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Former Columbia chairman David Puttnam, speaking at the USC Entertainment Law Symposium on Saturday before returning home to England after a stormy two-year stint in the United States: “It hurts me that today’s movies so frequently sell themselves short, unable or unwilling to step up to the creative and ethical standards the audience is entitled to expect of them. The medium is too powerful and far too important an influence on the way we live, the way we see ourselves, to be left solely to the tyranny of the box office or reduced to the lowest common denominator of public taste--this public taste or appetite being conditioned by a diet frequently capable only of producing emotional malnutrition.”