I’m probably going to lose about a thousand coolness points for admitting this, but there was a time, many years ago, when I actually liked the work of — prepare your gasps of derision now — Thomas Kinkade.

Yes, that Thomas Kinkade, the self-proclaimed Painter of Light™ — he’s actually trademarked that phrase, you know — the guy whose brand of schmaltzy nostalgic paintings adorn everything from collectible plates (trust me, folks, those damn things won’t increase in value, no matter how long you hold onto them) to greeting cards, calendars, music boxes, and who-knows-what-else. The Thomas Kinkade whose shopping-mall retail outlets sell mass-produced copies of his paintings printed on canvas and then “texturized” by low-paid minions to make them resemble original oils. The guy who gets basically zero respect from art critics but nevertheless confounds the hell out of them by selling millions of dollars worth of stuff to adoring fans. The guy whose licensing division is so thoroughly dedicated to imprinting Kinkade’s name and gauzy fantasies onto anything salable that there are actual housing developments modeled after his work. Yeah, that Thomas Kinkade.

Now, before you shake your head and forsake me forever because of my appalling lack of taste, let me explain myself.

In 1993, I spent a month in England on a study-abroad program. That month was a significant milestone in my life for reasons I won’t go into right now, and among the many, many things that made an impression on me during that adventure was the quality of the British light: ever-changing and generally kind of soft and dreamy, very romantic and appealing to a young man far away from home for the first time, and very unlike the hard, crystalline desert sun that I grew up with back home in Utah. I’ve never felt like the photos I took during that month really captured the light I still remember so vividly. But not long after I returned, I started seeing these paintings around that did seem to have the right look. I was a little bit starved for the place that had been so important to me, for the friends and freedom from my humdrum self that I’d known there, so, sentimental slob that I am, I responded to these paintings with affection and nostalgia. Just as Kinkade no doubt intended me to.

That moment must’ve been fairly early on in Kinkade’s career, before he became a trademarked brand, as opposed to just some painter. At least, I wasn’t yet aware of the Kinkade industry, if it existed then; I just happened to have seen some paintings that I liked. I still like some of his early, pre-™ work, to be honest. But as time passed and Kinkade’s star rose, I became disenchanted with the repetitiveness of his various series, the calculated and icky-gooey saccharine that seemed to be seeping into his work, and the increasingly blatant references to his Christian evangelical faith. (Nothing against anyone’s religion, or against them expressing their faith through their art, but I don’t like being preached to, and Kinkade’s faith strikes me as the cloying, Ned Flanders variety of preachiness that especially repels me.) In short, I lost interest in the guy and moved on…

I think that even if I did still call myself a Kinkade fan, however, I’d probably change my mind after reading the memo that’s been published at VanityFair.com. It’s a list of 16 guidelines that were apparently issued by the Painter of Light™ to the crew making Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, a direct-to-DVD movie that’s just been released this week, inspired by one of his paintings. These guidelines are unbelievably gack-worthy and reveal Kinkade to be a control freak of the highest caliber. I can’t imagine a film director with any professional self-respect putting up with lectures on what sort of camera moves and transitional techniques he ought to be using to re-create that trademarked Kinkade look. And if micromanaging the cinematography isn’t enough, Item #6 really takes the prize for self-aggrandizing horseshit:

[Include h]idden details whenever possible, References to my children (from youngest to oldest as follows): Evie, Winsor, Chandler and Merritt. References to my anniversary date, the number 52, the number 82, and the number 5282 (for fun, notice how many times this appears in my major published works). Hidden N’s throughout — preferably thirty N’s, commemorating one N for each year since the events happened.

Can you believe that? He may as well just write, “This movie is about me. Whatever the script says, whoever is acting in it, whoever’s directing it, it’s really my vanity project about my life, so just pretend you’re me and do it my way.”

Look, in-jokes are pretty common in movies — everyone knows about Threepio and Artoo appearing in hieroglyphic form in Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? — but they’re usually created in the spirit of affectionate homage, not dictated by the person to whom the joke refers. To essentially command a film crew to make homages to himself and his wife and family, and to further command (presumably) experienced professionals as to how they ought to be doing their jobs, is insufferably arrogant. The entire memo is like this, self-serving and obnoxious all the way down the line. I suspect it’s a pretty good reflection of the man who wrote it.

I’m suddenly very glad I never got around to buying any of his fake painting-print things…