Artist Should Pick Canvas

Unfortunately, Dave Clayton’s dissection of my remarks on wide-screen processes is a perfect example of someone misrepresenting one’s comments to fit his own agenda (“Ideas Count, Screens Don’t,” April 8). Of course, intelligence and imagination should be first and foremost among a filmmaker’s tools! I never said anything remotely to the contrary, and neither did John Carpenter. But that wasn’t the topic; Times staff writer Elaine Dutka and I were talking solely about visuals, not content.

The crux of Clayton’s criticism stems from his belief that films should be “demarcated” from the audience, and that CinemaScope movies violate this by “plunging” them into the action. Precisely! That’s why I like to sit down front--I want to be “engulfed” by sound and image, I want to be part of the experience. Isn’t that why we leave our homes and televisions and venture out to the ol’ nanoplex in the first place? And yes, artistic vision is selective: All the more reason to give the viewer a broader range of choices.

When motion picture photography first came into being, there were all sorts of aspect ratios in use; what is known as the “Academy ratio” (1.37:1, then 1.33:1 when sound came in) became the standard simply because that’s what Edison arbitrarily selected and the others eventually decided to fall in behind him. But there was plenty of experimentation long before the 1950s--remember Grandeur?--which certainly indicates a general dissatisfaction with a single format. If a painter can work on whatever size and shape canvas he chooses, a filmmaker should certainly have the same opportunity.

I do like the old “squarish” format, just as I like tuna. But given a choice between tuna and lobster, I’ll take the latter. Ditto on ‘Scope. And the huge crowds at the County Museum tell me I’m not alone.

MICHAEL SCHLESINGER

Columbia Pictures

Culver City