Calling ‘Picasso’s’ Bluff

Congratulations and thanks to Christopher Knight for his review of “Surviving Picasso” (“ ‘Picasso’ by the Numbers,” Sept. 20). When I heard the Merchant Ivory team were making a film about Picasso with Anthony Hopkins in the title role, I looked expectantly forward to seeing it. Then I read it was based on Arianna Huffington’s book. Oh well. . . .

When Huffington’s kind of intellectual dilettantism demands to be taken seriously, someone has to stand up and call its bluff. That this distinguished team of filmmakers would expend energy on such a feeble, self-serving attempt at serious scholarship prompted the only possible question from Knight. Why?

MARC GREGORY

Beverly Hills