Film critic Roger Ebert taught us to love the movies. He taught us to love movies for over forty years, as a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The introduction for the New York Times‘ coverage of a police shooting in the commercially decadent hub of New York known as Times Square is the following, “When the tourists and shoppers thronging Times Square on Saturday afternoon first saw the police officers, guns drawn, confronting a knife-wielding man, many thought they had stumbled onto a movie set.” The scene, however, ended with shots being fired that killed a man who had been chased for around seven blocks. So, Times writers add, “It was quickly apparent this was no celluloid fantasy.”

I don’t want to dismiss the extreme nature of shooter James Holmes’ obvious mental illness. Like psychiatrists say about Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, Holmes might suffer from schizotypal personality disorder. Certainly he suffers from serious disturbances.

I do, though, want to make two additional points: 1) Recognition through violence is a common theme in American culture; 2) In the age of Facebook, Twitter and reality television, everyone seems to have access to a significant audience, but the recognition it brings is, usually, an illusion. When everyone’s a star, no on is a star.