Back when I was teaching in FL, there was a time when I wanted to rally my students and organize a picketing of the local Thomas Kinkade gallery when it first opened up. The whole "this print of a real painting has dabs of actual paint applied by master highlighters and is selling for $1,000" concept was maddening, and, at the time, I was convinced that he would single-handedly do more to undermine the public's concept of "real art" than any shlockmeister who had gone before him. (but I can be an art-world pariah, because I still think that any painter who employs a factory, and whose work is selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars should have a stamp on the back of the paintings that says "concept by Famous Painter, actual painting by YYYY, YYYY and YYYY, unknown BFA students who are hoping to get a leg up in the art world through their painting skills because they can't afford the 'MFA at Columbia path' "). I digress. It seems that hollywood is going to make a movie based on Thomas Kinkade's life and "art". Sigh.