A CLEANER CINDERELLA
Renewing the age-old practice of
sanitizing fairy tales, Ever After — Fox's reinvention of
Cinderella starring Drew Barrymore — comes to tape March 2 absent
the ''sexually derived'' obscenity spoken by Dougray Scott and
re-rated by the MPAA. Deleting the four-letter word earned the
tape a PG — and that can't hurt in selling moms and dads a tape
aimed squarely at teenyboppers. (You doubt? Tie-in baubles
include charm necklaces, body glitter, and scented candles.) On
DVD, whose adherents are statistically more likely to be male
and postpubescent, Ever After will remain an unexpurgated PG-13. — Troy Patterson
SHOW ME THE MONKEE
Michael Nesmith swears he never intended to
make monkeys out of PBS. ''They sued me,'' he points out. But an
L.A. federal jury found his counterclaim so credible that they
awarded him a nearly $47 million judgment, deciding the Public
Broadcasting Service had defrauded him and breached its contract
with his Pacific Arts company, which was the first to have a
home-video partnership with PBS, releasing such shows as Nature,
Masterpiece Theatre, Ken Burns' The Civil War, and Sesame
Street. If PBS doesn't prevail on appeal, what's Nesmith gonna
do with that dough? ''No, no, I'm not gonna go back in the video
business,'' he laughs. His first novel, The Long Sandy Hair of
Neftoon Zamora, just came out, a second is in progress, and the
guy who executive-produced Repo Man and created the
sketch-comedy cult video Elephant Parts has also cofounded a
film company in his adopted hometown of Santa Fe, N.M. He plans
to do some writing and directing — but no producing or selling.
''I may not get back in business at all. If you can't trust PBS,
who can you trust?'' — Chris Willman
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