Tastefully Opening a Heavenly Floodgate

Terrible news.

It came last week. The messenger was Peter Locke, co-chairman of the Kushner-Locke Co., which along with InterAct Entertainment Inc. signed a deal with ABC to produce a TV movie about the Heaven’s Gate cult and the suicides of 39 of its disciples in Rancho Santa Fe recently.

ABC earlier had joined other networks in saying it wasn’t interested in developing a Heaven’s Gate docudrama. Much more surprising than its disclosure Thursday of plans to make the movie, however, was the shocking admission by Locke regarding how the story is to be presented. Fasten your seat belts.

“This is not going to be tasteless,” he vowed.

Not tasteless? Very, very disturbing. How dismissive of the public. Don’t these people ever take into account the appetites of viewers? If we can’t count on our television being tasteless, what can we count on?

What a huge miscalculation by ABC to be tasteful, moreover. With shrewd planning, it could release this film, say, in the fall of 1998, using it to kick off a new season of Sunday night movies when much of the nation will then have access to new digital technology, whose distribution the Federal Communications Commission has just approved. Among other things, this long-awaited digital revolution will create much clearer TV pictures accompanied by CD-quality sound.

In other words, more than boring old customary tastelessness, “Heaven’s Gate: The TV Movie”--my recommended title--could be razor-sharp tastelessness. Not the fuzzy stuff that we’re desensitized to, but true blockbuster bad taste, the grossness of your dreams, vulgarity to build an evening around.

Enhanced by digital TV, a tasteless Heaven’s Gate movie would be simply indelible, for this exciting miracle of technology is something for the ages. Sharper, clearer pictures with resonant sound that presumably will make bad jokes in comedies funnier, inferior drama more watchable, Sally Jessy Raphael more tolerable and local news choppers more relevant? Is this the promise of digital TV? So what if it’s only color bars, look at that clarity? If so, bring on that revolution!

Meanwhile, you’d hope that others in the TV industry have better judgment and a better handle than ABC on how to present the Heaven’s Gate story. The bad taste potential is infinite. For example:

* “Good Heavens!!!!!!” This is the “Shine” spinoff. An eccentric, muttering pianist of questionable skills but lots of nervous tics is invited to play for a weird cult whose members are all uncompromising music critics with lofty standards that are rarely met.

After the performance, the shrieking critics take their own lives.

* “Rancho Place.” This is the Aaron Spelling version. Members of a religious cult of great-looking aerobics instructors in black bikini underwear are instructed by their charismatic leaders, Bo and Peep, to oil and explore each other’s bodies while living together in a swanky condo.

* “Star Trek: The Next Level.” After beaming their containers to the Enterprise from Comet Hale-Bopp, cultish Klingons shave the heads of crew members and then castrate them.

* “Rancho SantaFeld.” Of course, the “Seinfeld” rip-off. Four New Yorkers create an exotic sect devoted to shallowness, then prove that they have the courage of their beliefs by meeting regularly to speak of nothing.

“I’m changing my name to Bo.”

“You’re changing your name to Bo?”

“Yeah.”

“What if I wanna change my name to Bo?”

“Can’t be two Bo’s.”

“Why not two Bo’s?”

“Too confusing.”

“What’s confusing? Bo One and Bo Two.”

“You could change your name to Peep.”

“I should change my name to Peep?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t wanna be Peep.”

“So, be Bo Peep.”

“There’s already a Bo Peep. Little Bo Peep.”

“You didn’t mind being Bo Two.”

“I know, but there’s something sacred about Little Bo Peep.”

“So be Big Bo Peep.”

“He’d have to have sheep.”

“Nah, he’d just lose ‘em.”

“Not if I had a staff.”

“You gotta staff?”

“No. But I can buy one.”

“You kidding? Buy a staff in New York?”

“And even if you find one, where you gonna keep your sheep?”

“That’s the problem with New York. Everybody’s always talkin’ about blacks and Puerto Ricans. What about the rights of shepherds?”

As you can see from the above, bad taste is not the only tradition that’s at stake when it comes to prime time applying itself to Heaven’s Gate or any other potentially serious story about real-life events. Tasteless perhaps we can live without. But please, ABC, let “Heaven’s Gate: The TV Movie” at least be mindless.