When stories like Cali's can't move people (at least anyone who has the requisite yellow brick road equipment to work with) then obviously something is very wrong. I think "it's the script, stupid."

I mean the script that gets into a person's head when disbelief is willingly suspended and the embrace of identity begins to take over and feel really good.

If I ever make a movie, my shooting script will be about everything, maybe based on the elusive Theory of Everything?
But I'm a suspect freak.
Sooner or later most folks get one dominant script stuck in their heads (religion, politics or some combination) and willingly immerse themselves in that one story, start to feel like one of its established characters and then start acting from that script in real life, responding to behind-the-scenes directors and producers who will use them as instruments, to bring that script to public life.

Those Unmoved By Cali must think they're in a whole different movie, different script and different target audience, so their reality has no relationship to hers. She ceases to matter, no, can quite literally cease to exist in their script, as they hunker down in their own comfortable genre, run the soundtrack as loud as they please and orchestrate critic bombs to lob across the lobby at her faceless crowd.

Yep. Powerbrokers who exploit our kids, schools, system of justice and free-flowing capital for their own greedy deals are hidebound conservative traditionalists, no matter which party's values they've traditionally barricaded themselves behind, or give showy awards to, or whose home and family choices they claim to bleed (red or blue) for.

Rob Reiner, that goes for you and your Big Hollywood Big State Big School Big Money "Why? Because we LIKE you!" preschool powerbrokering, too.

Any blogger, boss, pol or lobbyist who fears and therefore actively opposes and/or manipulates real, rightful, self-empowering private choices (including the dozens of progressive experiments changing our education cultures to organically reflect what the people really want and are willing to pay for) are thinking just like the Big Hollywood moviemakers -- like hidebound traditionalists all. Nothing progressive about that.

You guys find it a good investment to play the part of championing family values, privacy and "choice" outside your chosen profit center whether studio, sanctuary, classroom or cloakroom. Just know that your increasingly savvy audiences will expect your denouement later in the story, when the script calls for you to relinquish control of our choices . . .