LOS ANGELES—Stunned into silence after reading through thousands of highly critical comments about the new film, James Darnell, the CG supervisor for Cats, spoke up quietly Thursday to note that he thought he actually did an okay job. “Honestly, I think the end result didn’t turn out so bad at all,” said Darnell, stressing that the widely panned sight of Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, and James Corden as computer-generated cats singing and dancing through London alleyways represented three grueling years of his life. “For months, I stayed up late rendering textures to make sure the whiskers looked just right on the face of [Idris Elba’s character] Macavity. That was hard, all right? And when I was finally finished, I was so proud that I showed my wife some of the concept art. I don’t know. Obviously, it’s a silly little thing, but—I mean, Jesus Christ, this is my life these people are tearing apart. Have some fucking decency.” At press time, Darnell speculated that maybe the problem had less to do with him and more to do with the fact that Americans have just gotten far crueler and more spiteful in the past few years.

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