Woody Straight to Cable

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/15/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Despite a galaxy of names -- Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, David Schwimmer and acclaimed "Like Water for Chocolate" director Alfonso Arau -- the new movie "Picking Up the Pieces" is going straight to cable. The New York Post reports that the religious spoof has been deemed too hot for a theatrical distribution, so Cinemax will begin airing it this Friday. (Cinemax, like PEOPLE, is owned by Time Warner.) The film stars Woody as Tex, a kosher butcher from New York who is relocated to Texas under the FBI's witness protection program. In a jealous rage he fantasizes chopping off his wife's hand, which is then discovered in the desert by a blind woman -- whose blindness is then cured. Stone plays the dismembered wife and Schwimmer plays a parish priest who is having a fling with the town whore and who sets up a shrine to the hand. The faithful flock to it.