A. PISMO CLAM

Steven Smith’s article on movie character names (Film Clips, Oct. 6) caused a verbal riot at my Sunday brunch. Everyone weighed in.

My personal favorite is “Ball of Fire.” As Billy Wilder’s biggest fan, I still delight in the fact that he and Charles Brackett dared to name Barbara Stanwyck’s character Sugarpuss O’Shea--and two of the dumb thugs Asthma and Pastrami.

How did these names get past the studio brass? When my first screenplay went into production (the mind-numbing “Gnaw: Food of the Gods II”), I decided to name the two leads Neil and Rachel--after my parents.

The producer declared these names “too Jewish” and insisted that I change the man’s name to . . . David! What the hell? I thought to myself. This is a movie about giant rats. So I did as they requested. And then I went one step further . . . I changed my name too.

My co-credit reads: “screenplay by E. KIM BREWSTAR.” Which is my name backwards (sort of), and then some.

MIKE WERB (RATS)

West Hollywood

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In Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” the name Harry Caul is not merely a pun on Harry’s wiretapping activities. A caul is a transparent uterine membrane, which, if it remains on a newborn baby after the birthing process, is thought to be an omen of good luck.

Oh, by the way--Harry often wears a transparent tan raincoat.

CARLO PANNO

Tarzana

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What about “Dr. Strangelove’s” Merkin Muffley, Gen. Buck Turgidson, Gen. Jack D. Ripper and Russian Premier Kissoff?

LARRY TAYLOR

Fullerton

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Screenwriters can get as excited as they want about the woolly monikers of “The Wild Bunch,” but the best name man in modern culture remains Thomas Pynchon, a pen and paper guy who probably deserves some kind of film credit because his books are so cinematic.

Consider, please, Benny Profane; Rachel Owlglass; Tyrone Slothrop, scion of a venerable New England Puritan family among whose early members were to be found the Slothrops Constance and Variable; the 18th century cleric the Rev. Diocletian Blobb; arms magnate Clayton “Bloody” Chiclitz; dozens more. Hundreds.

Oh, almost forgot Pynchon’s film critic, Mitchell Prettyplace.

DAVID WILSON

Laguna Beach

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Egad!

The name from W.C. Fields’ movie “The Bank Dick” is Og Oggilby, I believe, not Ogilvy, as Calendar spelled it. “Sounds like a bubble in a bathtub.”

DAVE CUATT

Altadena

Also, Paul Newman’s character in “The Sting” was Henry Gondorf, not Harry.