Editor's note: With the news of Chris Penn's death, we're reposting this piece, one of Cintra Wilson's series of odes to Hollywood's unfairly forgotten or unjustly maligned.

I've admired Chris Penn's work, especially a guest role he did on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I hope he's at peace.

It's not a new piece, byline says 2004.

Upon seeing the news of the tragic death of Chris Penn, I went searching aroung the net for more information and came upon Cintra Wilson's article about the late actor. I was nodding my head and smiling as I read until I came to page four and saw that Quentin Tarantino writes "dumb dialogue" and that Penn's is the "only credible performance" in Reservoir Dogs. Ms. Wilson, you are obviously a writer of some talent; having said that, it is equally obvious that you are either pathologically contrary or an idiot - I'll give you the benifit of the doubt and assume that it's the former.

At this sad moment, one would have wished that the author could have reworked this over long homage to Chris Penn without the gratuitous attack on his brother. Sean Penn's great and moving abilities as an actor do not have to be diminished to celebrate Chris Penn. And publishing a piece that pits brother against brother, in the wake of a death that must cause great pain to his family, seems to me to unkind if not cruel.

Let me be up front: I only read the first page and then skimmed the third and fourth page, but as James Agee said regarding the poor review he gave a production of "Oklahoma" he had not actually seen: "I don't have to see 'Oklahoma' to know it plays badly." My response to this article is in the same vain: I don't have to read it to know its ridiculous. Chris Penn gets five pages on Salon? "A Caravaggio-like dancing teen." Is she serious? The speed with which the writer got this out following his death and the depth of her passion tell me this has been sitting around her desk as a personal musing for awhile. Look, as a kid I had a crush on the actor A. Martinze when he starred in the TV series "The Cowboys" but I'm pretty sure he is not worth five pages. Serious or amusing takes on contemporary culture make for lots of guilty pleasure reading. But the level of sincerity and the exaggerated language make this article seem, well, stupid.