Box-Office Numbers Game

Don’t know whether I am amused or bemused by the strutting and boasting of box-office bragging rights (“A New Box-Office Record, Relatively Speaking,” July 10). Forget about inflation adjustments. But don’t forget that when studio bean-counters talk dollars, are they talking real dollars or reel dollars? Can we rely on the veracity of the sleight-of-hand accounting artists who at one point had chalked up more than $350-million gross to “Forrest Gump” domestic alone (almost double that for worldwide) and yet still hadn’t located any net profit?

KEVIN GILLOGLY

Van Nuys