‘ISHTAR’: BOOS & !!!!!!

I believe I have encountered an altogether fitting and just coda to Broeske’s piece on “Ishtar.”

I was in a theater in Santa Monica recently watching the opening credits of “Meetings With Remarkable Men” roll as two men on the screen climbed laboriously up a desolate scree hill in an obviously barren, desert-like landscape.

Upon reaching the top of the hill, they looked down into a small valley and saw a crowd gathering for some sort of Middle-Eastern bazaar. This was about five or six slow minutes into the movie.

Then suddenly the film broke. The theater went dark and there were the usual boos and whistles. But then one woman’s voice rang out: “It was better than ‘Ishtar.’ ”

I think that says it all.

FRANCES THRONSON

Los Angeles