Bleeping out 3 words angers 2 involved with PBS show

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 15, 2004 | by Scott D. Pierce Deseret Morning News

LOS ANGELES -- Richard Dreyfuss and the executive producer of "Cop Shop" are incredibly ticked off because PBS asked them to bleep out three words from their show; three words I can't write here.

Oh, boo-hoo.

Fearing its member stations could face huge fines from the Federal Communications Commission in this post-Janet Jackson-halftime television world, PBS asked that the F-word, the S-word and an eight- letter word describing a sexual act be excised.

"We're complying with new FCC guidelines," Mary Mazur, the executive in charge of production for KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station that produced the show. "The choice was to deliver a program that would be in compliance with regulations and not put anyone in harm's way, in terms of jeopardizing the stations."

Seems prudent, doesn't it? And the fact is that Black and Dreyfuss agreed to the bleeping, "because broadcast of the words would subject . . . PBS affiliates to crippling penalties, even though we believe the language is appropriate to the subject matter of these episodes."

Dreyfuss also pointed to the threat of "intimidating fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," and he bemoaned "what might even appear to be caving in to temporary political pressure." But their beef is with the government, not with PBS.

"We believe," said writer/executive producer David Black, "that the new FCC regulations represent an unacceptable assault on our First Amendment rights, on everyone's First Amendment rights, (and are) an act unworthy of a free country. An act of censorship."

I'm not unsympathetic to that point of view. The knee-jerk, post- Janet Jackson stance of the FCC is indeed troubling, if only because there seems to be so little thought that's gone into it. And because of the proverbial slippery slope we're sliding on if we let government bureaucrats decide what is and what is not appropriate.

On the other hand, Black and Dreyfuss seemed completely unaware that they were themselves representing the worst of what has been called the Hollywood elite -- people so out of touch with most of America that they seem to inhabit another planet. They knew they were producing a show for broadcast television stations, so it should have occurred to them that the F-word is not appropriate.

Bleeping out the F-word shouldn't have been a problem, because there should not have been any F-words to bleep.

But in their world, that's just another word. And climbing on a First Amendment high horse over the F-word and the S-word and that sexual expression seems ludicrous.

We should probably expect theatricality from an actor, but Dreyfuss was waaaay over the top when he compared the Bush administration and the FCC to Mordor -- the evil realm in "The Lord of the Rings" -- and the word-bleeping to a battle featuring "the forces of dark versus light."

Frankly, if "Cop Shop" suffers because of the bleeping, it must not have been much of a show to begin with. And if Black can't come up with a compelling script that's free of the F-word, maybe he ought to try harder.

Not that Hollywood is any more hypocritical than Washington -- a fact Black gleefully took advantage of: "I stand with Vice President Cheney, who recently used the word on the Senate floor, and who said, sometimes you have to use it unapologetically because it makes you feel better afterward."

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com