Blithe of Riley

John Riley should be shot. Instead of filling his profile of Preview Henry (Nov. 24) with the silly babble of Hollywood flacks, perhaps he should have considered a little compassion. In order to foster the myth that Henry’s absence from the first screening of “Heaven’s Gate” foreshadowed its commercial failure, he trivializes the reason why the guy was a no-show. The circumstances, a burglary at Henry’s home that resulted in the death of his mother and a lengthy hospitalization for Henry, were among the saddest I’ve ever heard. Yet leave it to Riley to bury this life-altering tragedy in a brisk, easy, second-to-last paragraph in order to make his pointless point. What else does this insensitive writer have up his sleeve? A musical comedy about the Ethiopian famine?

Michael Logan

Los Angeles