On the other hand, you have Lionel Trilling, who was torn between trying to uphold or see what was good about America, and at the same time feeling compelled to criticise the popular culture. This idea that Hollywood is dominated by the Left, which is claimed to have happened as one of the results of the ethos of the 1960s - there's something in it, but compared generally with the drift of American society it doesn't seem to be particularly or interestingly of the Left. The only truly left-wing film maker is John Sayles, who operates on the fringe of Hollywood and is quite open about his politics.

When talking about such large issues in film I'm greatly reminded of a moment in 1959, when Ken Tynan was first flirting with Marxism and Brecht and went over to America to work on the New Yorker. Ken was at a public forum discussing culture and the future of the arts, and he was going on about his Marxist ideas and interpretation of society. The chairman of the panel turned to Philip Rahv, who was a former Trotskyist and one of the editors of Partisan Review - formerly leftist, and at that time very much a part of the anti-communist, liberal wing of American politics - and asked him what he thought about the questions that Tynan had raised. And Rahv turned round and said "Young man, the questions you raise are so old, I've forgotten the answers."

PW: I don't even think that it's necessarily that Hollywood's run by the Left. In my experience it's not quite like that. It seems to be much more the remnants of a kind of rather teenage rebelliousness, a desire simply to take a pop at things. It's as simple as that. I think that from what we've seen in recent years, there's a lot of posturing. So we have George Clooney making Good Night, and Good Luck, which I enjoyed as a film, but which was essentially going back and refighting the battles of the past. It wasn't really addressing anything at the moment which might even be risky. I mean, God save us from that. There's nothing risky about it.