Hah! Tom Cruise gets the Scientology episode banned in England!

[thewayne]

From IMDB news:

Cruise 'South Park' Show Censored
Tom Cruise has reportedly stopped an episode of South Park that mocks him from being aired in Britain. The show, in which Nicole Kidman and Cruise's fellow Scientologist John Travolta are depicted attempting to coax an animated version of the actor out of a closet caused controversy when broadcast in the US. The cartoon Kidman tells Cruise, "Don't you think this has gone on long enough? It's time for you to come out of the closet. You're not fooling anyone." - referring to allegations about Cruise's sexuality. According to TheRegister.co.uk, Paramount has agreed not to show the episode again, after Cruise complained. A source tells the site, "Tom is famously very litigious and will go to great lengths to protect his reputation. Tom was said not to like the episode and Paramount just didn't dare risk showing it again. It's a shame that UK audiences will never see it because it's very funny."


This is, in my ever so humble opinion, definitely one of the funniest Southpark episodes evah! Also up there is "The Return of the Lord of the Rings to the Two Towers."

Comments

[cardigirl.livejournal.com]

What's the chance that Internet downloads will just proliferate in the face of his objections? ;)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I would say the odds are pretty high. ;-)

[deborak]

That ep would have been funnier if they hadn't just beaten that "come out of the closet" joke to death. Once, it was hilarious. By the fifth or sixth time, I'm moved to side with Cruise on never showing it again.

I did really enjoy the "Butt Out" episode (anti-smoking crusaders vs. Big Tobacco) that re-aired this week.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty good. I wonder what they have against Riner, I'd never heard of him being an anti-smoking crusader.

At the same time, my lungs have become increasingly intollerant of smoke. I had a "mission" to try every Mexican food place in Alamogordo. I went into this one place, and even though there was no one smoking inside it, it was so saturated that I couldn't stay. Still, I've found one decent Mexican food place here that I return to.

[deborak]

Woohoo! A meaty discussion -- or should I say, a meat-head-y discussion. Haven't had the opportunity to have one of those on LJ for a bit. Anyhoo -

Here's the background scoop on Reiner/smoking. He campaigned to get Proposition 10 passed in CA under the Gray Davis administration. The Prop put a huge tax on cigarettes to "fund" pre-K education. Of course, non-smoking voters lacking logical thinking skills jumped on this because a) aww, think of the children and b) hey! cool! I don't have to pay for it!

It passed, and created a burgeoning bureaucracy of Commissions that raked in $700 million dollars in taxes, with no structure to disburse money to localities for educational purposes. Most of it went to pay the salaries of clowns who got themselves appointed to these agencies.

Meanwhile, Reiner, who had big political aspirations until Gore got a)defeated or b)dethroned (your pick) in 2000, turned his anti-smoking obsession toward the silver screen, and would harangue actors into refusing to smoke on screen where the script called for it, believing that this encouraged youth smoking.

Now you know I'm a Hercules fan, so I just squeed when I came across this little tidbit about Ryan Gosling, who played "Young Hercules."

Now if someone is to light up frivolously in a Castle Rock film, he [Reiner] wants the opportunity to talk the director or actor out of that choice. Not long ago he met with Ryan Gosling, 21, who is playing the role of a teenage murderer in a Castle Rock film directed by Barbet Schroeder. Reiner took a hard line with the young actor.

"Making this choice could conceivably get someone to start smoking, and ultimately kill them. I just wanted you to know that," he told Gosling. But the actor held his ground.

Reiner later reports, "He's a Mormon. He doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't swear. He's as clean-living as they come, and he did a tremendous amount of research into this character. So, we're not going to be censors, but if I were directing this film, I wouldn't let him smoke."

Go Hercules! Defeat evil! YAR!

[magic-rat.livejournal.com]

Here's the background scoop on Reiner/smoking. He campaigned to get Proposition 10 passed in CA under the Gray Davis administration. The Prop put a huge tax on cigarettes to "fund" pre-K education. Of course, non-smoking voters lacking logical thinking skills jumped on this because a) aww, think of the children and b) hey! cool! I don't have to pay for it!

It passed, and created a burgeoning bureaucracy of Commissions that raked in $700 million dollars in taxes, with no structure to disburse money to localities for educational purposes. Most of it went to pay the salaries of clowns who got themselves appointed to these agencies.

That sounds like something that happened here in Arizona before I quit smoking. The state government put another tax on cigarettes of which a good sized percentage was to go into a pool to be used for education against smoking, but the methods of just how that pool of tax money would be used was to be determined later. As far as I know, that pool is still sitting there unused and growing larger. Of course (this being Arizona), the governor and/or state legislature haven't figured out how to put it in their pockets yet; as usual, Arizona is still trying to catch up to California.