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"What an absolutely brilliant piece. I am sure like many others out there as a child you wished you could be a "movie star." I know I did. But as an adult in the real world looking at how shallow and really useless these people are, I wouldn't trade my life for the most famous or the most wealthy of them."

Most of them are'nt as wealthy as you'd think - many of them make about the same as the average manager at a corporation, they just get a lot of perks that makes them look like they live extravagent lifestyles. Just like rock stars, not many of them are millioniares, and even if they do have money, it's spent fast, thus the certain actors who just won't go away, or who were very big in movies but now are on tv shows or game shows.

It's entertainement. Most of them barely passed high school, and their level of intelligence is low. Anyone who looks to them for wisdom is a fool, as they rely on polling data more to craft their attitudes and opinions, or they rely on smarmy, lying press agents to speak for them.

When it comes down to it, if Brad Pitt never makes a movie again, it's not the end of the world, governments and society will not fall if Tom Cruise finally shuts up and goes away for good. The entertainment industry takes themselves entirely too seriously, and it's starting to annoy people - most people I know were disgusted that Al Gore won an award, and I don't know anyone who actually watched the show.

The cult of personality that is Hollywood disturbs me, but it will fall, eventually. I ignore the press, the tabloids, I don't watch tabloid tv, and I go to see few movies as most are garbage. Is my life poorer from not seeing these movies? Hah! It's BETTER.

300 does look like one hell of a movie, I'll go see that. It's the only movie I've wanted to see in a theater since King Kong.

I wish we could return to the old days when Hollywood Studios controlled what the average fan knew about the "stars." It was really a lot better than what we have today. Most stars existed in aura of glamor and fantasy with the studio keeping a tight lid on any information that could be unacceptable to an adoring public. The stars were larger than life, and through movie magazines we were allowed a small glimpse of what the studio would allow us to see. Usually that glimpse was a perfect life, a perfect home, and a perfect family.

If a star had a drug or alcohol problem, who knew? If they were sleeping around, who knew? Today, everything goes and it all hangs out. The mystery is gone and with it went the glamor and the fantasy. What we have now is an up close and personal look at people who really don't impress us very much. Most have very little character, and I can't imagine what it is like to go through life being so self-absorbed and shallow. They try desperately to validate their own existence, hence the embrace of every feel good cause that comes down the pike and the new fad of adopting children.

Hollywood was always a cesspool, but the difference now is that it is not hidden by any beautiful or perfect facade. Give me the old days.