Cutting for Cleanliness

...The Corleones expect fidelity from their employes or they wipe them out...

...This would give the program intellectual legitimacy...

...For some, this Late Late Late Show would be just an inexplicable mess not worth staying up for...

...And all the networks get for their troubles is abuse...

...Moreover, it is puzzling why the networks would want to put themselves in the position of purifying gangsters through censorship in the same way that they purified degenerates...

...When an executive, say, gives his organization's trade secrets to a competitor, he is often rewarded by the second corporation with a better paying job, while the first company simply ignores the injustice...

...As Professor Mattimore noted, "The Godfather is not meant to be an IBM promo film designed to induce people to work for the outfit...

...He managed to change a sordid film into a New York Chamber of Commerce tour of Dream Street, with selected glances at slums and deviationism...

...Perhaps it would have been better if he had used his few moments to suggest a constructive way to view his film...

...On Television CUTTING FOR CLEANLINESS BY MARVIN KITMAN On the night of November 16, for the first time in the annals of television film-censorship, the director of an edited movie came on the air to offer an explanation before the crime was exhibited to the public...

...What I didn't understand was why Coppola, who has always made a big deal about being serious, would do such a thing in public-before what turned out to be one of the largest audiences for a movie in TV history...

...Watching the destruction of Midnight Cowboy, I came up with one idea that ought to be explored...

...There must be a better way of giving the people their cake and letting them eat it too...

...It took a mere fraction of a second less running-time for James Caan to say "motherbuster"-at least 1 think that's what he said in a specially recorded piece of additional dialogue-instead of the original movie's more profound "motherfucker...

...We TV freaks are often masochists,' observes Professor James Mattimore of Suffolk County Community College's English Department...

...Innocent men, I've been told, used to stand up in the docks and confess that they not only were guilty of crimes they had not committed, but were pleased to be executed for the Communist cause...

...But the next time Midnight Cowboy is scheduled, splice the missing 23 minutes together and run it as a special called, say, Not Coming Attractions...

...Many critics, for instance, said it was the greatest gangster movie ever made, but an Italian-American friend of mine, Tough Tony from Bath Beach, has another opinion: "It's the best corporation-story in cinematic history...

...I guess I, like many others, just wanted to hurl obscenities at ABC...

...Cut the picture to shreds if necessary...

...They argue that the movie was so violent and disgusting and offensively stereotyped it should not have been shown at all...

...But the scene where one hood pins another hood's hand on the table with a knife-also deleted-was not gratuitous violence...

...What a wonderful opportunity this would be for the networks to sell space to all the companies whose products are too controversial to be on TV-the cigarette, liquor, contraceptive, and other interests currently blacked out of the medium...

...Naturally, there would have to be commercials interrupting the continuity of the new kind of movie show...

...As for myself, I had read about the cuts beforehand, in Variety and other periodicals, but to my own surprise I watched the cadaver anyway...

...With their prurient interests aroused, they then may start having affairs with secretaries, frequenting the peep-show emporiums that flourish a block or two away from network headquarters in Rockefeller Center, and engaging in other counterproductive activities much too sordid to mention in a family magazine...

...Predictably, NBC didn't want us to see Sonny banging his sister-in-law against the door...

...Without mayhem and death, the Godfather's dynasty would not have been possible...

...Still, i can sympathize with the programers' problems in presenting mature movies to reputedly immature viewers (the TV audience traditionally is said to have an 8-year-old's mentality...

...But the worst thing about TV censorship is that it seems to drain the networks of their creativity in dealing with the problem of presenting mature movies...

...I tried to avoid stereotypes...

...Nor did they satisfy the Morality-in-Media maniacs, who wanted even more deletions...

...Besides, their perception of reality is already zonked by the interruptions for commercials, which are never cut no matter how offensive they may be...

...But once the folks at NBC made the morally unwise decision to run it-an unwise decision widely supported by the rank and file of the TV audience-they should have had the courage of their convictions and shown us the gruesome horrors of the Corleones so that we could learn to hate violence...

...But John Schlesinger, for example, did not take any bows for his achievements in altering his masterpiece, Midnight Cowboy, for its ABC airing on November 3. He deserved to, though...

...For one thing, it costs them money...

...Listening to Coppola made me think of what it must have been like during the Stalin purge trials...

...I can support that position...

...By excising 23 minutes from the original 111, Schlesinger surely performed a miracle of the electronic age...

...How degrading this extraordinary introduction-a kind of portrait of the artist as a mouthpiece for a network's censor-would be for any director who takes his craft seriously...

...Coppola put it more agreeably, of course...

...Obviously, the cuts, however minimal, did not satisfy purists like myself...

...This was their film, their night to howl, their way of life accurately reflected by a medium that had long ignored their special interests...

...In his prefilm oration, Coppola made a special effort to appease this last contingent: "I think that insofar as Italians and Italian-Americans have made such an extraordinary contribution throughout history and to the building of this country specifically, that it would be unfair to let this story and these characters represent the whole of the Italian people...

...To be sure, directors have in the past worked behind the scenes, helping to "revise" outstanding films for TV...

...Francis Ford Coppola, the esteemed artist who made The Godfather, told movie-lovers how pleased he was to have been given the opportunity by NBC to personally supervise the desecration of his masterpiece...

...It was an exclamation point to the picture's statement...

...And a third group, the Italian-Americans, may have wished that the movie had been cut completely after the credits...

...Coppola overestimated the TV audience's capacity for fairness here...

...A movie purist like myself, on the other hand, would be able to watch the cut version at the regular time, the out-takes later, and then put it all together in his mind's eye...

...Rather than make major cuts in the film," he said, "I re-edited any questionable scenes so that it would be as close as possible to the original and still qualify for television standards...

...Nonetheless, the material taken out of The Godfather, most of it dealing with sex and violence, was very important to the film...

...In all, the network announced, only about a minute was expunged-though it is not unusual practice to underreport missing time and footage...

...But in deference to the young I can see where the network would want to run it late at night, very late...

...I believe the networks are sincere in their expressions of disgust about having to censor...

...Many people disagree...

...Not Coming Attractions should also appeal to viewers who like to read only the dirty parts of books...

...More than 6.5 million people in the New York area alone watched the first part of The Godfather that evening, according to the Nielsen estimates...

...The Mafia does not normally recruit at colleges like the major white-collar organizations...

...Assume that the general audience is not ready for the Schlesinger film...

...Ideally-if television were a medium of truth as well as beauty-this reel would be offered ahead of the movie itself...

...Dozens of well-paid employes have to waste company time sitting around watching movies...

...Children of all ages see enough violence and stereotypes in regular TV programing to keep them informed on every development in the field, and there was no need, under the public-service provisions of the FCC, to offer this particular movie...

...The deletion of the famous bedroom scene and all the homosexual encounters, partly responsible for making Midnight Cowboy a box-office hit, must have been a bitter pill for the nation's degenerates to swallow...

...A panel consisting of professors, film critics and a minister or two could be put together for a concluding discussion on the horrors of Hollywood...

...In the case of The Godfather, the actual footage removed was minimal...

...How many viewers sit there with stopwatches...

...The family is like General Motors or any other large corporation, only more honorable...

...Basically, it's the tale of a struggling family trying to get ahead in a highly competitive business...