HOLLYWOOD SUMMIT ROLLS CREDITS

As Hollywood involvement in the weeklong “Entertainment Summit” between American and Soviet film makers drew to a close Wednesday, participants looked hopefully toward a cooperative future.

Columbia Pictures chief David Puttnam, a Briton, was among those attending a press conference Wednesday at Le Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood where a broad 20-point plan pointing to further cooperation between the two film communities was issued. The process of the “Entertainment Summit” makes “cultural sense, clear humanistic sense and for us at Columbia Pictures, it makes very obvious longterm commercial sense,” Puttnam said.

Columbia was, in fact, “actively pursuing one, and maybe two, joint ventures” with the Soviet Union--including a film to be produced by Stanley Kramer that has been in development for at least six months, Puttnam said.

Soviet delegation head Elem Klimov said that although the Soviet and American governments seem unable to reach agreements, “we have come to an agreement in much shorter time. Film makers of all the world unite.”

The 20-step plan was arrived at in a 90-minute meeting at the hotel that summit organizer Mark Gerzon called “the most exciting and meaningful time we’ve had together this week.”

While the proposal itself detailed no business deals or specifics for joint film productions, it called for an exchange of film artists and film industry professionals; an exchange of films; organizational relationships between Hollywood guilds and Soviet film organizations; joint university film education programs, and “a number of commercial co-production ideas being explored.”

The summit will continue in New York on Friday and Saturday where a series of private meetings will be held at the Rockefeller estate north of the city.

Tentative plans also call for an American delegation of film makers to visit Moscow next year. The Soviets leave for home Sunday.

Tuesday’s summit session at the Writers Guild of America offices in West Hollywood turned out to be one of the more thought-provoking and low-key of the week’s series of meetings.

The emotional high point was the presentation of a bound copy of the original script of “Casablanca” by writer Julius Epstein to delegation head Elem Klimov.

No one present used the movie’s closing line about the beginning of beautiful friendships, but there was talk of rekindling the kind of camaraderie that Americans and Soviets shared during and immediately after World War II.

“It’s my heartfelt wish and prayer,” Epstein said, “that it will not take another war to make us friends and allies again.”

Noticeably moved by the presentation, Klimov appeared to fight back tears as he held the gold-embossed red leather book.

“When I was a little boy and saw this film,” the Soviet director said, “I never dreamed that I would some day meet someone who made this film.”

Screen and stage writer Rustam Ibragimbekov struck the aesthetic nerves of his American hosts and counterparts with a lengthy talk on the travails of the screenwriter, whom, he said, must struggle with directors, bureaucrats and him- or herself to produce art.

The audience and other participants especially enjoyed Ibragimbekov’s comments on the “love-hate relationship between writers and directors.”

Directors, he said, “look upon scripts as something to be worked on, something to be developed” and not as a literary genre in their own right.