Issues? Hollywood? Let’s Get Serious : Movies: Universal chief Tom Pollock chides press for stressing box-office grosses.

During his speech as the 17th recipient of the Entertainment Industries Humanitarian Award Monday night, MCA-Universal Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Pollock chided newspapers for devoting too much attention to the marketing and box-office grosses of movies and not enough to their content.

Touche, Tom. Let us know when you start making movies with content and we’ll take a look.

Pollock’s attack on the media, a common one from studio executives these days, is nonsense. Most of the films of the last decade rank in social significance with Madonna’s snow-cone bra, and even though that trend has shifted some lately, it’s not because a new breed of social lion has been loosed on the land.

Pollock’s support of local arts and community groups was cited as one reason for his receiving the Humanitarian Award, but you have to assume it was enthusiasm and good manners that led presenter Ivan Reitman to also credit Pollock for “bringing to the screen motion pictures that explore important social and political issues . . . and extend our understanding of human freedom.” If his record on those counts is exemplary, Hollywood is an even greater underachiever than we thought.

Under Pollock, Universal’s ratio of socially significant films to piffles has improved . . . a little. To his great credit, he greenlighted Martin Scorsese’s audacious “The Last Temptation of Christ” and then stood both the heat from outraged fundamentalists and the nasty gusts of anti-Semitism blown his way. But the vast majority of serious-themed films that work their way into American theaters each year are made and distributed independently, and television--which is often damned for its low-protein menu--airs more meaty social dramas in a month than Pollock-led Universal has done in four years.

The films most often mentioned in connection with the Great Pollock Social Revolution are “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and Richard Attenborough’s “Cry Freedom.” “Do the Right Thing” was a bold studio venture, for sure, but at the time it was released, Pollock candidly acknowledged that he wouldn’t have made it if he thought it was commercially risky. With a budget of just $6 million, he said he was sure it would make money, and with grosses (sorry, Tom) of more than $20 million, it did.

As for “Cry Freedom,” Attenborough took a true story about black South African activist Steven Biko and turned it into a thriller whose real hero was the white newspaperman who helped him. Any attack on apartheid is good, but “Cry Freedom’s” dramatic choices were quintessential Hollywood, with America’s white-male dominated demographics showing the way.

Universal, like most of its competitors, is a publicly owned company with shareholders to account to, and Pollock would be quickly back in his law practice if he were the conscientious gambler he is portrayed as. The studio has to go for big hits to return big profits and that means two things: It will make no-brainer movies aimed at the broadest possible audience (Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop” is coming soon), and it will market them in ways that are news .

The studio that gave us a thoughtful analysis of a race riot in “Do the Right Thing” also soaked up some heavy profits on “Problem Child,” a comedy about an abused boy who becomes a monster in his adopted parents’ home. The film exploits a social issue without even pretending to explore it, and just how it--or its planned sequel--figures to extend understanding of human freedom is not quite clear.

Movies are consumer products and consumers have a right to know as much about them as possible. All studio bosses would love to have that right-to-know confined to their marketing departments’ massive blasts of star-oriented publicity, but there are other things to consider.

Box-office grosses are important because this summer’s trends produce next summer’s movie schedule. We’re fascinated by the successes of “Pretty Woman” and “Ghost” because they tell us something about Americans’ moods and appetites. Bloated production budgets and escalating star salaries are important because they inevitably drive up ticket prices, as well as route money away from those filmmakers who would be exploring more serious issues for a necessarily smaller audience. Half a dozen “Driving Miss Daisys” could be made for the price of one “Total Recall.”

How movies are marketed, well, that’s really interesting. According to their distributors, every movie released is wonderful, even when it’s awful. Marketing people will do anything they can--indeed, it’s what they are paid for--to attract moviegoers. They do it with slogans, posters, publicity, merchandising and advertising; it’s up to the buyer to beware.

Probably the most obvious way they put happy faces on their movies is through quotes taken from critics and others who appear to have endorsed the films but often have not. The Times’ Peter Rainer is prominently quoted on current Tri-Star Pictures’ ads for “Avalon,” even though his review was far from a rave. And Times jazz critic Leonard Feather is quoted on Warner Bros.’ ad for “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones,” even though his review of that documentary was strongly negative.

It may be obvious to moviegoers that ads don’t accurately reflect the critical reaction to films, but to report on that phenomenon--or general marketing strategies, production costs and the financial performances of movies--comes under the heading here of consumer reporting.

When movies become more interesting and more relevant than they way they are sold, the emphasis on coverage will surely shift. Movies with content--that’s news.