It is possible to know too much. A wine aficionado has no taste for a $14.00 bottle of Pinot. A modern dance devotee would not deign to attend a square dance. A cocktail shaker enthusiast won’t look twice at a mass-marketed chrome shaker from the 1930s. This sort of knowledge-based snobbery applies particularly to movies and TV shows. I know from personal experience that a physician cannot watch a doctor/hospital show without constantly (and derisively) pointing out its endless flaws. I imagine the same is true when a policeperson watches a crime show or movie; when an attorney watches a courtroom drama; or when an extra-terrestrial takes in a science fiction movie. Given my particular knowledge base, I find I tolerate movies and TV shows about music poorly. Amadeus was entertaining, but the scene in which the dying Mozart presumably dictates a portion of his Requiem to Salieri is pure poppycock. And don’t get me started on any of the Beethoven movies out there; or when the 6’ tall Robert Walker portrayed the 5’ tall Johannes Brahms in the 1947 movie Song of Love (“good for a guffaw” wrote Bosley Crowther in his review in The New York Times); or […]