Disney to Cut Film’s Scene Tied to Fatality

The Walt Disney Co. will take the virtually unprecedented action of removing a scene from a movie while it is still playing in theaters, following the death of one teen-ager and critical injuries to two others who apparently imitated a scene in the film “The Program.”

A short sequence in the film shows drunken college football players attempting to prove how tough they are by lying in the middle of a highway as cars whiz by. It will be removed from all 1,222 prints of the film by Friday and the film’s coming-attraction trailer, which included a brief clip of the scene, will be pulled from theaters, the studio said Tuesday.

On Saturday, two teen-agers in Pennsylvania were struck by a pickup truck, killing one and seriously injuring another. The parents of the dead boy said he was copying the scene in “The Program.”

After a separate incident Saturday night, a 17-year-old Long Island boy was left in critical condition, and a police detective said the teen-ager was also mimicking the scene.

This was the second time this year that Disney took the unusual step of altering a film that had been in release. In July, the company said it would substitute a verse from a song in the popular film “Aladdin” after some in the Arab-American community said they found the lyrics offensive. Disney changed the lines in the video version of the animated film and will remove it from all subsequent re-releases of the film to theaters.

The decision to alter “The Program” was made amid a climate of growing concern about the connection between pop culture and incidents of violence, and as a Senate hearing on television violence begins today in Washington.

Disney’s Touchstone Pictures division and David Ward, the film’s writer-director, said in a statement that, while the scene in the movie “in no way advocates this irresponsible activity, it is impossible for us to ignore that someone may have recklessly chosen to imitate it.

“We are deeply moved by the tragedies already reported and our deepest sympathies go out to the families of those involved.”

Disney declined any further comment, and Ward did not return calls.

The movie, starring James Caan as a hard driving football coach, is R rated, which means that anyone under 17 must be accompanied by an adult.

Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti called Disney’s decision to delete the scene unusual and “a statesmanlike thing to do.” Referring to the copycat nature of the reported incidents, Valenti said: “I’m not one who believes that a movie makes you do anything.”

Patty Shingledecker, the mother of the dead youth, Michael Shingledecker, 18, of Stoneboro, Pa., said her son saw “The Program” last week.

“Michael would never come up with this on his own. He was adventurous but not stupid,” she told the Associated Press before the Disney decision was announced. About 200 people attended Shingledecker’s funeral service Tuesday at Grace United Methodist Church in Rocky Grove, Pa.

The Shingledeckers criticized Hollywood movies for depicting violence. Mrs. Shingledecker said she learned actor Jeff Bridges forbade his own children to watch one of his violent films.

“If these people won’t even let their own children watch a movie, why are they putting this out there for other children?” she asked.

Some friends of Michael Shingledecker said they were smart enough not to imitate everything they see.

“They chose to do it. The movie didn’t make them do it,” said Chad Karns, 17, a classmate of Shingledecker’s at Franklin Area High School.

Dean Bartlett, 17, who also was hit by the truck, remained in serious condition Tuesday at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“I thought it was a good movie,” said Dean’s brother, 16-year-old Joe Bartlett. “I never expected anything like this to happen.”

Marcia Bartlett, the boys’ mother, told the nearby Oil City Derrick newspaper that Dean and his younger brother went to see the film a couple of weeks ago. “They liked the movie,” she said, “but they really didn’t talk about it that much. They never said anything about a scene like that.”

Witnesses told police the youths were following through on a dare when they went to the two-lane state Route 62 in Polk, about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Neither Bartlett or Shingledecker played on their high school football team. In the other incident, Nassau County Police Det. Thomas Keteltas said Michael Macias, who was a member of his school’s football team, was copying the scene from “The Program.”

Although Disney would not confirm it, sources said the decision to delete the scene from “The Program” was reached jointly by executives at the company’s top levels, the filmmaker and co-producer the Samuel Goldwyn Co., which will release the movie overseas.

Disney’s action comes on the heels of recent decisions by MTV about its controversial series “Beavis and Butt-head” after the animated program reportedly inspired a 5-year-old Ohio boy to set fire to a bed, killing his 2-year-old sister. The cable network announced it would delete all references to fire in the popular animated series about two heavy-metal rocker dudes and later said it would remove the program from its early time slot at 7 p.m. (See Calendar story, F1.)

The Associated Press contributed to this story.