Distressing news from somewhere in Hollywood. According to reports, Steven Spielberg may resign as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics over China's business ties with Sudan. Presumably because of their heavy investment in Sudan's oil industry, China has declined to send UN peacekeeping troops to Darfur, and Mister Spielberg is now "engaged in private dialogue" on the issue with the Chinese government - a state of affairs which crystallises perhaps better than anything the thoroughly screwed position in which the crisis-hit region finds itself.
"Steven will make a decision in the next few weeks regarding his work with the Chinese," begins a typically self-effacing statement from the director's spokesman. "Our main concern is ending the genocide."
And tying up pre-production on Jurassic Park IV, surely?
Yet as a longtime connoisseur of the Olympic opening ceremony, that least hilarious of contemporary art forms, Lost in Showbiz will be inconsolable if we are denied Mister Spielberg's vision for the next Games.
Who knows which of his trademark cinematic flourishes he will generously allow to be co-opted into the Beijing Olympiad's pageantry? But already, we had dared to dream of a black stadium, whose total darkness is suddenly pierced by a searchlight - but is it an earthly searchlight? - sweeping out from behind the brow of a hill. We had allowed ourselves to hear a John Williams soundtrack playing, as a low-height tracking shot takes in the noble athletes, a shot that conveys the childlike wonder that you would need to possess to remain remotely non-cynical about the entire event. And above all, we had envisioned his light directorial touch picking out a little Chinese gymnast in a red leotard, a red leotard which will later be spotlit again, only this time not encasing a tearful ten year-old - is she ten? God, she could be as old as 19, but you wouldn't know - but perched atop a pile of syringes and discarded bloodbags, in a moment which will simultaneously bring home the individual and collective tragedy of the modern Olympic story.
