Dear Alan Smithee: The envelope, please: Best '07 letters

Dear Readers (indeed, good friend, the salutation applies to you): I am vacationing, which means it is time to reach into the vault and present the Best of Ask Alan Smithee for 2007. Traditional gifting has been suspended temporarily because these letter writers have already received valuable T-shirts and such.

From 7-20-2007 Dear Mr. Smithee: Why is a movie's popularity based on receipts instead of tickets sold? I know movies are all about money, but listing the number of tickets sold would make comparing the most popular movies from year to year much easier, without having to adjust for inflation.

JEFFREY FREEMAN, ALPHARETTA, GA.

Dear Right You Are: Your logic is astounding, my son. And quite sound. The best way to judge the popularity of every movie would be to count the number of tickets sold.

Here's why it will never happen:

Reason 1: Hollywood executives are the only individuals on the planet whose egos depend solely on overstating the worth of the pure, smelly rubbish they dump into the public fray every week. And, trust me, execs are a needy bunch.

Reason 2: Your practice would certainly mean that movies like "Gone With the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation" would be considered the top films in American cinematic history. Clearly, those studio execs involved with those films are no longer with us, thereby rendering them unable to thump their massively important chests at their studio competitors, which in turn would unhinge the very reason Hollywood exists.

Reason 4: Doing things your way, Jeff, would expose the fact that Hollywood doesn't sell nearly as many tickets as it did, say, in the 1940s, an era when billions and billions of tickets were sold each year because there was no prevalence of a little thing called television.

And really, Jeff, you live in America. Have you not figured out yet that the goal of red-blooded democracy is commerce? Get off the facts, my son, and climb aboard "Titanic." Don't you want to be like James Cameron at the Oscars and shout, "I'm king of the world!" -- no matter how asinine you might appear doing so?

ALAN

Dear Mr. Smithee: Re: Your recent column on the Oscars and women directors. Am I wrong that Barbra Streisand directed herself in "Yentl"? If she did, don't you think you forgot about her??? Don't you think she was deserving?

GERRY AND JACK BARNICK, BOYNTON BEACH, FLA.

She directed "The Mirror Has Two Faces."

And we'll let that last sentence just stand by itself without embellishment.

Trust me, I did not forget Barbra. Who could? Was she deserving? No.

ALAN

From 3-16-2007 Dear Mr. Smithee: There seems to be some sort of cult following for the 1980 movie "Caddyshack." It was one of the most stupid, banal and childish pieces of junk I have ever seen.

Dear Be the Ball: "Caddyshack" stupid, banal and childish? Well, of course it is. Therein lies its charm, its brilliance, its utter perfection. Go ask Tiger Woods. He's one of the many in the film's "some sort of cult following."

ALAN