‘Barbarians’ Gets Its Act Cleaned Up : Television: HBO tones down its Emmy-winning movie for syndication. In the new version, they still behave ‘like thugs,’ but they now speak largely in euphemisms, like diplomats.

Censors at the Gate.

Emmy Awards are widely seen as the most important and prestigious affirmations of quality that the television industry bestows. Yet sharing this year’s Emmy for best television movie with HBO’s “Stalin” did not insulate HBO’s dirty-talking “Barbarians at the Gate” from the censor’s heavy pencil when it came to tailoring it for syndication, including its scheduled 8 p.m. showing on Fox Nov. 29.

Anything but prudish, HBO itself is as R-rated as mainstream television gets. Fearing the movie’s crude language would restrict its non-cable marketability, however, HBO’s legal department mandated a whopping 109 line changes in the 105-minute “Barbarians at the Gate.”

“Now, like the Nixon tapes, it’s been expurgated,” said Larry Gelbart, the former “MASH” head writer who adapted the HBO movie from a book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar.

In concert with Glenn Jordan’s Emmy-nominated direction, Gelbart’s Emmy-nominated script gave a wickedly funny twist to the 1988 failed corporate takeover of giant R.J.R. Nabisco by a group headed by the firm’s former president, F. Ross Johnson. “The shock to the viewer in the original piece was to hear these people who have a somewhat inflated idea of themselves talk and behave like thugs,” Gelbart said.

In the new, cleaner version, they still behave “like thugs.” But Johnson, in particular, now speaks largely in euphemisms, like a diplomat.

When it aired on HBO last March, the movie was faulted in some circles for making Johnson too folksy nice. “Now, he’s even more Boy Scoutish,” Gelbart said.

HBO’s legal department suggested, for example, that Johnson’s uttering of “son of a bitch” be changed to “son of a witch.” A witch ? Gelbart opted instead for “son of a buck.”

In another instance, HBO worried that Johnson’s joking reference to the planet Uranus could be taken as a reference to “your anus” and suggested Venus as an alternative. Gelbart chose to drop the line altogether.

In other instances, HBO asked that the “s” word for excrement--one of several expletives uttered throughout the movie--be changed to crap , yet, inexplicably, it wanted toilet substituted for crapper.

“I said crapper in a ‘MASH’ script in 1972,” Gelbart complained. “And now crapper is out.” More specifically, in the toilet.

HBO says that in editing its programs for syndication, it sends out one version for all stations to use. And no one at Fox could say, by press time Tuesday, whether it had asked for any of the changes made by HBO. Yet the irony of a cleansed “Barbarians at the Gate” airing on Fox--a network that regularly soils its pants with such grime-spewing programs as the new comedy “Daddy Dearest” and Chevy Chase’s new late-night series--isn’t lost on Gelbart.

“The Fox network hasn’t even been housebroken yet,” he said.

Nor has much of regular television, where raunchy topics are routine fare for daytime talk shows and other programs, making them noxious even when expletive free. Thus, Gelbart argues, laundering “Barbarians at the Gate” for syndication “is so hypocritical given what people watch on their local channels and the fourth network (Fox). These affiliate stations that HBO is so protective of are doing 900-number ads and carrying all kind of exploitative and harmful material. It seems there ought to be a single standard. I can’t understand the idea of taste being subdivided. This show (“Barbarians at the Gate”) is not innocent, but neither can it corrupt someone.”

He said that when HBO submitted its list of changes for the syndicated version, it gave him the option of making them himself or having “someone make them for you.” Gelbart decided he should be the one to make the changes.

Most of the disputed language came from Johnson, who was played by James Garner. And even though an actor could have been hired to impersonate Garner’s voice, Garner agreed to redo the dialogue himself.

Gelbart agrees that some of the edits--cutting a snippet of nudity and substituting “jeez” for “Jesus,” for example--were relatively insignificant. Not so, however, for an especially entertaining chunk of the movie in which Nabisco--the maker of Camels and Salems, among other products--loses $750 million on its experiment with a so-called smokeless cigarette. It turns out, hilariously, that the new cigarette tastes and smells remarkably like the “s” expletive, a word that’s repeated again and again throughout the fast-cutting sequence.

HBO weighed in with such alternatives as turd, crap and dung. In most cases, Gelbart chose crap . Who even uses the word dung ? “It’s used a lot in China,” Gelbart deadpanned.

In any event, the segment’s robust humor was drawn mostly from its vulgarity. “And now it’s been castrated,” Gelbart said.

Even though a battle-scarred veteran of the business, Gelbart insists he hadn’t anticipated having to make such drastic cuts in “Barbarians at the Gate” for its wider distribution. HBO hadn’t requested any dialogue changes when the script was submitted originally, he said.

Meanwhile, there are some universes just as bizarre as the one depicted in Gelbart’s script. Just why, for example, is crap proper when crappe r isn’t?

“In general, what we object to are words that apply to bodily functions,” an HBO spokesman said. “ Crap is one of those borderline words.” And crapper ? “It was a borderline call in both cases.”

Which is why life in television can be a real . . . witch.