Quibbles & Bits

. . . In a piece on movies gone to video that don’t deserve a second chance, the NY Times’ Janet Maslin accuses “Adventures in Babysitting” of affirming “every imaginable prejudice and preconception.” What a difference time--and a little controversy--makes. Last summer when the pic came out, Maslin called the movie “determinedly cute.”

. . . Timing is everything, right? KABC-TV promo’d a news segment on pre-teens “so obsessed with looking good” they’re on “dangerous diets.” And followed with a commercial for Marcy Fitness Products, contrasting a gluttonous fat man with an Adonis straining his perfect muscles on an exercise machine.

. . . NBC’s Don Criqui couldn’t resist a cutesy bit of homophobia while covering the Orange Bowl: “You don’t mind (the football players) holding hands in the huddle--you just don’t want them doing it in the locker room!”

. . . Screenwriter Robert Garland tells us that before his script of “No Way Out” was sent to Kevin Costner, who eventually starred in it, it went to Tom Selleck’s agent: “We got a reply that Tom would never do a role in any movie that made his country look bad.”

. . . Woody Allen, Francis Coppola et al., take note: Doug Llewelyn--yes, the pixieish second banana of “People’s Court”--has signed with a talent agency for “exclusive theatrical representation.”