A look inside Hollywood and the movies incorporating Outtakes, Cinefile and Production Chart. : WHO’S THE BOSS? : Happy Is Definitely a State of Mind

After reading a March 10 story in Sunday Calendar about Sony’s new management at Columbia Pictures, Denise Kostbar--a secretary in the studio’s publicity department--wrote a letter to the editor applauding The Times and deriding her bosses. “Finally someone has told of the obscene, vulgar waste of money by the Guber/Peters team,” Kostbar wrote in a reference to Columbia chairmen Peter Guber and Jon Peters. “As an employee of Columbia, I am outraged.”

Her expressed outrage on March 24 apparently made her bosses outraged. The following Monday morning, Kostbar said, she was called into Columbia chief Frank Price’s office and asked to explain her action. Three days later, Kostbar was exiled to the clerical equivalent of Siberia.

Kostbar said that after being told that Columbia’s management “no longer trusted her judgment,” she was placed in a temporary clerical pool where her wages and benefits could not be guaranteed after 60 days. Moreover, Kostbar said she was told she would not be permitted to accept any work assignments inside the executive Thalberg Building on Columbia’s Culver City lot. (A Columbia spokesman denied that Kostbar was barred from the Thalberg Building.)

“I’m being punished for exercising my right to free speech,” said Kostbar, who has been at the studio since fall, 1989. “I write letters all the time--to George Bush, to senators, to my City Council member. If there’s an issue I want to oppose, or support, I write letters. That’s the American system.”

Said Columbia spokesman Ed Russell: “It was obvious that she was not happy with the situation. We were looking to find a place where she will be happy.”

Kostbar, a longtime Angeleno who once taught English in Japan, is currently pursuing grievance procedures against the studio through her union, Local 174 of the Office and Professional Employees International.