Are talking actors an Oscar turnoff ?

Oscar telecast ratings were down to record lows this year, but every bit of bad news may become good grist for the PR mill. This prize-winning pitch was received two days after the Oscar broadcast from a person representing Mark

Weinberg, who’d been a press secretary for Ronald Reagan and whose new book is “Movie Nights With the Reagans: A Memoir.”

In Weinberg’s view, “Why not make wholesome, entertaining movies instead of cramming their political agendas down our throats?” According to Weinberg, his late boss had been so astute that even 30 years ago, he realized that film fans would be turned off by movies raising controversial issues. And that’s why Oscar ratings plunged, theorizes this expert. Surely everyone who watched would have preferred “Bedtime for Bonzo” nominated rather than “Get Out.”

The release describes Weinberg expressing himself in an opinion piece for Fox News online, saying that filmmakers ought to refrain “from the shaming, moral judgments and condescension that turns off Americans who don’t live in a handful of pockets on the coasts.” The author cites his sainted boss at Camp David, often quoting studio chief Harry Warner, who, responding to news that talkies would revolutionize the movie biz, asked, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”

P.S. On the morning after the Oscar broadcast, in a hallway at Drew School in San Francisco, Karen Houck overheard two women in conversation about “The Shape of Water.” “There’s no way a woman would date a fish,” said one to the other.

Perhaps you are, as I am, semi-addicted to the British police procedurals broadcast on PBS stations. But in real life, calls to the cops do not always involve reports of murder and mayhem. And in real life, Gordon Boultbee ,an apparently devoted and close reader of the Kenwood Press, forwards from the March 1 edition two items that comment on the uncertainties of law enforcement:

“Feb. 15: A caller reported finding two terry cloth robes and a towel along the side of the road in the 11000 block of Dunbar Road. The caller said it appeared the items had blood on them. The caller phoned later and said it wasn’t blood but red wine stains. A deputy drove out to check it out anyway.”

“Feb. 18: A caller from the 8000 block of Sonoma Mountain Road reported thinking they saw a man on their property running into the trees. The caller also said it might have been a deer.”

Visiting Brooklyn, Ed Rose sent a picture of a sign on the sidewalk outside of Mia’s Bakery: “Skinny people are easier to kidnap. Stay safe! Eat more cake.”

The word from Nob Hill: Reader Catherine Luciano is still picking up bags full of trash from the sidewalk around the Ritz-Carlton, which is one of her neighbors. Although the hotel has yet to pitch in on the project, when Luciano left a trash bag, bundled and tied, on top of one of the topiary bushes out front, it disappeared quickly, the hotel apparently having taken it in. “Maybe royalty was in town,” she says. Good sports: Jeff Pelline, a former Chronicle reporter who nowadays publishes the magazine Sierra FoodWineArt, is a baseball fan who has gone to spring training for years. This year, Pelline’s Sierra Foothills Report blog reported that he had “met a couple with long memories” of the rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers. Specifically, he was wearing a Juan Marichal jersey, paying homage to the Giants pitcher; she was wearing a Johnny Roseboro jersey, paying homage to the Dodgers catcher.

In 1965, the Giants and the Dodgers were playing at Candlestick Park when Marichal and Roseboro got into a 14minute-long fight that included the pitcher hitting the catcher with a baseball bat. Eventually, they mended fences and even became friends. Marichal was an honorary pallbearer and spoke at the 2002 funeral of Roseboro, saying that Roseboro’s forgiving him “was one of the best things that happened in my life.”

The couple in the T-shirts looked as though they were getting along just fine.

Injured Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, who first became famous quarterbacking for Stanford, was shopping at Vin Vino Wine in Palo Alto the other day, reports John Joss .He “picked up three great French burgundies,” says Joss, and “no one asked him about his shoulder.”

“We don’t give a senior discount. It’s your Life Experience Reward.” Clerk to customer, overheard at Apothecarium, a marijuana dispensary in South of Market, by Janet Lawson