Happy 4th, U.S. folks 

Lest you ever think I don't love my country, let me tell you I do. Just like I'll always love my kids, no matter what, even when they disappoint me.

You wouldn't fault a mother for disloyalty to a kid when she points out aspects of the kid's behavior she'd like to see altered. Nope, it's usually done with love and a wish for a better future. Here's my 4th of July wish: that a certain wavelength of the political spectrum will stop seeing criticism as disloyal and un-American (or terrorist-emboldening). If you look back at our rebellious founders, criticism and dissent is what they did best, and they didn't win our independence by asking nicely. Talk about traditional American values! Dissent (even contumacy) may be the granddaddy of them all.

Wondering about old TV plays 

The Library of Congress found this 1959 adaptation of What Makes Sammy Run, and showed it to an audience two years ago. I want to see it, and a bunch of other programs from that era, like the TV take on The Moon and Sixpence with Lawrence Olivier as Strickland. (Youngsters, this is Twilight Zone era TV, some great stuff, don't sniff.)

I know some of the tapes are missing, taped over or ruined. Such a shame they weren't cared for better, and valued. But I wonder what's the roadblock to releasing the programs that are intact, and putting them on DVD or online. Rights? Cost of restoration? Me, I'd watch a nasty scratchy Olivier as Strickland rather than not see it at all. What if they converted the raw footage and let amateurs work on cleaning it up, like a Gutenberg project? Better than letting it sit around unseen and unappreciated.

P.S. Dreamworks is supposed to be making the first film adaptation of What Makes Sammy Run but it hasn't been greenlighted. I'm reading it for the first time. Can't believe I never got around to it. Hustling Sammy Glick evokes strains of the driven web 2.0 entrepreneur, a Calacanis type. I loved Schulberg's The Disenchanted, based loosely on his experience as a young writer paired up on a movie script with F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was on his way down. Fitzgerald himself wrote the same auto-biographical character, along with a nice character tribute to Irving Thalberg, in The Last Tycoon, one of my all-time favorite books.