ABC Butchers Film for First Network Broadcast
May 5, 2007 - "Meet the Fockers" made its network broadcast premiere tonight, and it's usually fun when one of Barbra's films is shown on national television for the first time. However, tonight was different. One of the most wholesome films ever to be released in theatres was apparently considered too racy for the ABC censors. The network went haywire with the cutting room scissors before allowing this mild PG-13 comedy to be aired. Gone were some of the funniest jokes of the film (honestly, did the foreskin joke need to be edited...along with the running gag over the baby's first word?). Several of the film's most hilarious sequences were removed altogether, among them Roz and Bernie's bedroom antics with the whipped cream, and the film's most famous scene, Barbra giving DeNiro a message. I'm surprised they didn't demand a change in the film's title.

Have certain segments within our society become so politically sensitive (and powerful) that the most harmless of entertainments are now targets for mass censorship? Shame on ABC. And if director Jay Roach green-lighted this hatchet job, he should be embarrassed by what he allowed the network to do to his film.

I hope Barbra was at rehearsals last night and missed the broadcast entirely. I don't think she would have tolerated the network's editing shenanigans if the film were her baby. As Roz Focker would say, it was nich geet.