While Hollywood observers can rationally understand what Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman meant when he told a room full of investors that Steven Spielberg's possible departure from his corporate family would be "completely immaterial" to his company's overall health, they also know that it was a catastrophic mistake not to immediately douse himself in gasoline after speaking those impolitic words, strike a match, and cry in anguish, "But the very thought of losing the greatest filmmaker—nay, human being!—in the history of this business we call show is so painful that this disturbing self-immolation you will now witness is the only thing that can stop my heartsickness." Slate's Kim Masters asks some insiders about Dauman's tragic failure to pay any kind of tribute to the national treasure's contributions, about Spielberg's likely feelings on the issue of immateriality, and about whether or not Paramount should just burn down the Melrose lot and start over after his inevitable departure: