I write to the luscious tones of Maria Callas. Tom Volf, the director of the new documentary Maria by Callas fell in love with her voice only five years ago. He had a coup de foudre for all things Maria and it took him the better part of four years to pull off what is really a marvellous documentary.

Instead of talking heads, and a narration, la Callas, as she referred to her professional self, or Maria as she referred to her personal self, is captured in on-and-off the record interviews with Joyce di Donato standing in for her when she is momentarily absent. Entire songs rather than excerpts let you bathe in the voice, the mannerisms (I want the shawl, I want to hold my arms in a self-embrace, I want the bouffant hair).

Of course it’s the early years that fascinate. Born in New York City, she becomes a more elegant and refined citizen of no country with the haute accent that goes along with that. The pudgy prodigy, nudged by her mother to Greece for training with a Spanish diva who is discovered early on becomes the leading bel canto singer of her generation.

The images of her looking up at the camera, the cat eyes, the wide mouth, they are indelible. Besides her voice, she knew what her assets were.

The dramatic career buttressed by the long affair with Aristotle Onassis, interrupted by an equally ambitious Jacqueline Kennedy, and then a rapprochement when La JO had had enough is grand opera in itself. Don’t ever let great artists con you by saying their lives are separate from their work.

If you don’t know Callas, Amazon Prime has a lot of free Callas, and there is You Tube. But the film is special, the house was packed Saturday night in NY at the Paris Theater, I could only think with Met opera goers who were not at the opera itself (Callas warred with the Met much of her career).

The film is a brilliant look at what goes into being a celebrity of any decade.

We talk about divas. There are divas and then there are Divas. Callas was the latter.

The Price of Everything is a comprehensive and clear-eyed documentary on the subject of the relation of art to commerce. To that end, we hear from collectors, curators, journalists, auctioneers and artists—from the wildly successful (Jeff Koons), to very successful (George Condo, Marilyn Minter) to those whom the market lost sight of (Larry Poons) and those just coming into view (Njideka Akunyili Crosby).

It could not be more depressing.

Koons’ hedge fund factory art which some collectors can’t get enough of is on full display. So is Poons’ neglected ramshackle self and barn. So is Amy Cappellazzo’s auction house sophistry, and Jerry Saltz’s I’ve-seen-it-all shrug. And Crosby’s face as she realizes a work of hers has topped 900,000 at auction—and she won’t see a cent of it.

A Russian collector cries over her Hirst butterflies. Condo paints an entire painting as if he’s painting a fence while carrying on an interview. Between him and Koons and really the rest of the interviews with the possible exception of Crosby, the veil is entirely lifted so as to dispel any remaining magic we ever felt about artists or certainly the art world. The film is in direct contradiction to the artist’s panel I attended last week.

The following conclusions are drawn:

It’s very important for good art to be expensive.

If the gimmick owns you. it’s over.

To be an effective collector, you have to be a decorator.

Everything is metaphor.

Contemporary Art is a luxury brand.

Kill me now. Or maybe the messengers? The producer of the film is Jennifer Blei Stockman, an art collector herself, former chair of the Guggenheim Board, once named ‘Republican Woman of the Year”. The director is Nathaniel Kahn, architect Louis Kahn’s son who once made the infinitely more marvelous and uplifting documentary about his father.

The film opens theatrically this weekend in NY and then makes its way across the country to depress everyone else. A program at the 92nd Street Y on November 4th with some of the subjects is just more masochism if you ask me. On November 12th it hits HBO.