UNMAKING ‘SUN CITY’

This business of PBS rejecting Little Steven Van Zandt’s “Sun City/Making of Sun City” for air as a documentary is beginning to look like a comic opera (by Deborah Caulfield, Nov. 22).

Van Zandt doesn’t understand why PBS won’t air his movie; Fred Friendly, who hasn’t seen it, doesn’t understand either; and Barry Chase, the usually articulate head of public affairs at PBS, can’t seem to make anybody understand without insults.

Chase was able, however, to tell PBS stations his reasons, and, in the interest of truth and justice, I will pass them along:

The film apparently gives the impression (erroneously, I’m sure) that it’s chief purpose is to pat the participants in Van Zandt’s anti-Sun City project on the back.

It is not a serious documentary about apartheid--of which PBS has aired many times in recent years. It is, rather, a documentary about how Van Zandt and his friends feel about apartheid.

PBS has a rule that it will not accept documentaries in which the producer is also the subject of the film. A good rule, you say?

Ah, yes. But here’s the funny part. SIP, PBS’s Station Independence Program, which funds programs that will bring in pledge dollars, doesn’t care who produces a show as long as it brings in bucks. It accepted “The Making of the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” produced by, you guessed it, Lucasfilm.

So you see, Van Zandt’s problem is that he submitted a lightweight documentary about how he and his friends did a good deed to a heavyweight department. And now everybody’s angry.

But all Van Zandt has to do is make a documentary about the rejection of “The Making of Sun City” and sell it to SIP. Should bring in a lot of money.

PAT FINN

Director of Public Information

KPBS, San Diego