I have a problem. I am obsessed with the cappuccino. I mean, obsessed. I will go miles and miles out of my way just to try a new one. I lie awake at night thinking about them. I even suspect that the cappuccino is the main reason that I keep finding excuses to go live in Italy.

But I'm an American. And every time I go into a new coffee shop here in America, I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. All previous experience indicates that what I'm about to do will be a disaster, but I let myself get suckered into it anyway. American cappuccinos are typically way too large, far too hot, and served in paper cups whose steep sides make it impossible to fully experience the cappuccino in a single sip. They're also topped with stiff peaks that would be more at home on a key lime pie than a cup of coffee. Occasionally, they have been befouled with cinnamon.

But I can't stop searching. Because every once in a great while... I find a really good one. Not too hot, so the milk stays sweet. Not too big. A perfect blend of espresso and milk into a velvety-sweet cream that is both dense and airy at the same time. But even the perfect cappuccino doesn't last long; as soon as it comes into existence, it starts to deteriorate. The cappuccino is so ephemeral, and each one is so unique in its particulars based in large part on the hand of the person who made it. And I think it's that element of unpredictability that has kept me curious.

The good news is that America is in the middle of a coffee shop boom, so there is no shortage of new places to try. And there is always Starbucks. When Starbucks first started to really grow, in the early and mid-90's, I felt some gratitude. It wasn't the best cappuccino ever - they still had the stiff peaks problem and the paper cups. But it was a cappuccino. And often it was in places where the cappuccino had never gone before. I remember driving through Denver in 1996 and feeling positively gleeful at the sight of a Starbucks there.

And then in 1997 I left San Francisco - home to countless independent coffee shops - and moved to Los Angeles. For those of you who don't know, the white neighborhoods of Los Angeles are absolutely teeming with Starbucks stores. I started going there more and more often. But then I started to notice something. I would be standing in line, waiting to order, and I'd put my head down. Hunch my shoulders. Avoid making eye contact with other people. What was this discomfort all about? It was incredibly hard to put my finger on it. But I think what I was feeling was guilt. Starbucks guilt. But why?

I'd like to believe that my guilt came from a concern for Third World coffee growers, who have been suffering under the lowest coffee prices in history while companies like Starbucks reap huge profits for their shareholders. But if I am honest with myself, the plight of Guatemalan coffee producers was only part of the discomfort I felt inside a Starbucks. And I didn't feel so much guilt when I drank coffee at home in my kitchen. Just at Starbucks.

I think that my Starbucks guilt came mostly from the fear that I was losing my individuality. It came from knowing that in thousands of identical coffee shops around the country, thousands of people just like me were sitting down on Ikea chairs that looked exactly like mine, listening to the same jazzy soundtrack and drinking their Sunday morning cappuccinos, which, incidentally, were served in identical cups and were ordered using exactly the same words, a lingo that is unique to Starbucks. And, strangest of all, their cappuccinos tasted and smelled and looked just like mine. Suddenly my beloved, unpredictable cappuccino had become... predictable. No wonder I felt odd.

I became almost as obsessed with Starbucks guilt as I am with the cappuccino. So I started asking around, to find out if anyone else felt the same way I did. And it turns out that everybody has something to say about Starbucks. While there are passionate supporters and equally passionate detractors, most people have very mixed feelings. And it seems to me now that our mixed feelings about Starbucks are emblematic of the much larger issues we face in contemporary America - issues around consumerism, community and political involvement, individualism and the American dream. So I've decided to find out more about it - all of it... the cappuccino, Starbucks, American consumer culture...

THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO will accompany me on a personally-narrated journey that will trace the origins and current social meaning of one beverage, the cappuccino. Along the way it will confront a series of larger questions: Why is the Starbucks chain-store model a uniquely American approach to coffee? Is there something in our character, as Americans, that pushes us toward expansion and mass standardization? Is this human nature? Is it American nature? Are we a culture that values business enterprise? Or a culture that is ruled by it? Blending the voices of baristas, cultural critics, business leaders and coffee geeks everywhere, this film will use the cappuccino as a means to chart the strange intersections of individualism and mass culture that make up the contemporary American character.