SHORT TAKES : Racism Taboo, Shepherd Says

Cybill Shepherd says movie studios are afraid to make a film about racism.

“Prejudice is ever present. It’s just uncomfortable. People don’t want to recognize it in themselves,” the “Moonlighting” actress said Wednesday while promoting the TV movie “Memphis,” which airs next year.

The movie is about the kidnaping of the grandson of a wealthy black businessman from Memphis in the 1950s. Shepherd plays a kidnaper who develops a maternal bond with the child.

A Memphis native, Shepherd is one of the film’s producers and helped write the script based on Shelby Foote’s novel “September, September.”

Shepherd said she began working in 1981 on the screenplay and looked for several years for a studio interested in making the movie, which Turner Network Television recently decided to back.