Judging Films by Box Office Grosses

* “Box Office Mania Gets Mixed Reviews” (July 29) perceptively warns us how the combination of industry and media frenzy about movie grosses will increasingly have a negative and narrowing impact on the range of films that are made. Sadly, this obsession with judging entertainment primarily by its commercial success has increased its pernicious grip on other media too.

New television shows--which usually need time to mature--must hit arbitrary ratings targets or face premature cancellation. Record companies are fixated on the first week’s sales of albums by established artists as the gauge of a record’s worth. Radio station hosts and formats are dumped at the whim of uncreative, ratings-obsessed owners and executives.

We all accept that we live in a capitalist society--and that arts and entertainment must sell. But if the entertainment industry is determined to exploit today’s pie-chart mentality as a means of promoting its products, why not at least use an additional criterion that is more meaningful to us consumers?

Rather than just try to impress us with the sheer numerical strength of a week’s grosses, ratings or sales, perhaps it would behoove them to also let us know about the percentage of customer satisfaction or pleasure.

MARTIN LEWIS

Los Angeles

* As an independent producer of small films, I’m totally run over by those obsessed with the box office. I moved to L.A. in 1986. At that time, you’d have to read Variety on Tuesdays to see the box office charts. Today, they have overnight numbers, projections, costs against previous hits, etc. It’s one thing to print the numbers, as The Times and many others do, as if they’re the gospel. It’s quite another to fail to even adjust them for inflation over decades. For instance, “Ghostbusters” made something like $14 million the weekend it opened in June 1984. If a movie opened to $14 million now, that would be considered smallish for a big film, and it would also have sold fewer tickets than “Ghostbusters.”

Does printing grosses hurt films? Yes, I can say firsthand that it does. Money people, distributors, marketing folks and such get in a tizzy if they think your film doesn’t have “stars” or “box office potential.” Forget how good the story might be or how many great things the film might say; if it can’t make a mint, forget it.

MICHAEL HUENS

Los Angeles