For people who grew up hearing tales of the Great Depression over dinner, the current economic crisis is pretty disappointing. With things this bad, you expect to look out your window and see that the whole world is in black and white.

It's not. Not here in hi-def Santa Monica: Lilac yoga mats still bounce off the buff, brown shoulders of a fifth tri-mester women hopping out of black cherry Escalades so huge they should come with a fireplace standard.

Really, this is no place to experience a depression. No matter what bleak news you hear on NPR, L.A. sedates the crisis. Your 401K turns into a 201K but you spot Jessica Alba at the Farmer's Market. Unemployment hits record highs but the next joyously dumb license plate you see reads FLM EXEC. You ask a bunch of your friends if they'd take $50,000 to see "He's Just Not That Into You" and they all decline, no...

"Everything I learned about love, I learned from the movies."

-- Hugh Hefner in the Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2009

Long before I created Playboy Magazine, my cinematic education in love began with Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece “Potemkin.” During the epic Odessa Steps scene as that poor mother lost hold of her baby stroller, it struck me how the great Russian director chose to shoot in black and white purely to mask any sense of what kind of body the woman had. For days afterward, the entire mise en scene haunted me until I realized that potato-shaped women in winter coats just weren't my type, so I moved to LA.

The first film I saw in Hollywood was “King Kong.” By the third reel, I knew this classic love story was talking to me and me alone, although a couple behind me thought the film was talking to them...