“Authentic” celebrity is never the product only of the efforts of the person who is celebrated. The actor commanding $10 million a picture is able to do so because in his second appearance in a film the screenplay was written by a genius, the director was a wizard, the producer kept his eye on the ball, the studio cut a hell of a distribution deal, or his co-star was a $15 million a picture celebrity whose notoriety (always a career booster) led to a record-breaking opening weekend. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of never-will-be’s strive and sacrifice, “prepare” themselves and writhe with desire and hope until their intestines cycle into spin/dry, yet never get a call-back. The predicament is too humanly destructive for a glib or frivolous comment about being in the right place at the right time (however apt that may be). It’s just the way things are. It’s the luck of the draw. The only consolation the multitude of disappointed might savor is the knowledge that after that first big success, the celebrity in question gets his choice of five or six of all the good parts on offer at the moment and, more often than not, either exercises terrible judgment or never again receives a smidgen of the good fortune he enjoyed his second time out. Bye, bye, happiness. Still, there is a difference in being a 45-year-old car salesman who never delivered a line on screen, and a no-longer-employable leading man with fifty million dollars in the bank and a Gulfstream jet. That is an irony that calls for sarcasm, but I am sorry—I just can’t seem to find it in me.