Films and Feelings

     Someone show me another business as enthusiastic for its own self-deprecation as Hollywood.      From affectionate self-parodies like Singin' in the Rain to darker reflections of the movie business like Sunset Boulevard , Hollywood has kind of built its empire on ridicule of itself. And why wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to pay admission to feel like they're in on the secret: that movie magic is just smoke and mirrors? That silver screen titans actually have the most fragile egos?       But these are not revelations, and I don't think they are intended to be. Hollywood doesn't really care about displaying its own pettiness and internal rot because it knows that all just makes for good entertainment.  A t some point, this all stops feeling like a joke that we, the audience, are in on. At some point, it all stops feeling less like a confession and more like gloating. At what point, then, does the joke turn on us, the enablers of this cesspool whose claim to