The Real Hollywood Network was casting around for an attention-grabber to kick off its new Web audio chat service. What it produced is a weirdly counterintuitive multimedia happening: mime Marcel Marceau, in what the service says is his first audio Web chat. The network's press release pants, "A new page in Internet history will be written when...."
Marceau, whose thing is silence, did not comment. This piece of history will be made on 5 January at noon PST.
- - - Shut my video up: In the wake of a protest by the National Organization for Women, MTV has dropped the racy music video for the song "Smack My Bitch Up" by British techno band Prodigy. That's according to Variety. However, an MTV spokesman said the protest had nothing to do with the decision, and that the music cable network had planned all along to stop running the video after a week, although it actually remained on MTV for 10 days. An MTV statement called the video, which depicts women being beaten and injecting illegal narcotics, "groundbreaking and newsworthy." The song's lyrics are limited to two lines: "Change my pitch up/Smack my bitch up." (23.Dec.97)
Reuters contributed to this report.
