Or: Lies My Musicals Told Me. A feature-length argument against the maxim that popular art is a reflection of the way we live; instead Herbert Ross and his team argue that popular art actually just represents (or even creates) the large-scale lies we need to tell ourselves in order to keep our brains from going haywire with malice, worry, and regret. And so Pennies - which basically collapses the entirety of the 20s and some of the 30s into one…

Based purely on the content of the film itself, one can’t help but suspect it was long forgotten not because it lacks historical value but instead because its own director preferred it that way: I’ve seen Baldwin on film clowning many an interviewer over the years, but never quite like this. In the first of three significant passages, director Terence Dixon explains via narration how “Baldwin… became less cooperative” with the filmmaker’s own goals (which are essentially to make a…