It’s Only Make-Believe, Show Biz Workers Say : Entertainment: Technicians, writers react bitterly to angst over TV and movie violence.

Common sense dictates that people shouldn’t have to be told that fire burns and lying in the middle of a busy street is dangerous--if not downright stupid.

But they’ll let anybody with seven bucks into the movies.

Such were the sentiments--some bitter, some biting--from the regulars at Residuals, a Studio City bar haunted by the worker bees of The Industry. Violence in the media was all the buzz Friday as the afternoon crowd ended a tumultuous week a bit early.

“You can’t hold a film liable for everything because there are morons in this world,” Jeff Miller, a Studio City photographer, said to anyone who was listening. “It’s just not fair. Movies are make-believe. They’re a made-up creation and if someone can’t realize that then they got what’s coming to them.”

Miller’s observations echoed through the constantly changing group of writers, producers and others who churn out the constant stream of movies, sitcoms, commercials and other propaganda of Dan Quayle’s so-called cultural elite.

What raised their creative hackles was a week in which Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told television executives to clean up violence on television, MTV removed fire jokes from its immensely popular Beavis and Butt-head series after a 5-year-old burned his 2-year-old sister to death and Disney cut a scene from “The Program” that depicts football players lying in the middle of traffic after teen-agers tried the stunt with fatal results.

The folks at Residuals watched it all in jaw-dropped astonishment.

Sipping a coffee with cream and sugar, former “Studs” writer Gary Marks mused: “If your kids are dumb enough to lay down in the middle of a highway as a test of manhood, then I don’t think the problem stops at television.”

Like several others, Marks wondered why parents aren’t taking more responsibility for what their children are watching. As a kid, he was not allowed to watch “Star Trek” because “my parents thought it would freak me out.”

What, indeed, are today’s parents thinking? That’s what Miller wanted to know.

“If you bring kids into this world you have to accept the responsibility for them,” he said. “If you don’t want the responsibility then don’t have the kids. People are more concerned about training their pets than in teaching their kids to be good human beings.”

Jim Palmer, who packages videotapes for the studios, suggested a compromise: teaming a certain wholesome purple dinosaur with MTV’s vidiots. “They could do ‘Barney and Butt-head’ or ‘Beavis and Barney,’ ” he said. “There is a little onomatopoeia in that.”

As his lunch partner Doug Bambridge called last week’s TV tempest “crazy,” Palmer offered a reporter and Bambridge a way to live on the edge. “Go out and interview him lying in the middle of the road,” he suggested.

Bambridge, an operations director for Paramount’s home video division, said Disney shouldn’t be overly concerned about the impact of “The Program.” “Judging by the numbers, I don’t think very many people saw the thing.”

“But it’s very popular in truck stops,” Palmer said dryly.

And so it went. Down at the other end of the bar sat John McAuley, a Universal Studios technician, who recently found liberation when his television went on the fritz.

“My television broke down a few weeks ago and I’m a much happier person,” he said. “I’ve missed nothing.”

As he sees it, the whole flap is kind of silly.

“You always have the choice to turn off your TV or radio and I do it a lot,” he said, holding an imaginary remote control. “Zap!”