Once again, ladies and gentlemen, those charming folks at the FCC are stepping in to hand us censorship a la carte–they’re pretty much responsible for Kevin Smith’s movie title getting changed.

You might remember when we talked about it before, but he’s revealed the true reason behind it, and it’s pretty much what we figured–the FCC stepped in.

See, like with Zack And Miri Make A Porno, the networks couldn’t actually air any advertising for A Couple of Dicks before nine o’clock.  Warner Brothers, who’s planning to distribute the new Smith film, actually called around and checked.  Smith describes it thusly in Entertainment Weekly:

Warner Bros. decided, “Hey man, we’ll call the networks and see if we’re going to get any problems [with A Couple of Dicks as a title], months before the movie’s ever going to come out.” The top 3 networks — CBS, ABC, NBC — said we can’t run one of your spots before 9 o’clock.

And with that, they lose a pretty fair chunk of their advertising potential.  Plus they’re limited to either super-pricey prime time advertising or really dicey late night advertising, and that seldom bodes well for a movie ad.

So if you want to know why you couldn’t get a movie title with a clever reference to forties-era film noir, well, talk to these guys.