>No, I haven't. I'm aware of who they were and of their friendship, but I've not read their correspondences. Although, my whole thrust of replies to Pertti was in jest, aimed at Dragan's seeming distrust of anything western. I figured if they weren't agreeing on something, then it must be because there was some western influence in Pertti's thinking.

Wrong, you score -20. Wasn't I counting among the good things that I was exposed to both (or more) sides from early childhood? Which included (I'll repeat, and you find the "distrust of anything western" in the list) seeing at least two dozen cowboy movies (about one third with that JWayne), "Forbidden planet", almost all of Brigitte B[not sure whether the rest is spellable], Belmondo, a bunch of Italians, even one German musical comedy of early sixties etc etc. And I have openly said that I think I wouldn't be as I am if I wasn't exposed to both sides (nod to Joni Mitchell: there are more sides, though).

What I am ranting against here, and what you keep steering away from, is the attitude that "we're fine not knowing anything beyond what's made in the US or UK, and we're fine not wanting to know - we aren't missing anything because we don't know..." and there it gets circular.