What's contemporarily tragic about Sternberg is that he has a fatal physical flaw. One of his eyes is turned completely around in his head. From the front it looks like a boiled egg. It won't come back around straight. It's like an injury. It's incredibly bad for his ambitions as a commercial actor. He doesn't talk about what the backward eye sees. He's offended that D.L. in person asked him right off the bat.

He has other flaws, too.