Also, sometimes we overlook the potential of a life story; some lives may be more interesting than anyone thinks. “Moneyball,” with Billy Beane using computers and statistics to pick a winning team, might not seem like a cinematic tale at first despite being first told in book form by the excellent Michael Lewis. However, it was in the top five at the box office. But that is a Cinderella story in a way and we somehow never grow tired of those. We do watch other people’s endless train wrecks on “reality” TV. We watch the segments up to the intervention on “Intervention” because they tell a story in 44 minutes about how this person came to this decision point.

I have to smile because at the time I wrote that bit about circus elephants, “Like Water for Elephants” hadn’t been turned into a movie.