It's not for everybody and not trying to be.

2) But, dude, listen to yourself. "This sounds like ..." This is my problem with audiences right now. It's my problem with myself, sometimes. Should we really congratulate ourselves on our unwillingness to take chances?

OK, three things about that, in the tradition of "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."

3) It's a lovely film. Very difficult to convey in words how well it works.

I've posted a correction to the article, making clear that Kim Roberts says she was never a drug user or drug addict. She has made it clear that she sold drugs to make a living.