ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

MOVIES

Once Again, Into the Fray

The Defense Department confirmed that 100 military personnel, including members of the elite Army Rangers, have been deployed to Morocco to help on the set of the Ridley Scott thriller “Black Hawk Down.” Last month, the Pentagon was criticized for sending the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to Honolulu for the promotion of Disney’s “Pearl Harbor.” According to USA Today, Revolution Studios--producers of the film--has agreed to reimburse the military $3 million for the cost of deployment, not counting the soldiers’ salaries.

TELEVISION

‘Brady’ Star Pleads His Case

Barry Williams, who portrayed Greg Brady on the 1970s sitcom “The Brady Bunch,” has filed an unfair-labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the Actors Equity Assn. The group fined him $52,000 in January for performing in a nonunion production of “The Sound of Music”--the largest penalty ever to be imposed by the stage actors’ union against a performer. Williams called the sum exorbitant and said it was illegal because he had resigned from the union by the time the contract was signed.

A Change of Heart

On Tuesday, Pacific Palisades parent Michael Scott praised ABC for pulling footage of his and other children from “Tampering With Nature,” John Stossel’s news program that criticizes environmental education. On Wednesday, he changed his tune. Scott sent a sharply worded letter to Stossel asking him to refrain from even paraphrasing what his children said when the show airs Friday night, as he has hinted he might. “I withdrew my consent to my children’s participation in the interview and your segment entirely--including any representation or restatement of their remarks,” Scott wrote. ABC declined to comment on Scott’s letter.

POP/ROCK

Concert Attack Fells Singer

R&B; singer Lil’ Mo, whose “Superwoman Pt. 2” is No. 7 on the U.S. singles chart, has canceled all public appearances and is resting at home after an attack Friday that required 20 stitches in her head. The 23-year-old singer had finished performing at a concert given by a radio station in San Francisco when she was struck on the head with a bottle, her publicist at Elektra Records said. Her attacker has not been identified.

QUICK TAKES

As part of an effort to build a young following, Russia’s struggling Bolshoi Theatre is appointing conductor Alexander Vedernikov, 38, to the post of artistic director, replacing veteran conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who resigned earlier this month. . . . NBC’s “Today” show host Matt Lauer and his wife, Dutch model Annette Roque, 35, welcomed the birth of a son, Jack, Tuesday afternoon.