No. 1 on the Homicide Chart

It is good to read that Dale Pollock has come to realize that he has to accept moral responsibility for the works “I helped create” (“Facing Up to the Question of Morality,” Oct. 22). Some of us do take longer.

Mr. Pollock is proud of his movie “Set It Off.” It was No. 2 at the box office on its opening weekend, and he tells us he would make it again. It was No. 1, though, on the homicide chart, with those parking-lot gun battles afterward. Now he wonders why to this day that weighs so heavily on him.

I wonder too. Mr. Pollock’s heart seems to be in the right place, but when he says he is proud of his film and would make it again, is he saying it had nothing to do with the violence? Well, maybe the placement of its TV ads did, he suggests, or the absence of security guards outside the theaters showing it.

Well, if his film was responsible for being No. 2 at the box office, why was it not responsible for being No. 1 on the homicide chart? Or was that just a coincidence? But that can’t be because he says the violence weighs heavily on him, suggesting maybe he suspects he and his film were responsible after all.

TOM ROBISCHON

Los Angeles