I was sitting at a party some years ago and another guest told me, because my accent had brought up the fact that I was American, that her brother was a chef in a French restaurant … in Hollywood. “We have visited twice.  It is amazing: America is just like the movies,” she said.  She went on to describe her niece’s birthday party, with hired clowns and magicians around a swimming pool.  While I did a pretty good job of looking interested, I was feeling some surprise because, at the time, “Million Dollar Baby” was all the rage in France.  I was born in Missouri, and while we moved away when I was still a baby, I have been back often enough to know that southern Missouri (the Ozarks) is nothing like L.A. and that the clown thing was definitely not happening in that film.