While running through some old issues of Newsweek, I actually found an article about the movie from 1979. The book the movie was based on did have a mother-son love scene, and they actually filmed it for the movie. The scene didn't make the final cut, and few people would have cared--except CBS mentioned in a press release the dropped scene. Not surprisingly a media firestorm emerged. Was CBS that dumb, or did it intentionally mention it for the media attention?
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TV urban legends which could be false.
- Thread starter hamster
- Start date
One does wonder !!
Looking back I wonder if the preacher got this confused with "Taboo American Style" which is a porno shot in 1979 and 1980 around this time ?? No I didn't see the movie but that was about incest between a mother and her son. Pretty shocking stuff for even an X-rated movie. There was another porno flick also around this time of a father having sex with his son BUT I was reading long ago that the director felt that scene was "too nasty" so he cut it out only to be seen never again. Or was it ?? People claim to had seen it. Kinda like the original King Kong from 1933 and those men who were eaten alive by huge spiders. People claim to had seen that too even though not even their grandparents were alive in 1933.
Thought of two more....
Larry Flynt and the deal he made with HBO ( some say it was Showtime ) to bring Hustler magazine to TV late at night in the early 80s, I guess that is the basis of the rumor that causes some to say "...I remember seeing porno on HBO back in 1982">
Jim Bakker on his old PTL Club was caught on camera saying "...only the stupid people give me money !!". Did he actually say that publicly ?? Then there was those who swear that on the air he actually bragged about what having sex with Jessica Hawn. Even went as far as saying "..she was way BETTER than Tammy Faye". That one I don't know.
People may have seen the occasional soft-core porn on HBO or other pay cable networks, but no hardcore porn. The difference is - no close-ups of genitalia or penetration of any kind. Softcore was a thing for awhile - I guess for people who didn't want to go to sleazy porn theatres. But hardcore porn being readily available in "respectable" video stores put the damper on that - then internet porn killed softcore all together, AFAIK. Is the Playboy Channel still a thing? If so, they probably still run softcore porn.
Early HBO was surprisingly timid. According to a TV Guide article from 1976, HBO had a policy of not airing R rated films before 9pm. They even clipped the infamous "squeal like a pig" scene from Deliverance.
HBO was still that way into the '80s -- no R until the kids were in bed. That didn't prevent a church in the Arkansas town in which I was living in the late '70s from taking out big ads in the local paper (for which I was working) calling on all good Christians to tell the cable company to get rid of "HPO" -- Home Pornography Outlet!
HBO came to my hometown in 1978. For the first couple of years if one had wanted HBO and was willing to pay for it AND they had kids the HBO box came with a lock on it so to block out HBO for them. I don't think HBO showed R rated movies during the day but Showtime did and people would get the two channels confused, I knew people at the time who swear they saw Porky's on HBO during the day NO that was on Showtime. "Fraggle Rock...such a cute family friendly show on Showtime"...NO that was HBO !!!
I agree with you except for one thing....soft core porn is actually receiving new interest from millennials. Rather than watching nudes and hardcore sex they would rather see some woman wearing a bikini in Maxim instead of being nude in Hustler or a guy smoking a cigar and drinking brandy with his clothes ON online say on Facebook than see the same guy in a porno.
With all their tats how can they tell the difference between clothed and unclothed?
You got a point there !!
I knew of a man and woman who ran one of those clothing optional places in California. They had a good business for years that is until the millennials. They just would not take their clothes off and they would freak out if they saw those over 40 nude. Of course with them having so many tats one would think that wouldn't make a difference but anyway they closed the resort.
When we first got HBO, it wasn't even scrambled and was included in the normal cost of cable. This was around 77/78. I think that within a year, though, they switched to the extra charge and the scrambled signal needing a cable box because people complained about the R rated movies being available for everyone. My dad never wanted to pay the extra so we didn't have it after that point.
Our cable system got HBO in 1978 and Showtime in 1980. Yes we had parents who complained about HBO and the R rated movies so the channel was moved to a package one had to pay extra for BUT Showtime and their uncensored R movies was given a pass and remain on straight cable for years and there were no complaints. Go figure !!
Huh? I think your memory is off. 'Premium" cable channels have always been separate - you can subscribe to one, though sometimes there is a package discount if you subscribe to more than one. I had Viacom cable in the 1977-78, and the only premium channel available was Showtime - which was owned by Viacom -but it ran R rated movies uncensored even then.
HBO, Showtime, and now Starz and others - were ALWAYS separate channels you had to pay extra for. Nobody has to get it as part of a cable package. If the blue-noses didn't like it, they didn't have to have it on their personal cable.
Yes they are premium channels but back in 1978 Teleco ( our local cable at the time ) replaced WTVR channel 6 out of Richmond with HBO. Maybe it was one of those "preview" things. For almost four months HBO was on channel 6 until people complained about the R movies. Then it became a pay channel and Richmond's channel 6 returned. In 1980 Showtime took over channel 6 and it was on that channel a long time. Sometime in the mid 80s Showtime was dropped from the system and would be off until Comcast took over many years later. I never heard any complaints about Showtime it was always HBO. I remember many people were shocked with Flashdance "on HBO" but it was Showtime that aired it at the time and not HBO. They was a HBO "package" when the preview stopped. With HBO finally becoming a premium channel for us one would also get Baltimore TV with WMAR, WBAL, WJZ and WBFF and nothing else. Now that was odd.
When I had Viacom cable in the mid 70s, there was no box if you only had the cable channels - it was just channels 2-13, with some UHF channels moved to open channels, so our local Channel 20 was moved to 13, Channel 44 to 12, and so on. But if you had Showtime, Viacom gave you a box with, IIRC, one button on top, which you pushed to watch Showtime, which was then just theatrical movies - no other content whatsoever. And IIRC, it was not 24 hours - but broadcast from late afternoon to a bit after midnight. No censorship whatsoever, though. It was weird at first being able to watch profanity and nudity on TV...this was a half-decade before video-cassettes.
Showtime despite the showing of uncensored R rated movies never had the bad mouthing of them doing that at the time like HBO had. Even Showtime shows like Shelly Duval's children's show while on Showtime many back in those days said it was on HBO. I do remember hearing a rumor at the time that Showtime would sue people if they would dare to bad mouth Showtime. Didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now BUT I did go to a "garnishment party" yesterday that was for a woman who said some nasty things about Denver's KDVR when they took over KWGN on Yelp several years ago. Her son at KWGN was laid off by KDVR. Apparently KDVR didn't like the review and somehow sued her got a judgement ( probably default) and they only recently start garnishing her. When we moved to Denver 11 years ago we heard that businesses DO sue private people over "unfair" reviews and such but still....
To be fair it is quite easy to sue and win in Colorado. Sewer service and other questionable service while illegal is the norm here. All one has to do is to serve the people is to find some kid on the street, give them the summons and ask the child to deliver it. A child to deliver THAT ?? Hardly !! The person for some reason doesn't get the summons and or course doesn't show up in court and the result is a default judgement against the person being sued. Then after several years of nothing ( often the person didn't even know he/she were being sued at all ) the garnishment take place. Sad !!
Showtime was and is owned by Viacom...or perhaps officially CBS at this point, which is connected to Viacom as corporate "cousins." I seriously doubt Viacom sued anybody for badmouthing Showtime. Viacom got most of their bad-mouthing from consumers in regard to their widely despised cable system, including in the Bay Area where I lived. To be fair, cable was still somewhat in it's infancy, and I'm not sure the problems with outages and poor signals could have been easily dealt with by the technology of the 70s and early 80s. Though their customer service was supposedly piss-poor and rude, as well. I personally never had a bad experience, unless you count waiting in a long line at their offices.
Viacom was smart enough to dump the cable business, and get exclusively (IIRC) into content, at MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CBS, etc. But I really don't recall that they ever used lawsuits as a weapon to squelch criticism.
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