Oregon Pubic Broadcasting

[August 29th, 2007]

When Oregon Public Broadcasting airs Portland director Ian McCluskey’s Eloquent Nude this Thursday, Aug. 30, it will be showing a gorgeous, poignant documentary about the love affair between an iconic photographer and his model.

It will also be showing a nekkid woman.

That programming decision, reached after several weeks of internal discussion at the public television station, is a choice that McCluskey calls “a bold step” and that OPB officials say is only natural.

“This comes with great relief to us, as initial discussions about broadcast included talk of either cutting or blurring images,” McCluskey says. “OPB is taking a big step showing the full nudity on TV. I hope they will be proud of this moment in history and realize that they are taking a stand for the public airwaves. And art.”

OPB station manager Jeff Douglas downplayed any potential controversy. “I don’t know if that’s quite true,” Douglas says of the idea that broadcasting the film takes courage. “It’s a proud moment mostly because the film’s good, and we’re showing it to the whole state.”

Douglas adds the decision to air Eloquent Nude , as part of its Oregon Lens series of documentaries, was widely supported by OPB managers. “I championed it, but I really didn’t run into any opposition. The film doesn’t even have a hint of pornographic content.”

Both Douglas and OPB program director Tom Doggett note that Eloquent Nude will air at 10 pm Thursday, in what the Federal Communications Commission calls the “safe harbor,” a time when children are not expected to be watching television. Douglas says that OPB had the documentary examined by a lawyer for any possibility of FCC obscenity violations. “An FCC fine, theoretically, could be $300,000-plus,” he says. “OPB doesn’t have that kind of money lying around.”

The airing of nude scenes is not exactly unprecedented; spokesmen for Eastern Washington and Seattle public broadcasting outlets say they have featured toplessness in recent years.

Oregon Lens executive producer Steve Amen says the long arm of the FCC isn’t as fearsome as it was earlier this decade. “For a while there, the FCC was cracking down,” Amen says. “There seems to be a feeling that they’re loosening up a bit.”

The feeling is not lost on local filmmaker Chel White, whose short movie Passage aired on OPB in 2005 with some of its footage blurred out. (The station had aired an earlier White project, Cellmate , with its full frontal male nudity intact.) Passage , a series of underwater portraits, contained “a couple of very prominently exposed breasts,” White says. OPB officials told White they could air his film only if the breasts’ nipples were blurred out. White agreed—on one condition. “In the interest of equality,” he told OPB, “I want you to blur out the male nipples as well as the female nipples.” OPB did.

Eloquent Nude , meanwhile, contains nude photographs by the famed photographer Edward Weston of his then-wife Charis Wilson, along with re-enactments of Weston and Wilson’s photo shoots, complete with a nude model. (Both the photos and the re-enactments contain full frontal female nudity.) The film has been well received in Portland—more than 2,000 people have seen it in theaters, with the opening-night line at the NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium stretching for more than a city block.

But the movie hasn’t escaped censure. Portland’s downtown Hotel Monaco “was initially enthusiastic about purchasing copies to include in special gift bags for their guests,” McCluskey says. “The hotel manager was excited to present this locally produced work, but an advance copy of Eloquent Nude was flagged by their corporate office for the nudity.” Hotel Monaco sales director Liz Gallagher confirms the hotel declined to buy DVDs of the movie. But Pazzo Bar next door, which is also owned by Kimpton Hotels, is hosting a special screening Sept. 9.

Amen doesn’t expect similar quibbling after Thursday’s airing of Eloquent Nude . “It’s very tastefully done,” he says.

“We have plenty of nudity on Oregon Field Guide ,” he adds, referring to the nature series he also produces. “It’s just that it’s wildlife. We’ve never had anybody object to a naked deer.”