Not really.
The radio raunchster's foray into the almost-family hour comes courtesy the commercial TV premiere of his 1997 autobiographical comedy, Private Parts, scheduled to air on cable's USA Network from 9-11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).
A landmark broadcast, the R-rated flick will be presented uncut--albeit in altered uncut form. Its "problematic language" (in network parlance) is drowned out by bleeps; its lesbian orgy sequence (and other nudity), made safe for viewers via artfully positioned digital boxes. Stern and film producer Ivan Reitman oversaw the censor-mandated additions.
"Frankly, I'm amazed we got away with as much as we did," Stern says in a specially taped introduction to the USA broadcast.
But others aren't amazed at all. In the summer of South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut and other envelope-shoving film fare, can it be that Howard Stern is...tame?!?
"I don't see that Private Parts represents some new shocking excess, given the material that's been on cable," says film reviewer/radio host Michael Medved, a frequent critic of Hollywood (as well as Stern's Saturday night TV show on CBS). "The basic point of it glorifies marriage. It's pro-family. It's actually an embarrassingly wholesome movie."
Still, per standards and practices, some stuff did have to go. Examples:
A scene featuring a young Howard Stern (Matt Friedman) puffing a marijuana cigarette in his parent's house shows up on TV as a young Howard Stern puffing a digital box.
A scene featuring a female radio guest demonstrating her ability to swallow a 13-inch kielbasa shows up on TV as a female radio guest demonstrating her ability to, yes, swallow a long, gray digital box.
A USA spokeswoman says those scenes--and others--were altered not for comic effect, but per the requests of network censors. So, what exactly is "wrong" with, say, the smoked sausage scene? Too "suggestive," the flack says. Or as Stern puts it during one of his cameos in the Private Parts broadcast: "These boxes are here to protect your family from indecency."
Either that, or to prepare the TV nation for Fox's upcoming bleepin' adult comedy series Action.