How encouraging it must be to film makers that Columbia Pictures Entertainment and Dawn Steel handed out a $35,000 1988 BMW convertible as a gift to writer/director David Seltzer, whose current cars aren't quite up to snuff? (Outtakes, by Leonard Klady, Nov. 6).
But maybe we should look beyond the superficial.
$35,000 may not seem like much in relation to the salaries and expenditures of a major studio, but for a corporation laboring to re-establish itself, the money could make a world of difference to a film that needs the proper promotion to give it a fair chance at the box office, such as Sanford Lieberson's "Stars and Bars."
$35,000 could go toward developing future projects, maybe being used to option a screenplay from a first-time writer with a good story to tell, but because of his lowly status (maybe he only drives a pickup truck), not many people are willing to hear it.
$35,000 is a year's salary to one of the 750 employees Columbia and Tri-Star fired since their merger 10 months ago. (Maybe some of those former employees weren't washing their cars as often as they should.)
