'HELTER SKELTER' CBS chief wants less violence

The film's director said it's important to counter Manson's cult-hero image.
By SCOTT COLLINS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
HOLLYWOOD -- When conservatives raised a ruckus last year over "The Reagans," CBS ended up dumping the TV movie about the former first family.
Then Janet Jackson's impromptu strip during CBS' Super Bowl halftime show reignited a national debate about broadcast indecency.
Now the network finds itself with another potentially troublesome project, this one involving mass murderer Charles Manson.
One of CBS' main events for the critical May ratings sweep is "Helter Skelter," a new three-hour adaptation of former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's best seller about the 1969 Manson murders.
But with CBS seemingly always in the media hot seat, Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves is evidently taking no chances that the Manson film will become the latest flap for his network, which nevertheless remains the nation's most-watched broadcaster and has enjoyed a strong season so far.
What it's about
Moonves, who screened the director's cut recently with other top CBS executives, has asked the producers to scale back the violence in the film, which depicts the notoriously gruesome slayings of actress Sharon Tate and her house guests, and grocery magnate Leno LaBianca and his wife, according to several people familiar with the situation.
The murders became linked to larger cultural anxieties in the late 1960s, abetted by numerous grisly, widely reported details (for example, the killers scrawled "death to pigs" and other messages with the victims' blood).
Moonves and other CBS executives are said to be especially concerned about the depictions of the murders themselves, which are rendered in graphic terms, at least by broadcast standards, according to some who have seen the film. Neither the film nor the script was available for review.
This version of "Helter Skelter" stars Bruno Kirby as Bugliosi and Jeremy Davies as Manson. The original version, starring Steve Railsback as Manson, was nominated for three Emmy Awards.
Moonves does not always screen the CBS movies before they air, and the fact that he has carefully considered the possible problems with "Helter Skelter" suggests how thorny the issue of provocative content has become for broadcasters.
John Gray, writer-director of "Helter Skelter," said Friday that it was not unusual for a network to order trims of particularly explicit scenes. But CBS' recent imbroglios have likely given the network a heightened sensitivity to controversial material.
"From the time that CBS ordered the movie, things have changed a lot," Gray said. "They've been beaten up pretty badly."
Gray, a well-known TV-movie director who made last season's "Martin and Lewis" movie for CBS, added that he did not yet know exactly which scenes the network wanted trimmed.