Well, not really, but the South Park Scientology episode is off the banned list
One week after South Park’s controversial “Trapped in the Closet” episode garnered an Emmy nomination, and nearly four months after it was abruptly pulled from rotation on the cable net, Comedy Central has finally acquiesced and will allow the Scientology-skewering episode back on the air.And clearly not a moment too soon.
“If they hadn’t put this episode back on the air, we’d have had serious issues, and we wouldn’t be doing anything else with them,” cocreator Matt Stone tells Variety.
The episode reportedly ruffled some high-powered feathers upon its first airing. In addition to an accurate, if cartoon-depicted, primer on Scientology, the show featured a literally closeted Tom Cruise who refuses to come out, only to be joined in his hiding by fellow Scientologist John Travolta and R&B man R. Kelly, whose operatic ballad provided the show’s title.
While Comedy Central failed to publicly disclose its reasons for yanking the program (which is also credited for leading Scientologist Isaac Hayes to jump ship as the longtime voice of Chef), creators Stone and Trey Parker didn’t shy away from broadcasting what they claimed was the network-sanctioned reason.
As the conspiracy theory goes, the Cruise’s camp had a hand in deep-sixing the episode, with the litigious actor reportedly threatening threatened to pull out of promotional duties for Mission: Impossible III. (Viacom is the parent company for both Comedy Central and Paramount, the studio that was releasing Cruise’s film.)
Cruise’s reps vehemently denied such allegations, but the South Park brain trust stuck by its guns.
“I only know what we were told, that people involved with M:I:III wanted the episode off the air and that is why Comedy Central had to do it,” Stone says in Variety. “I don’t know why else it would have been pulled.”
H/T: Andrew Sullivan
July 14th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[...] Though Comedy Central announced earlier this week that the Scientology episode that was pulled earlier this year would return to normal rerun rotation, its clear that the controversy about what actually happened won’t go away: Matt Stone and Trey Parker are still angry that Comedy Central in May yanked a repeat of the “Trapped in the Closet” episode lampooning Scientology and its most famous member, Tom Cruise. [...]
July 14th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
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