mandibierly - Tumblr blog

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Why the 'Deadliest Catch' captains think the show has made it to 200 episodes (and it's not just the Coast Guard rescues)

yahoo

Deadliest Catch is back tonight for the premiere of its 14th season — and 200th episode — and Yahoo Entertainment has your first look at the Northwestern, Wizard, Saga, Summer Bay, and Brenna A leaving Dutch Harbor, Alaska, for the king crab grounds.

As you see in the sneak peek, Jake Anderson and Sig Hansen weren’t exactly talking at that moment. Sig had tossed Jake out of the Northwestern wheelhouse when he dropped by looking to partner with his mentor. After the Saga‘s expensive $750,000 makeover, Jake needs to put crab in the tank, but he’ll have to rely on a 6-month-old government survey to find them.

The two men were, however, talking when they stopped by Build Series NYC for an interview with us on Monday. And it’s no surprise: Asked to name the moment that’s made him the happiest in the show’s run, Jake said it was when he got his jacket on Hansen’s family-run Northwestern. “There was a lot more going on than just gettin’ a jacket. It was where I had just came from, just having struggles in my own life, and then when the guys on the Northwestern basically made me a part of something that was huge to me that I never thought I could achieve,” he said. “So becoming a captain and all that has been great … but the biggest moment I think, the most significant moment, was what that jacket signified for me as a person.”

Sig Hansen, Keith Colburn, Jake Anderson, Josh Harris, and Wild Bill Wichrowski (Photo: Noam Galai/BUILD Series NYC)

The idea of family was on the minds of the other captains as well: Hansen said his moment was seeing the footage of his loved ones gathered around him after his 2016 heart attack. For Keith Colburn, it was fishing with his son. Josh Harris, who’s basically lived his whole adult life on the show, said it was knowing that his child could someday watch both him and his father, the late great Capt. Phil Harris, on the series (and that cameras had captured his final conversation with his dad). Wild Bill Wichrowski thought of all the little moments that add up to his crew doing something “epic” — and joked that if he ever has great great grandkids, they’ll say he was “kind of an a**” but he’s prepared for it.

The captains were also asked why they think the show remains so popular, 14 seasons in. Colburn often hears it’s one of the only shows a whole family can agree on watching together, and people are always telling Wichrowski they wish they could experience that kind of adventure for just one day. Josh’s answer went beyond the fact that people are curious about the life-and-death danger on deck. “[People] deal with a lot of the problems that we deal with, because you get to see a lot of our home life,” he said. “It’s like with me, personally, my brother who abused drugs, out of control, and losing a family member where now we gotta take over the business. People get to watch all this stuff ’cause they’re going through similar things, and how do you cope with all this: is there a right way, is there a wrong way? They think we have a lot of these answers because you get to see me do it and watch me fail miserably or you get to see me succeed. A lot of people can relate to all that.”

Anderson may have summed it up best: “[Like with Josh], they’ve watched me grow up and follow the American dream and accomplish that American dream. It’s not pretty, it’s ugly. There’s a lot of kickin’, and cryin’, and moanin’. And that’s just one of the 50 interesting stories that are on there and they’re 100 percent authentic. And I think that’s what can draw the crowd. So I really believe in the integrity of the show, and I think I can speak for all of us that that’s what it is — you’re really watching a real documentary.”

Deadliest Catch Season 14 premieres Tuesday, April 10 at 9 p.m., following “The Bait” pre-show at 8 p.m., on Discovery. The all-new Discovery Go series Deadliest Catch: Greenhorn is streaming now.

yahoo

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Man overboard, supermoon seas, and the painful new season of ‘Deadliest Catch’

‘Deadliest Catch’: Josh Harris and Casey McManus on the Cornelia Marie’s return in Season 14

Capt. Sig Hansen opens up about friend lost at sea

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #sig hansen #keith colburn #josh harris #_author:Mandi Bierly #jake anderson #Wild Bill Wichrowski #video #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #deadliest catch #discovery #exclusive #interview #_uuid:6005a2b5-22f2-3613-8fba-c047e48ca2bb

3 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Man overboard, supermoon seas, and the painful new season of 'Deadliest Catch'

yahoo

Fourteen seasons in to Discovery’s Emmy-winning reality series Deadliest Catch, and the captains are as spoiler-phobic as ever. But sitting down with us for a Build Series NYC interview ahead of Tuesday’s return (which is also the series’ 200th episode), they did open up about the battle we’ll see with the always brutal Bering Sea winter.

During the opilio crab (a.k.a. opi or snow crab) season, they dealt with the kind of supermoon event you only see once every 150 years. As Capt. Keith Colburn explained, what ensued was “chaos all over the planet with the currents and the tides.” It was the worst the fleet has ever seen. Opi season was “big waves and everything breakin’ ’cause of the waves,” Capt. Jake Anderson said. “It was torture for us, I know that.” (A wave hit another boat in the fleet so hard, it smashed all the windows out of the wheelhouse, they said.)

Discovery has also revealed in the Season 14 trailer that at some point, a deckhand on Capt. Wild Bill Wichrowski’s Summer Bay is pulled overboard, which sets off a feverish search (the network hasn’t disclosed the outcome). It’s the first time that’s happened in Bill’s 40-year career, and it understandably hit him hard — which the other captains attested to after spending time promoting the show with him.

“I’ve never seen him get so choked up in my life, so this is like the most serious topic you could ever touch on. And sincerely, he really took it to heart,” Capt. Sig Hansen said. “It’s about as real as you’re gonna get, I think, what he has to go through and the people that went through it.”

“You prepare for this every day as a captain, every day as a deckhand, and I’ll just give you this one little bit,” Bill said. “The incident had happened, I went, ‘No way. That didn’t happen. I just didn’t see that, did I?’ And I did.”

Even when a crew member goes into the frigid water on purpose — say, to jump on a walrus carcass or switch boats — it’s a surreal sight, Colburn and Anderson insisted. So just imagine Bill’s situation, Sig said: “This guy has a crew member that goes in the water. He knew him as a child, and now he’s responsible for him, and then Bill’s watching this guy literally dying, and you’ve only got a few minutes. It’s in the Bering Sea, what do you got? Ten minutes before hypothermia sets in and then you’re done.”

“Two [minutes], typically,” Anderson said. Because the stakes are that real, and that high, you’ll never catch him watching the show. “I can only relive that once. I can’t relive it twice. It’s hard just even talking about a lot of stuff,” he said. “And to see Bill these last couple of weeks talk about it… I’ve always grown up and he was the toughest guy we knew. And to see it break him down, it became pretty real to me, and hopefully I never go through that experience.”

Capt. Josh Harris, who returns to the wheelhouse of the Cornelia Marie this season alongside his co-captain, Casey McManus, admitted he hasn’t watched the show since his father, the late great Capt. Phil Harris, passed away. (Though maybe that will change this season, he said, since, while he’s always paying tribute to his father’s legacy, they are also making the boat more their own.) Sig remembered in Season 1 his family speeding home to watch the show together. Now, because he gets too animated watching the drama unfold, his wife has banished him to his office to watch solo.

yahoo

One experience the men share is having their phones tell them how well they’re doing in any given episode. Bill noted that he tends to catch more hell from the West Coast than the East, and that he and Keith have traded off years as “the bad guy.” They wonder if it might finally be Sig’s turn in the hot seat after the trailer showed him literally tossing Anderson out of the Northwestern wheelhouse when Jake came to his mentor looking for information to help guarantee crab in his tank after a $750,000 makeover on the Saga. “Twenty years of fishin’, I’ve never been kicked out of a wheelhouse,” Jake said, able to laugh about it now.

Looking back on the confrontation that took place before king crab season in October, Hansen said it’s like, “Dude, I love you. I don’t want to hurt you. But it was like time to leave the nest. I just feel like that’s how my old man would have treated me, and that’s just kinda the first reaction.”

Sig is clearly feeling good, having recovered from his 2016 heart attack. As fans saw during Discovery’s recent recap special, his brother Edgar jokingly asked him to sign a contract that said he won’t again stay in the wheelhouse during a 24- or 48-hour grind when the Northwestern lands on good numbers. So will we see him push himself too far this season? That’s one spoiler he reluctantly gave up: “I learned how to tap out,” he said.

Watch the full interview below for more from the captains, including a discussion about how they pick greenhorns (and handle them when they can’t cut it on deck); the moments they’re happiest have been captured on camera (for Josh, whose whole adult life has basically been on TV, one is his final conversation with his father, since he was too emotional to remember what he said); and why they believe the show is still such a hit after more than a decade on the air.

yahoo

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ trailer: Who is Chewbacca hugging and other burning questions

Your exhaustive guide to the Sean Hannity and Jimmy Kimmel war

A buzzed Jennifer Garner gives fans a tour of her purse — and there’s some weird stuff inside

#news #wild bill wichrowski #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #sig hansen #keith colburn #josh harris #_author:Mandi Bierly #build series nyc #jake anderson #video #_uuid:f2c86fcc-8cf2-38f6-ad06-c1ef3d22eee1 #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #deadliest catch #discovery #interview

2 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Foot fetishist fans and controversial fireplace reveals: 'Trading Spaces' stars swap behind-the-scenes stories

yahoo

It’s been 10 years since we last saw TLC’s hit home makeover show Trading Spaces, but the series that launched an entire TV genre is back Saturday night and better than ever. Should you not remember just how popular the show was back in the 2000s, all you have to do is hear how returning designer Genevieve Gorder — who’s known for taking off her shoes when she’s helping people redecorate a room so she doesn’t ruin her kicks — recount her old fan mail from foot fetishists.

“[I’ve had] a file, a manila folder, in my house from 2000 on that said, ‘If I die, it’s one of these guys,'” she told us during a Build Series NYC interview. “There were a lot of foot-fetish people writing — mind you, because there wasn’t social media — like single-spaced letters that would be 10 pages, and I’m like, ‘How much time did that take and what were you doing while you did that?’ It would be the Barefoot Association of America — there is one. There’s something called, like, Toe Ringers. And they show up at my events barefoot like I should know them, too, like, ‘G!’, you know, in the back, and I’m like obviously wearing shoes. Bizarre underworld I had no idea [about]. But I have soccer feet, my second toe is longer — there is nothing beautiful about my feet, however they have their own websites all over the place.”

Fellow returning designer Doug Wilson — who appears in the April 7 premiere along with the always polarizing designer Hildi Santo Tomás, cheery host Paige Davis, and carpenters Ty Pennington and Carter Oosterhouse — is looking forward to the show airing in the age of Twitter. Whereas he used to have to rely on his fans to defend his more divisive designs in chat rooms, he’ll now be able to explain them himself.

He says one of his designs in the new season can’t even win over the open-minded Davis, but she did have his back when we brought up the original series’ most infamous reveal — “Crying Pam.”

youtube

Homeowner Pam had asked her neighbors, who were redoing her family room with Wilson, to keep him from touching the brick around her fireplace. And he didn’t; he just covered it with a facade. Viewing it for the first time, Pam asked to leave the room — but because she had her mic on, viewers could still hear her tears.

Davis says homeowners are allowed to tell the show there are certain things they want to protect in their rooms. “She wanted to protect that brick, so when she opened her eyes, and saw that to her eyes, that brick was gone — completely safe underneath — she was so angry that she actually thought we had broken the contract. That’s why she says, ‘You guys are gonna be fixin’ that in a little bit.’ But we didn’t. We actually didn’t break the contract. … And we didn’t fix it. And she was taking it down while we were still packing up cameras,” Davis says. “And if she had just slept on it. I always wish she would have just slept on it.”

According to Wilson, there are situations like this in the new season, but with happier endings. “They don’t like it when we see the reveal, then all the sudden the next day when all the camera crews are out and all the lights are gone, they can see this room takes on a new new experience,” he says.

So that leaves the big question: Have homeowners ever stopped being friends with their neighbors after doing the show together? Davis only knows of it happening once. Watch the full interview below for that story and more.

yahoo

TLC will air a 24-hour marathon of classic Trading Spaces episodes starting Friday at 6 p.m., leading into a two-hour reunion special Saturday at 6 p.m., followed by the season premiere at 8 p.m.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

David Letterman’s Jay-Z interview gets really, really awkward

How ‘Blockers’ redefines the prom-night comedy with talk of consent and John Cena’s bare butt

Brad Pitt is spending time with MIT Professor Neri Oxman — but what does it mean?

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #_author:Mandi Bierly #tlc #video #_uuid:fcef0547-c100-3052-8dc6-c55991b286c3 #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #paige davis #trading spaces #doug wilson #genevieve gorder

5 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

20 of TV's top showrunners reveal the storylines they're most proud of

Alisha Boe as Jessica Davis and Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in 13 Reasons Why. (Photo: Netflix)

Before Linda Schuyler became the creator of the iconic Degrassi franchise, she spent eight years in a classroom as a junior high school teacher. On Friday afternoons, she liked to show her students something that would get them talking. One day she screened “The Summer We Moved to Elm Street,” a 1968 episode from the National Film Board of Canada about a nine-year-old girl whose family has moved because her father is an alcoholic and can’t hold a job. “It really got quite a lively discussion started afterward,” Schuyler says, “but one of the most poignant things about that discussion was one of the little girls in my class was talking about that girl in the show — ‘that girl.’ And at some point, she stopped talking about it in the third person and started talking about it in the first person. I realized that it had touched a real nerve with her, and we were talking about the fact that her father was an alcoholic. As a teacher, I went on to take the necessary steps, but as a storyteller, I was really struck by the power that a little 20-minute show had to unleash discussion and feelings that my kids otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to explore.”

Those kinds of conversations continue today, which is why we asked showrunners participating in our Why Teen TV Matters series to tell us the storyline they’re proudest of in their series — for its intent or impact. Some people, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, gave us two.

“‘Intent’ goes to ‘Earshot,’ for being ABOUT other people’s perspectives,” he wrote, choosing the Season 3 episode, written by Jane Espenson, in which Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) can hear people’s thoughts and believes she has to stop classmate Jonathan (Danny Strong) from committing a school shooting.

Watch a scene from the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ episode “Earshot.”

youtube

For ‘impact,’ he picked the romantic relationship between Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). “I wasn’t trying to help people; I just wanted to put normal behavior I’d observed on screen (and find a worthy follow up to Oz),” he insisted. “I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal. I am not so bright. But I’m a little proud anyway.”

Here are other storylines that remain a source of pride, for the producers of the teen TV/family genres.

Coming out

Peter Paige (Freeform’s The Fosters): “Honestly, there are so many storylines we’ve done on The Fosters that fill me with pride — abuse in the foster system, DACA, same-sex marriage, able-ism, the sex offender registry, addiction and recovery, more — but the one that holds the place closest to my heart is probably Jude’s coming out and first kiss. To put forward so humanly the simple notion that gay adults actually start out as gay kids — and deserve the dignity of seeing their stories told — is the kind of storytelling that drew me to Hollywood in the first place.”

youtube

Nahnatchka Khan (ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat): “The coming-out storyline of Nicole (played by Luna Blaise). Her struggle to tell one person (her friend and neighbor Eddie, who used to have a crush on her) and then him becoming a support system for her as she decides to tell her family and essentially come to terms with who she is. Not only do I think this is important because as we all know representation matters, but I love showing how people you least expect can become an ally.”

youtube

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (Hulu’s Marvel’s Runaways): “We became very aware as the season was unfolding just how important Karolina is to a lot of readers of the comic and viewers of the show. Her relationship with Nico was something that remained unrequited in the comic but we knew we wanted to take it further in the show. We’re very proud of how representative the Runaways are, and that some of these characters are an on-screen first in Marvel’s history.”

youtube

Mike Royce (Netflix’s One Day at a Time): “Elena’s coming-out arc on One Day at a Time makes me very proud. I’m so happy with how we were able to show a really complete experience with all the bumps and bruises, based on other writers’ experiences and for me, inspired by my daughter coming out basically at the same time we were writing the arc. So many people have expressed to Gloria and me what it meant to them, and whoops I’m crying.”

Gloria Calderon Kellett (One Day at a Time): “What Mike said and now I’m also crying.”

youtube

Sexual assualt

Brian Yorkey (Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why): “I think the way our show deals with sexual assault and its devastating impact on young women is something I’m very proud of putting out into the world. Especially heading into our Season 2, as we follow Jessica’s experience as a survivor of sexual assault — it is a seasons-long if not show-long storyline for her, just as for survivors in the real world it is a lifelong process. We were writing about and talking about sexual assault on our show long before the very-welcome Me Too movement opened, I think, many eyes to just how prevalent sexual assault and sexual harassment are in our world, and we hope that we can continue feeding the conversation — helping to keep the conversation going — especially for teenagers.”

youtube

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (MTV’s Sweet/Vicious): “I am proudest of the seventh episode of Sweet/Vicious entitled ‘Heartbreaker,’ which is the episode where we unpack Jules’s sexual assault and everything that happened after that lead her to become a vigilante. We didn’t want to shy away from exposing the realities of sexual assault, but it was also extremely important to myself and the entire Sweet/Vicious team that we weren’t exploitative in our portrayal of Jules’s experience. This episode was our way of reaching out our hand to survivors and saying we hear you, we see you, and we believe you. The response I get to this day from people about the series as a whole, but this episode in particular… there are no words that can properly describe the amount of love I have in my heart for everyone that was able to feel less alone from watching this episode of television.”

youtube

Self-worth

Lauren Iungerich (MTV’s Awkward, Netflix’s On My Block): “Yikes. This is so hard. But if I had to choose I’d say the 3rd season of Awkward and that season’s finale (which was my series finale as showrunner and creator). By the end of the third season, my heroine learned that she could decide to find meaning in her life on her own terms without validation from other people — especially the boy she loved. When that episode aired I had so many people — kids and adults alike — tell me how powerful that message was for them. Doesn’t matter how old you are, the lesson is an important one. We can dictate our own self-worth — we don’t need others to do it.”

Ashley Rickards as Jenna Hamilton in ‘Awkward’ (GIF: MTV)

Terri Minsky (Disney Channel’s Andi Mack): “The storyline I am most proud of is Andi’s self-awareness about how much she doesn’t enjoy her relationship with Jonah. This was something I was profoundly ignorant of as a teenager. I spent way too much time wondering and agonizing over what someone felt about me. Many times, I just decided for them — they liked me as a friend, but they liked my best friend better. I thought of myself as the second banana. I have even tried to develop a show called Second Banana. You know why it doesn’t work? Nobody wants to be that girl. With Andi Mack, I’ve finally stopped trying to write the teenage girl I was, and am now writing the teenage girl I wish I’d been. The scene I’m most proud of is in a first season episode called ‘Were We Ever.’ In it, Andi recognizes that her relationship with Jonah has a severe imbalance; she’s hyper-aware of his needs, and he is completely oblivious to hers. She’s so thrilled by his attention she’ll do whatever he asks, but now she sees they’re on a one-way street and she’s over it. The thing is … she tells him. She doesn’t just endure this unsatisfactory arrangement — she gets out of it! I got to put words in Andi’s mouth that I wish I had said decades ago, and I really hope I helped some teenager somewhere to end that crappy relationship which was making them miserable.”

youtube

Eileen Heisler (ABC’s The Middle): “I’d say the episode DeAnn [Heline] and I wrote and I directed called ‘The Graduate.’ We won a Humanitas for that one, which I am very proud of. It’s an episode where Sue, who is worried that she made no impact on those around her in high school, finds out that by just being herself, she has actually made an incredible impact. The scene where Sue’s classmates return her high school yearbook and it is filled with inscriptions of how her rather average-seeming life has touched her classmates is one a lot of people related to. I think many people feel invisible in high school, and giving voice to that meant a lot to us.”

youtube

Michael Mohan (Netflix’s Everything Sucks!): “I feel so fortunate to have been able to work with this company of immensely talented teen actors — it’s hard to single out one storyline or episode. But in our story, there’s one character named Emaline, beautifully played by Sydney Sweeney. She’s introduced as a bit of a drama queen: one day she’s dressed up like Courtney Love, the next she’s channeling Gwen Stefani. She’s someone who feels validated by demanding attention. And the character’s metamorphosis is absolutely wild to watch because once she has her heart broken, she loses sight of her entire sense of identity, which she just begins to recover in the most surprising of ways. Especially in high school, we all become obsessed with trying to figure out who we are and forcing ourselves to be or act a certain way. And even if we don’t hop on lunchroom tables reciting Shakespeare like Emaline tends to do — her search for a sense of self is something that anyone can relate to.”

Sydney Sweeney, standing on a cafeteria lunch table, as Emaline in Everything Sucks! (Photo: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix)

Dan Perrault (Netflix’s American Vandal): “I’m proudest of our finale to Season 1. (Spoiler Alert) When he’s finally proven innocent of the vandalism, Dylan enjoys his celebrity status back at school. But his excitement comes crashing down when he finally watches the first few episodes of the documentary and realizes nobody genuinely likes him. They’ve been laughing at him the whole time. Dylan was labeled an idiot and a loser by the school and his peers. And it’s fair to say that this unfair label was one of the major factors in him getting falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit. In high school, we’re quick to judge people. It’s unfair, especially considering how we’re still learning and figuring ourselves out.”

Jimmy Tatro as Dylan Maxwell in American Vandal. (Photo: Netflix)

Representation, in all its form

Michael Braverman (ABC’s Life Goes On): “Without question, I’m most proud of the pilot episode of Life Goes On. My intent, from FADE IN on the first page, was to put on full display the magnificence and humanity of people with Down Syndrome. A little-known fact is that Charles, ‘Corky,’ was named and modeled after my nephew, Charles — a truly wonderful person. As to the series’ impact, that is for others to judge.”

youtube

Heather Wordham (Netflix’s Alexa & Katie): “I am proudest of the overall premise of Alexa & Katie as we portray a teenager who is living with and in the process of surviving leukemia. We had an adult guest actor on one of our early episodes who handed me a letter right after curtain call. In the letter, this actor described his childhood dealing with Type 1 diabetes. He said when he watched TV growing up, that a sick kid on a sitcom was the punchline, not the star. He went on to say how happy he was to see a show where a teen character is going through an illness and yet is relatable, likable, and one of the main characters.”

youtube

Dreamers

Katie Elmore Mota (Hulu’s East Los High): “I am extremely proud of the wide array of issues we addressed on East Los High from immigration to sexual and reproductive health, to domestic abuse and more. I think the story we told about a young Dreamer named Eddie is particularly important. We are living in a time when issues such as immigration have become so divisive that we have stopped seeing the humanity behind these hot-button topics. So we wanted to tell a story about a Dreamer through the lens of a character that the audience already knew and loved. On East Los High Eddie is a high school student who was born in Mexico but grew up in the U.S. One day on his way to see his mother, the bus he’s on gets searched by immigration. And he gets taken into custody and put in a detention center. The conditions are horrendous and the abuse the detainees endure makes your skin crawl. Eddie is terrified and ends up suffering severe PTSD as a result.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in our country living in these ‘prisons’ every year, yet Eddie’s story was the first time in the history of U.S. television that showed what detention centers are actually like, and the horrific conditions that people, including children, are put in. The human rights abuses are gross and things are only getting worse under this administration. Kids like Eddie, refugees, people who know no other home than the United States, are being treated like criminals, and it is heartbreaking. We worked closely with United We Dream to tell that story.

youtube

We then wanted to show how communities can come together and take action, so the students of East Los High staged a huge protest to get him out and it works. It was always really important for us to show the challenges, but to also show what people can do, that their voices matter, that even in situations where they feel powerless, coming together and using their voice can make them powerful. We started writing this storyline in 2015, when little attention had been given to Dreamers in mainstream media, and it aired just months before the 2016 election. Understanding the impact the storyline would have, we worked closely with Voto Latino and United We Dream on Eddie’s story as well as a digital campaign to help drive voter registration and the importance of voting.”

Loss

Julie Plec (The CW’s The Vampire Diaries): “I love writing about loss, and two episodes of the Vampire Diaries that were so important to me were when Elena had to come to terms with the fact that her brother is dead, which was ‘Stand by Me’ back in the third season, and when Caroline has to bury her mother in the sixth season. Those are universal experiences. The mourning period — the grief, the crisis, or the trauma of the moment — is often written away from or happens off-screen, and to be able to expose that like Joss [Whedon] did with ‘The Body’ back in the day [on Buffy], expose the mechanics about that kind of loss and what happens thereafter, was really important to me. I’m really proud of those two episodes for their emotional weight.”

youtube

Friendship

youtube

I. Marlene King (Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars): “At its core, Pretty Little Liars was about the PLL’s unconditional friendship. We were never the show that pitted women against each other. And the girls never fought over their dating partners. So when Spencer and Caleb started to have romantic feelings for each other, even though Haleb had been over for a long time, it was important for me to make sure we handled the storyline in a way that represented the show’s core value. Spencer refused to move forward with Caleb until she received Hanna’s permission. The intention of her decision was to show friends taking care of friends, which is what PLL was all about.”

Innocence

Adam F. Goldberg (ABC’s The Goldbergs): “Season 4, I introduced the romance between Adam and Jackie Geary, an awkward theater kid played by Rowan Blanchard. They have all the typical teen drama, but it’s all filtered through geeky pop culture issues. I’ve found such immense joy writing this innocent teen storyline, especially because it’s all real. Jackie and I are still friends to this day and it’s been so amazing revisiting that innocent time of my life where our biggest argument was about Star Trek versus Star Wars.”

youtube

Read more “Why Teen TV Matters” from Yahoo Entertainment:

The moment TV’s teen revolution truly began

Why ‘My So-Called Life’ is the most influential teen show ever

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

Fewer guns, more ‘adult’ dialogue: How will the Parkland, Fla., students impact teen TV?

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

Why vampires aren’t as sexy in the age of #MeToo

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Fewer guns, more 'adult' dialogue: How will the Parkland, Fla., students impact teen TV?

‘Sweet/Vicious’ and ‘Dawson’s Creek’ are two series from the past that showed us how to move forward. (Photos: Getty/Everett Collection)

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, creator of MTV’s campus-vigilante series Sweet/Vicious, grew up in South Florida. Her cousins went to Majory Stoneman Douglas High School, and her mother and aunt were driving on the local highway as the first-response vehicles rushed to get to the school after shots were fired Feb. 14.

“To think that gun violence is not something that’s at your doorstep is a mistake. I am so in awe of the Parkland survivors and the action they have taken to fight back. It speaks to my heart as someone that created a show about a woman who took justice into her own hands after she was tossed aside by the system,” Robinson tells Yahoo Entertainment, echoing other showrunners who’ve shared how much these #NeverAgain activists have inspired them in our “Why Teen TV Matters” series.

But she also goes a step further: “There is a reason there were no guns used on Sweet/Vicious. That was a deliberate choice. We as creators, writers, directors of entertainment have an obligation to these children who are being slaughtered to do better as storytellers,” Robinson insists. “Take a look at what you’re making and ask yourself — does this story absolutely need a gun or would it work with something else? Cause more times than not, I bet it would.”

youtube

She isn’t the only one who’d like to see those in the industry voluntarily re-think their weapon of choice.

Katie Elmore Mota, executive producer of Hulu’s East Los High who founded the production company Wise Entertainment to focus on socially relevant stories, admits she’s been brought to tears “many times” by the students in Parkland — and the fact that these teens have been forced to lead a fight adults didn’t. “I am beyond grateful to these teens for the work they are doing to awaken this country and fight the deadly gun lobby, the NRA, and the politicians who value the money that comes from the gun lobby more than they have valued the lives of our children. Enough is enough. These teens have tremendous courage and they are changing our country. Already actions are being taken because they spoke up. Now we must do our job and support them in this fight in every single way that we can,” she urges. “And Hollywood must not shy away from their responsibility in this and how we portray and normalize violence and guns. The stories we put into the world matter, what children watch matters. And we have a responsibility.”

While we wait to see how the students’ call for gun control in the real world may have an impact on the scripted one, the conversations they’ve created and carried on our TVs is a reminder of the kind of dialogue we should be hearing.

Last month, as The Vampire Diaries executive producer Julie Plec watched the teen survivors speak on TV, she couldn’t help but think back 20 years to the days when she worked on close friend Kevin Williamson’s series Dawson’s Creek.

As she told us, “Kevin made a very specific and unique style choice in that he purposefully wrote those teens to have almost hyperbolic language and communication skills, and I would say, probably the biggest lesson you can take from his choice was that when you’re writing for teenagers, you don’t treat them like children. You treat them, and you present them, as adults. And that was actually passing through my head when I was listening to all the Parkland students on CNN who were giving their testimony at the press conference. I said, ‘My God, they are so magnificently articulate, and the idea that there used to exist this sense in that particular youth genre that you had to write down or limit their vocabulary or narrow their point of view seems so ridiculous in the post-Dawson’s Creek era.’ Because you look at the reality of how teenagers communicate at their best, and we saw that.”

As much as Plec hopes these teens “single-handedly start the wave to change the world” — and they’re well on their way with the March for Our Lives on March 24 — she’d also love to believe TV helped pave the way. “I’d like to think as someone from an older generation that maybe it’s the programming that we gave them that inspired them to be their best selves, to talk about their issues rather than run from them. So maybe it’s a symbiotic relationship we’ve got going.”

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, showrunners of Marvel’s Runaways on Hulu, would agree that it’s a two-way street: “We think the most important message shows like ours can send is putting smart, strong, young characters up on screen. … Representation is so important — and not just in terms of gender, race, and sexuality — but also in presenting teenage characters as complicated, flawed, smart, and idealistic … like the real-life teen heroes inspiring all of us today.”

youtube

Marshall Herskovitz, who co-created thirtysomething and exec produced My So-Called Life, wonders if now might be the time that TV takes a realistic look at how ill-prepared we’re leaving generations for the future. He has two grown daughters who, when they were adolescents, had the sense that “the world really didn’t give a crap about them.” They also grew up in the shadow of 9/11. “They felt that so many of the institutions of our society were breaking down. I think there’s a way in which we have failed our children as a society by not really addressing the future,” he says. “I think that it’s our responsibility as adults to create a future that’s sustainable. I certainly mean that from an environmental standpoint or in terms of climate, but I also mean it in terms of the ethics and morals of how a culture behaves — the institutions, education itself, the way Congress works, firearms, on, and on, and on. … How are we as a society creating the future that we think we should have? The answer is we’re doing a bad job of it, and I think that should be explored on television.”

He and his longtime producing partner, Ed Zwick, have pitched that kind of drama before. “It’s very difficult,” he says. “In other words, we were unable to sell it, because I think maybe it was just a little bit too much of holding one’s hand over the flame.”

Read more “Why Teen TV Matters” from Yahoo Entertainment:

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

The moment TV’s teen revolution truly began

Why ‘My So-Called Life’ is the most influential teen show ever

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

Why vampires aren’t as sexy in the age of #MeToo

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

The moment TV's teen revolution truly began

Claire Danes in My So-Called Life, Lennon Stella in Nashville, and Kristy McNichol in Family. (Photo: Everett Collection)

Back in the late ’70s, a full decade before Marshall Herskovitz and his producing partner, Ed Zwick, would change TV by creating thirtysomething, they cut their teeth as writers on the aptly titled ABC drama Family. Created by Jay Presson Allen and exec-produced by Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling, and Mike Nichols, it revolved around the Lawrences, a family from Pasadena, Calif. whose youngest child was Buddy — the character that would launch Kristy McNichol’s career and, inadvertently, help inspire the most influential teen TV series of all time.

When Herskovitz and Zwick tapped Winnie Holzman to create My So-Called Life, an authentic early-’90s drama centered on a teenage girl, Angela Chase (Claire Danes), they wanted to upend the rules they had to once abide by.

“We used to get notes [on Family scripts] from Len Goldberg, and there would be a line and it said on it ‘NOB.’ I remember asking, ‘What does NOB stand for?’ and it meant, ‘Not Our Buddy,'” Herskovitz tells Yahoo Entertainment. “They wanted her to be nice all the time, and they wanted her to be a good girl. I think there was this way in which teens, but especially teenage girls, were still seen as voiceless in the culture. And I think that was the thing that most motivated us when we were doing My So-Called Life, was to say, ‘These are people within our lives who need to be heard.'”

If Herskovitz’s memory is correct, one “NOB” scene had Buddy, who he notes was younger than 15-year-old Angela when the series began, talking back to her mother “too stridently.”

“Which is so funny to me,” he says, “because in My So-Called Life, Angela would scream at her mother. Basically, she wanted to kill her mother. So, certainly, there was a change.”

As part of our Why Teen TV Matters series, we spoke with Herskovitz, who’s now co-showrunner of CMT’s Nashville with Zwick, about the other shifts he’s witnessed in his 40-plus-year TV career.

The beginning

Wilson Cruz as Rickie and Danes in My So-Called Life. (Photos: Everett Collection)

Most people agree that the Teen TV genre didn’t even exist until My So-Called Life. “It’s funny, I used to talk about this with Ed Zwick all the time, that I would get very disturbed watching television as a child, because it in no way resembled what my life looked and felt like, and I couldn’t figure out who was crazy,” Herskovitz says, recalling that he found My Three Sons with Fred MacMurray particularly unnerving. “It’s in the nature of sitcoms to basically portray people as clinically insane: like one week they are completely obsessed with something, they start a business and they get the whole neighborhood involved, and it causes some horrible thing to happen, and the next week that’s completely forgotten and they’re doing something else. Because My Three Sons was mostly about these teenage boys, I found it to be utterly perplexing and disturbing.”

When he, Zwick, and Holzman, who had been a writer on thirtysomething, were brainstorming ideas for a new series, it was Herskovitz who initially suggested doing a drama focused on teens. “I had written a pilot for Showtime in the mid-’80s, when Showtime was just beginning, as a matter of fact, about a 17-year-old boy, and I found myself exploring issues that I had never seen on television before,” he says. “Most shows about teens on television [in the early ’90s, like Beverly Hills, 90210] were very exploitative about sexuality and meant to be titillating rather than inside the experience of what it meant to be an adolescent. What I said to Winnie was, ‘This is something that still interests me, what about you?’ And she said, ‘My God, this is something I think about every day.'”

youtube

ABC initially passed on the pilot and then never quite knew what to do with the show, right down to its loud MTV-esque promos. “They completely ignored the fact that the show was so introspective. And we kept telling them, ‘This is a show for grownups. Every grownup was once a teenager. You’re not getting what we have here,” he says. “And they just never believed in the show. In fact, it took two and a half years to do the 19 episodes that we produced. I remember Ed had made an appeal to [then network president] Bob Iger when they were talking about canceling the show, saying, ‘You should keep this show on the air because teenage girls have no voice in our culture and the show is giving them a voice.’ And the irony of that is so incredible now, 25 years later, because teenage girls have such a huge voice in the culture. I mean, look at the Parkland kid [Emma Gonzalez].”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Emma Gonzalez, left, David Hogg, and Cameron Kasky raising their voices. (Photos: Getty Images, AP)

Like every showrunner who’s participated in our series, he’s been inspired by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students. “I’m not the only person to think these kids are incredible. One of the things that strikes me is that, quite naturally, this group is so heterogeneous — there are boys and girls, and people of different ethnic backgrounds — and I find that so refreshing and lovely to see that it naturally happens that way. And also, how together they are, how much solidarity they have, how generous they are with each other. It’s an extraordinary moment, it really is,” Herskovitz says. “They have this extraordinary moral high ground. I mean, no one should have to be in fear for their life when they go to school. And it’s reaching the point now where every kid in this country is afraid for his or her life. You cannot not listen to these people.”

In 1994, My So-Called Life had an episode, “Guns and Gossip,” that deals with a gun accidentally going off in school — a cautionary tale that Herskovitz still sees as current. Gay student Rickie (Wilson Cruz) is being bullied so badly that he’s OK with people believing he’s the one who brought in the weapon because it might make them think he’s dangerous and scare them off. “It was really a multifaceted story about the pressures kids go through in high school, using this gun as the instigating incident, but really it was never about the gun,” he says. “What touched me most about that episode was the storyline about Brian Krakow, played by Devin Gummersall, who the principal decided he was going to browbeat into getting him to rat on whoever it was brought the gun. So it became a different kind of bullying, where the principal was bullying this kid and tried to intimidate him and scare him, and, finally, at the end, Brian stands up to the principal, and says, ‘You’re harassing me, and if you keep doing it I’m going to sue you.’ It was just a wonderful moment that I just love, where the kid found his voice and stood up to the grownup.”

Herskovitz’s favorite episode of the series is “The Zit,” a particularly poetic one written by Holzman based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis. “It’s about Angela having a zit that’s tormenting her the whole time — that somehow her entire life will be ruined by the fact that she has this huge zit on her chin — and, meanwhile, they’re learning about how, in the Kafka story, this guy wakes up as a cockroach,” he says. “It’s about how each kid’s image of themselves is so negative and tortured, and, also, untrue — and how they are being so done in by what they feel they have to be in order to fit into society. It’s such a remarkable piece of work.”

Jason Katims, the future showrunner of Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, and Rise who got his start in the My So-Called Life writers’ room, has cited the episode as an example of their goal: “to tell as little story as possible.”

“Honestly, we did not write that show in any way differently for teens. In other words, we wrote that show the same way we wrote thirtysomething,” Herskovitz says. “It was about teens, and so we were inside the experience of what it means to be a teenager, which means things are felt more intensely. There’s less context in which to help to get yourself off the ledge when you think something is horrible. But, really, it was the same approach, which is to say, ‘How can we honestly depict how people experience themselves in the world?’ And that’s a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of thought, and a lot of self-exploration, a lot of honesty, and I felt that that’s what Winnie was so brilliant at.”

Back to the future

Marshall and Zwick also created the family drama Once and Again, which ran on ABC from 1999-2002. Browse clips on YouTube, and you’ll be reminded of a storyline where teen Grace (Julia Whelan) grew very close to a teacher, played by Eric Stoltz. When we talked with The Vampire Diaries‘ Julie Plec, who worked on Dawson’s Creek for a time, she said someone might have to think twice today about doing a storyline like Pacey sleeping with his teacher. Herskovitz agrees. “But remember, in Once and Again, it never was fully realized. You understood that he had a crush on her and she had a crush on him, but it wasn’t about, ‘Oh, they’re going to have an affair.’ It was more about the idea that two people who are inappropriate to each other would still have feelings for each other, and I might still be interested in exploring that today,” he says. “I mean, I find the idea of exploring what can’t be, but what you still want is a part of human nature.”

youtube

Human nature is also why he’d concur with Holzman, who told us looking back on MSCL through the prism of the #MeToo movement she has “no regrets” about the use of the bad boy trope — Angela’s crush on Jared Leto’s Jordan Catalano, who didn’t always treat her well. If characters are “neatly shorn of their problems, they’re not really gonna feel like people that you’re actually encountering,” Holzman said — and mistakes are how people learn.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that it’s not necessarily the moment in the culture for men to say a lot about the #MeToo movement, so I think I should not say a lot,” Herskovitz begins, “but I will say that there have been many moments in my life where I felt the culture tried to simplify human nature or simplify the way humans should be in this world, and that has never interested me. … Men are complicated, women are complicated, there are bad people in this world, there are confused people in this world, and I’m only interested in exploring the entire universe that exists inside a human being — and part of that universe is dark, and part of it is light. I wouldn’t have any problem talking about a girl’s attraction to a bad boy today because that exists in human nature. I’m not saying it’s good or bad — I’m just saying it exists — and I would want to portray it as part of a developmental process because I think it is.”

Danes and Jared Leto as Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life. (Photos: Everett Collection)

So many of the producers who’ve participated in this “Why Teen TV Matters” series told us that My So-Called Life was the show that first taught them the impact a series could have. That’s the reason the series may be the one Herskovitz feels proudest of having worked on in his career. “Twenty-five years later, to hear with some regularity how it influenced people, or how they felt in some way empowered by it, or just understood is a remarkable feeling, frankly. And I give Winnie all the credit. I mean, she made that happen, and I am just so happy to be able to help her bring that vision to the world,” he says.

In retrospect, he can even appreciate that My So-Called Life is “like the James Dean of television shows” — that in some way, it’s better that they only got to make 19 episodes. “Because it lives in this perfect memory of each one was a gem,” he says. “I’d like to believe that if we had done five seasons of it, it could have been still great, but there is something about it having died young that just adds to that feeling of specialness about it.”

He’s, of course, also proud of the equally groundbreaking thirtysomething, which ran from 1987 to 1991, and, in his words, “went right up to that envelope of how little story could you have and still fill an hour of television — because the less story you had, the more human interactions and moments of life that you could depict.” But he points to a movie he directed, 1998’s Dangerous Beauty, based on the true story of 16th century Venetian courtesan/poet Veronica Franco, as well.

youtube

“The idea behind this film was to explore the idea of women owning their own sexuality, and not being stopped by the chain and punishments that society so often forced on them,” he says. Though it wasn’t a blockbuster, it became a kind of cult hit on Netflix with women who considered it an anthem. “I was very proud of that, and I was actually very conscious while I was making it that in some way I was making it for my daughters, even though they were too young for it at the time,” he says. “The idea of them becoming women and navigating their own lives, I wanted to create a message of something that showed the possibility of liberation.”

Empowering young women is something he still strives to do on Nashville, with Lennon and Maisy Stella’s characters, Maddie and Daphne. Bringing us full circle, “There’s just an assumption on this show that these kids are going to speak their minds. There’s no pretense that they are going to be ‘ladylike,’ in some old-fashioned sense of what girls are supposed to be,” he says. “They argue with their father, they argue with each other, they just live their lives, and I love that. I love that they are fully realized in that way.”

youtube

My So-Called Life is currently streaming on Hulu. Watch all 19 episodes for free on Yahoo View. Nashville returns for the start of its final episodes June 7 on CMT.

Read more “Why Teen TV Matters” from Yahoo Entertainment:

Why ‘My So-Called Life’ is the most influential teen show ever

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

Why vampires aren’t as sexy in the age of #MeToo

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #winnie holzman #_uuid:24257581-d085-3fc8-85cd-7f9410e3bc8a #abc #my so called life #nashville #why teen tv matters #marshall herskovitz #dangerous beauty #_author:Mandi Bierly #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #jason katims #ed zwick

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Why 'My So-Called Life' is the most influential teen show ever

Claire Danes as Angela Chase and Jared Leto as Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life. (Photos: Everett Collection)

When My So-Called Life premiered in 1994, the honest portrayal of high school in the hallways and at home changed the conversation of teen and family TV forever. As Yahoo Entertainment discovered when we asked showrunners to name an episode of a teen series that impacted them when they were that age — or that they wish they could have seen back then — MSCL is still the only show many of them want to discuss.

“Teen TV didn’t really exist when I was that age. (The horseless carriage was all the rage tho, and ladies were demanding the vote!),” jokes Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. “I don’t think teen TV really existed until My So-Called Life. (90210 was not teen TV. It was Mini-Dynasty.)”

Whedon says he wishes he’d been able to watch all 19 episodes of MSCL when he was younger. But he singles out “Other People’s Mothers” (when teens Angela and Rickie have to call Angela’s mom after their friend Rayanne overdoses); “Life of Brian” (when the World Happiness Dance brings almost nothing but sorrow), and “Betrayal” (when Rayanne — brace for it — has sex with Angela’s obsession, Jordan Catalano).

“Knowing other people feel like you do — while getting a humbling dose of everyone else’s perspective — might’ve been nice,” Whedon says. “Also, feels.”

More showrunners participating in our Why Teen TV Matters survey sent us passionate tributes to the series created by Winnie Holzman and exec-produced by thirtysomething‘s Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Read together, they tell the story of the show’s legacy.

Michael Mohan (Netflix’s Everything Sucks!): When the pilot episode of My So-Called Life first aired back in 1994, it felt so unbelievably fresh. Up until then, teenage life had only been depicted via overly sanitized sitcoms like Blossom or Saved By the Bell, featuring characters that spoke in catchphrases rather than how my friends and I actually spoke. From the very first scene, My So-Called Life stood out by being even more real and raw than even the best John Hughes movies. Still, to this day, I don’t think I have ever related more to a character than Brian Krakow, the nerdy boy who secretly lusts after his neighbor Angela Chase. This is a show that wasn’t afraid to be quiet. It wasn’t afraid to have the characters do unlikable things. It was just honest and messy, and above all real.

Nahnatchka Khan (ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat): I was just out of my teens when it premiered, but I was blown away by My So-Called Life. Coming after the soapiness of “teen fare” like Beverly Hills, 90210, the realness of the characters and grounded stories featuring teenagers was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It’s not an individual episode, but the whole storyline with Rickie (played by Wilson Cruz) just trying to be his true self in the face of hate and adversity was revolutionary. I remember wondering what it would’ve been like if that show had come out five years earlier, when I was the exact age of its main protagonists, and how it would’ve changed my perspective on things — because it definitely would have.

Brian Yorkey (Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why): My So-Called Life landed in the world a little bit after my teenage years, but is still — as I suspect it is for many, many people — one of the most resonant portrayals of high school and how I felt going through those years that I can imagine. I was about to use the word “accurate,” but I hesitate because the specifics of people’s high school experience — I have learned — can be very, very different, but so many of the emotional moments are very much the same, and MSCL was so brilliantly honest and raw and sweet and painful and lovely and even dreamy, that to me it felt how high school felt.

I would say the episode that probably left the greatest impact on me of all the wonderful (but too few) MSCL episodes was probably the episode called “Why Jordan Can’t Read,” which I found so sort of powerful but also funny and gentle at the same time. The way the show balanced adult foibles with the life-or-death emotional rollercoaster rides that the teen characters went through was so perfect, and I especially loved Roger Rees’s portrayal of substitute teacher Vic Racine — who proved to be inspiring and then a huge disappointment — as was true for me with a number of teachers in my high school years.

Stephanie Savage (Hulu’s Marvel’s Runaways): My favorite episode of My So-Called Life is “Other People’s Mothers.” The rawness and intensity of the mother-daughter relationship at that age — they captured it perfectly. There is so much conflict in the episode, but despite all of Angela’s bad choices, her mom still has her back. I don’t have kids, but watching that episode I was like, “Oh, that’s what a mother is.” Teens tell themselves that their parents don’t matter in their lives, but they do.

Terri Minsky (Disney Channel’s Andi Mack): I think My So-Called Life is essential viewing for teenage girls, moms of teenage girls (ideally with their teenage girls), anyone who has been a teenage girl, anyone who cares about a teenage girl and wonders what in God’s name is going on with her.

Jason Micallef (Paramount Network’s Heathers): Any episode of My So-Called Life that focused on Rayanne. I never really identified with any of the characters on teen shows for some reason, but Rayanne felt so mysterious to me. I loved the episode where she slept with Jordan Catalano. I mean that is such a cruel thing to do to Angela and yet you sort of understand why Rayanne did it.

Katie Elmore Mota (Hulu’s East Los High): I loved My So-Called Life. It was canceled way too soon. It wasn’t so much that I really connected to one particular storyline, but the series as a whole really resonated with me. I loved that it was about a group of students on the fringe, teens who felt like they didn’t belong anywhere and were dealing with the pressures of fitting in. I think the show really captured so many of the complexities of feelings that I had as a teenager: who am I, who am I supposed to be, and how do I survive another day of high school? I loved the character Rayanne because she just acted like she didn’t give a f***, would always call things out at face value, but of course, deep down she did care and had her own challenges to face as a result.

Other shows we can thank for the teen programming we see today:

THE WONDER YEARS

Josh Schwartz (Hulu’s Marvel’s Runaways): The Wonder Years. The pilot episode where Winnie learns about her brother’s death and they had their first kiss. It was the first time I was ever made aware that I’d be nostalgic for my youth. … I’d never seen someone on screen my own age (I was the same age as Kevin and Winnie) treated with such complicated emotions, dealing with life and death … like an adult.

Adam F. Goldberg (ABC’s The Goldbergs): The most impactful show dealing with teenage issues from my childhood was The Wonder Years. I was the same age as Kevin Arnold and even though the show was set in the ’60s, I truly identified with his character’s everyday struggles. There was a classic episode about being picked last in gym class that they handled in such a real and honest way and it was like looking into a mirror. Gym was the most painful part of my day growing up, and I remember feeling such immense relief knowing that I wasn’t alone.

yahoo

WHO’S THE BOSS

Gloria Calderon Kellett (Netflix’s One Day at a Time): Who’s The Boss, ’cause I convinced myself that Alyssa Milano was Latina. … She looked kinda like me and I love that she was tough and took no crap.

Tony Danza and Alyssa Milano in Who’s the Boss. (Photo: Columbia Pictures Television/Courtesy Everett Collection)

FREAKS AND GEEKS

Dan Perrault (Netflix’s American Vandal): Freaks and Geeks, in general, was one of my favorite teen shows. The characters felt very relatable and their everyday high school hopes and fears did as well. In high school, we tend to treat everything like it’s high stakes even if it’s just a matter of who likes you or who sits near you at lunch. As an audience those situations are funny, but as a teen, it was nice to connect with characters whose high school high stakes situations were not very different than my own.

Martin Starr, John Francis Daley, Linda Cardellini, Busy Philipps, Jason Segel, (back row) Samm Levine, Seth Rogen, and James Franco in Freaks and Geeks. (Photo: NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection)

DAWSON’S CREEK

Peter Paige (The Fosters): There wasn’t a lot of “Teen TV” in my era. We had Fame, which I loved, but I can’t recall a particular storyline as being especially impactful. I think the story I wish had been on TV during my adolescence was the Jack’s kiss episode of Dawson’s Creek. I can only imagine what that would’ve meant to me as young gay man…

youtube

ROSEANNE

Eileen Heisler (The Middle): It’s not so much individual episodes I remember from when I was growing up … more entire series. I remember really being drawn to family shows at a young age … Family, One Day at a Time, Family Ties. One storyline from a later series that always sticks with me was “Darlene Fades to Black” on Roseanne. I was not a depressed child myself, but I felt that episode/storyline was so groundbreaking because it showed a teen feeling that everything with her wasn’t OK and that there wasn’t necessarily an epic reason for it … simply that she was going through a phase where she wasn’t happy and that was OK. They just understood that she was going through this period, it didn’t resolve immediately, and I thought that was brave and revolutionary for a sitcom.

Sara Gilbert and Roseanne in the 1991 Roseanne episode “Darlene Fades to Black.” (Photo: Carsey-Werner Company)

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Mike Royce (One Day at a Time): I honestly wish I had been a teenager during Buffy. I had Happy Days. And the Fonz was cool, but he was no Buffy.

yahoo

Shows created by people who wished they’d had them:

I. Marlene King (Pretty Little Liars): As a girl growing up in a small Midwestern town, I wish Emily Field’s storyline on Pretty Little Liars was on TV when I was a teen. There were no gay women who weren’t stereotypes on TV when I was struggling with my identity. When I created PLL it was important for me, as a storyteller, to make sure Emily’s friends supported her when she came out. I wanted to show young people what unconditional friendship looks like and what it looks like to accept your friends for who they are.

Shay Mitchell and Lucy Hale in Pretty Little Liars. (Photo: Freeform/Eric McCandless)

Lauren Iungerich (Awkward): When I was growing up, there were not many teen shows on TV and the only one I watched was 90210 (the Darren Star original). I’m not sure if 90210 had a big impact on me other than highlighting the need for stringent Girl Code when dealing with matters of the heart. Basically: don’t get involved with your bestie’s ex.   The teen content that made a real impact on me was not found on TV; rather I was impacted by teen films — specifically John Hughes movies. John Hughes had a way of empowering teenage voices to feel important. He did not condescend to or trivialize the teen experience. His work was the reason why I wanted to create Awkward. I felt there was a void in teen content that didn’t minimize how profound the teen years are for most people. The teen years dictate who we become as adults and why we become those people. The teen genre is an unsung genre of storytelling but the impact of the genre sticks with you — even as an adult.

Ashley Rickards and Beau Mirchoff in Awkward. (Photo: ©MTV/Viacom/Courtesy: Everett Collection)

Proof the inspiration continues:

Logan Browning, Marque Richardson, Ashley Blaine Featherson in Episode 5 of Dear White People. (Photo: Adam Rose/Netflix)

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Sweet/Vicious): I’m not sure that this falls directly into the Teen TV category, but Dear White People on Netflix is astonishing. What Justin Simien has done with that show is so brilliant, and [it] should be required viewing not just for teens, but for everyone. I don’t want to ruin anything, as it is something that should be experienced as you watch the series, but Season 1, Episode 5 has stayed with me since the minute it ended. It is an episode that explores race and gun violence with such grace and nuance. The cast, the writers, and the episode’s director, Barry Jenkins, made an exceptional half-hour of television. I think it’s episodes like this one that make me the most excited about being a storyteller.

My So-Called Life is currently streaming on Hulu. Watch all 19 episodes free on Yahoo View.

Read more “Why Teen TV Matters” from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

Why vampires aren’t as sexy in the age of #MeToo

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Why vampires aren't as sexy in the age of #MeToo

Nina Dobrev as Elena and Ian Somerhalder as Damon on The Vampire Diaries. (Photo: Everett Collection)

The Vampire Diaries and Dawson’s Creek producer Julie Plec on the storylines you’d have to think twice about today, the inspiring Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, and the Roswell reboot.

This March marks a year since The Vampire Diaries signed off the air after eight seasons on The CW, and as showrunner Julie Plec thinks back to its beginnings, there’s no question what her biggest takeaway is. “There was a sensuality and a seduction to the vampire genre that now, [nearly] 10 years later, isn’t necessarily as sexy, right?” she says, alluding to the fact that vampires can compel or glamour humans (depending on whether you’re watching TVD or True Blood) and have overpowering strength and speed.

“And you could look at it back through the lens of say the #MeToo movement and object to what may be a little bit of a glorification of a rape culture, but what we were working with at the time was a gothic romance with a fine line — a very fine line — separating it,” she says, with a laugh. “And I used to get in arguments about it being a gothic romance and not wanting to censor the sexuality of the characters, even if it felt a little questionable at times, like specifically Damon and Caroline in the first couple of episodes [when he used her as a plaything and drank from her against her will]. Because that’s what vampires represented, and that’s what vampires were. And the culture has just shifted enough that you’d have to think twice before you dove in that boldly now, I think.”

youtube

Another storyline that doesn’t feel “of the time” today is the classic bad boy trope, which, Plec admits, she’s had great success exploring on TVD and its spinoff, The Originals (which returns April 20 for its fifth and final season). “It brings to light a lot of questions about women’s self-worth and passivity in that male/female dynamic, and so that’s shifting as well,” she says. “It’ll be [interesting] to see how you can create great romance and tension in a romantic relationship without being able to rely on those old tropes of the guy picking up the girl and throwing her over his shoulder and saving the day, you know.”

As someone who also worked on close friend Kevin Williamson’s series Dawson’s Creek for a time, Plec can, too, admit that 20 years later, a plot point like Pacey having sex with his teacher hasn’t aged well. “There was something kind of sexy and dirty and naughty and wish fulfillment about that back then that leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth right now,” she says.

youtube

Still, there are some Dawson’s arcs that more than hold up. She thinks back to Jack (Kerr Smith) coming out in Season 2 — and in Season 3, experiencing the first passionate kiss between two men on TV (thanks to then showrunner Greg Berlanti being willing to walk away from the series if the network wouldn’t air it). “Essentially that scene where the father rejects Jack and leaves him in a puddle crying was a fictionalized version of Greg’s actual experience, which he’s talked very freely about in his own interviews,” Plec says. “The beauty of that storyline is the idea that as a young adult, [Greg] had an experience that he had to keep a secret for a while, and then when he revealed his secret, it didn’t go well, and then for him to be able to exorcise that demon through writing — to actually show the story to an audience and show them all the beautiful things about that story that he himself had never gotten to see as a viewer.”

That’s also an illustration of why Plec has always been drawn to the teen genre. “What’s most inspirational about writing for that age is that everyone at that age is either living their biggest truth or their biggest secret, and sometimes both. And they communicate in a very straight-forward way. They tend to sort of say what they mean, and express their feelings without filters in a way that you just don’t do as much as an adult,” she says. “And so as a writer, it makes it a particularly honest experience — I don’t have to think, I can just put my thoughts on the page as I would have wanted to when I was 17.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Emma Gonzalez, left, David Hogg, and Cameron Kasky raising their voices. (Photos: Getty/AP)

Last month, when she was watching the teen survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting speak on TV, she thought again about Dawson’s Creek.

“Kevin made a very specific and unique style choice in that he purposefully wrote those teens to have almost hyperbolic language and communication skills,” Plec says, “and I would say, probably the biggest lesson you can take from his choice was that when you’re writing for teenagers, you don’t treat them like children. You treat them, and you present them, as adults. And that was actually passing through my head when I was listening to all the Parkland students on CNN giving their press conference. I said, ‘My god, they are so magnificently articulate.’ And the idea that there used to exist this sense in that particular youth genre that you had to write down or limit their vocabulary or narrow their point of view seems so ridiculous in the post-Dawson’s Creek era, because you look at the reality of how teenagers communicate at their best.”

Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in 13 Reasons Why. (Photo: Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)

The conversation those students, and fearless shows like 13 Reasons Why, are creating in the country give her hope. “If you’re looking at all of these kids talking about being shot up in their school, then you’re applauding a show like 13 Reasons Why for creating an environment for people to talk openly about their feelings, about their mental illness, about their sadness, about the things that make them feel dark. If talking about mental health is the norm and not the aberration, then I think we solve a lot of the world’s problems just by definition of that.”

Because again, when done well, these shows can make a difference. For her next project, Plec will direct the pilot for The CW’s Roswell reboot, written by Originals alum Carina Adly MacKenzie and based on the Roswell High book series. This time, the story centers on the daughter (Jeanine Mason) of undocumented immigrants who returns to her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico, for her 10-year high school reunion and discovers that her teenage crush (Nathan Parsons), who is now a police officer, has been hiding the fact that he’s an alien with unearthly abilities. When a violent attack and long-standing government cover-up point to a greater alien presence on Earth, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose him and destroy their deepening romance.

“Carina was raised in the Muslim faith by an Egyptian mother, although she is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman, and after 9/11, the next day everyone in her school was exhibiting blatant Islamophobia, and she had to sort of stand up and say, ‘Hey, wait a second, guys. Watch yourselves.’ And so to be able to tell that story through this lens is really important to her because it is something that she went through as a teenager.”

And it’s an experience that today’s teens can still relate to. “Anything that you’re making for that particular audience, you know deep down that you’re in some way, in success, laying the foundation for important things like tolerance and inclusion, and openness to issues like mental health or self-esteem,” she says. “You’re touching people at the right time, where your message can actually make positive change if your message is well-executed — and there’s something really uplifting and powerful about that.”

Read more “Why Teen TV Matters” from Yahoo Entertainment:

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #why teen tv matters #_author:Mandi Bierly #greg berlanti #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #julie plec #the vampire diaries #kevin williamson #roswell #Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School #The CW #_uuid:4771b971-500b-32f1-9834-9f5fe810a831 #dawsons creek

5 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Why social media is the biggest issue teen TV should tackle

Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in 13 Reasons Why. (Photo: Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Andi Mack creator Terri Minsky doesn’t feel it’s her place to tell any other showrunner what they should be doing on their series, but she does understand why Yahoo Entertainment reached out to television producers to ask which issue they’d like to see more shows address for teen and family audiences.

“TV shows are a message, a warning, from one generation to the next, about how not to do things,” Minsky says. “My generation thought high school was supposed to be the best four years of your life, so obviously there was something wrong with you if they turned out to be the most miserable. Kids who hated high school grew up to write Freaks and Geeks, and Daria, and Glee, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so the next generation came prepared, fully informed on what an emotional and psychological cesspool high school really was. Now, TV writers are trying to clear the forest of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, violence, rape, addictions… There’s a lot to do, and unfortunately, right now, this list grows longer by the day, sometimes by the hour.”

In this age of Peak TV, many producers echo the words of The Fosters showrunner Peter Paige: “I think we have an incredible opportunity at this moment in time, with the breadth of programming going on, to explore all the issues that teenagers today wrestle with — sex, drugs, the internet, social media, guns — without talking down to them.” The Vampire Diaries‘ Julie Plec lists a broad array: “Just like the rainbow coalition of normal human issues, whether it be depression and therapy, sexuality, gender dynamics, race dynamics.” 13 Reasons Why‘s Brian Yorkey gives more of a mission statement: “I would love to see more shows that speak honestly and personally and unflinchingly to some of the difficult things teens face on a daily basis, and not in a way necessarily that seeks to educate adults, but in a way that seeks to honor the experience of teenagers and to let them know that — as much as they may be feeling they’re the only kid going through it — they’re really not alone.”

But as we sorted the responses to our “Why Teen TV Matters” showrunner survey, we noticed one recurring theme:

Social Media

The Middle‘s Eileen Heisler cuts right to the chase: “I think the issue of social media is one that has impacted today’s teens in ways we don’t even fully understand yet. I think the effects of social media usage on teens is a current health crisis and something television should address.”

Heather Wordham, creator of Netflix’s Alexa & Katie, recalls something she heard recently explaining the pathology: “The point that was made that really stuck with me was that before social media, any teenager who felt bullied or like they weren’t enough at school always had a reprieve from that when they went home at the end of the day and could get away from some of those feelings of inadequacy. But with social media, that influence is now 24 hours a day. Anytime a kid checks out their social media, no matter what time it is or where they are, they risk facing those challenges and feelings.”

youtube

This is a particularly timely discussion for Pretty Little Liars creator I. Marlene King, who, by the way, doesn’t limit the damage being done to just teenagers adding to the conversation: “Young people and adults have forgotten that words matter. They can inspire but they can also inflict deep and impactful wounds. When you hate anonymously on social media, your words still land hard and cause pain. Social media bullying is an epidemic in this country and we need to address it in our storylines. We need to show the bullies how it feels to be bullied. And we need to show kids who are being bullied solutions and ways to rise above the hate. I’d also like to see more storylines exploring the stress of needing to be popular on social media. It’s adding another layer to what success looks like to young people, and their need to be perfect at everything. We’re exploring these issues in our new show, Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists.”

Awkward creator Lauren Iungerich (whose next series is Netflix’s On My Block) might have a suggestion: focusing on “self-compassion over self-esteem.”

“Self-esteem suggests that in order to win someone has to lose. And when you promote self-compassion, you are telling people to find a connection even in failure. That there are lessons to be learned when you don’t win. That when you don’t win, you actually connect with everyone else who is also not winning. And in that common connection, you find community,” she says. “I feel like our society is driven by so much self-importance that community has been lost. Being part of a fully-realized, supportive, and inclusive community is where we really flourish as a society. And I wish more shows would promote that idea.”

Buffy creator Joss Whedon would watch them: “The stories I’m looking for are about the kids who aren’t beautiful, sculpted, sexy leaders and stars,” he says. “I’m always interested in the people who get ignored and get by anyway. (And look like they’re still in high school.)”

So, too, would Dan Perrault (Netflix’s American Vandal), who wants to see the labels that divide us disappear: “I think it’s getting a lot better, but in general I’d like to see less stereotyping and categorizing of teens. It seems like in real life we’re moving away from the idea of jocks, nerds, cool kids, and losers. We don’t all fit in a box, so I hope teen TV reflects that.”

Embracing our differences would help bring back what One Day at a Time co-showrunner Mike Royce believes is missing: “Portraying empathy is so important. For identity, representation, privilege… any storyline that can convey an understanding of people who are not necessarily exactly like you. Their problems, their struggles,” he says. “The kicker is, it’s all relatable no matter who you are. But empathy is becoming a lost feeling and we need to be finding it.”

There is hope

Funnily enough, the most optimistic outlook on the issues facing this generation may come from the co-creator of Netflix’s Everything Sucks! , Michael Mohan. “One of the most rewarding aspects of making this show was being able to hang out with these teenagers outside of filming. And it was so illuminating because I feel like so many articles about this current generation of teenagers take a pessimistic stance. You read about teenagers being addicted to technology — personally, I think teenagers today have a much healthier relationship with their phones than most of my adult friends have. Our cast wasn’t glued to their phones at all whatsoever,” he says. “You read about them being emotionally distant — but I actually think they’re more in touch with their own vulnerability than prior generations. And I think they feel far more empowered than anyone is giving them credit for. So while our show is set in the “olden days” of the 1990s (the same distance from when The Wonder Years took place and when it aired), I would love to see a straight-up honest, vampire-free story about what it’s like in high school right now, so that teenagers can see themselves represented onscreen accurately, and so that adults have a window into how amazing this generation actually is.”

Peyton Kennedy and Jahi Di’Allo Winston in Everything Sucks! (Photo: Scott Patrick Green/Netflix)

Katie Elmore Mota, executive producer of Hulu’s East Los High, has her own list of priorities — safety, equal access to education, issues around sex and relationships — but she, too, thinks what is most important is listening to the teens you are writing about. “We need to ask them what matters most to them, and what stories or characters would they like to see on television that they maybe haven’t seen yet, what is on their minds. We did this with every season of East Los High and we always learned so much. I think it really helped us ground the show and keep it relevant,” she says. “And overall, I think one of the most important things in life is to feel seen and heard. I hope that more and more teens feel that they are seeing themselves in mainstream media, that they see representations of themselves that they can relate to and that they feel that their stories matter. And to validate their feelings and challenges, and remind teens that every day is a new day, so never lose hope or give up. My mom always said ‘this too shall pass,’ and that’s true for both the highs and the lows in life.”

That kind of communication is what One Day at Time co-showrunner Gloria Calderon Kellett hopes to see more of: “I think parents start to get afraid of their kids and don’t know what to say to them. And on our show, we try to show that it’s hard and awkward and you don’t always say that perfect, elegant thing. But it’s the doing that is important,” she says. “Penelope always goes right in there and talks to her kids. I think it’s good for both parents and kids to see that.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Show creator looks back at 4 decades of ‘Degrassi,’ from abortion to Drake

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: ‘I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.’

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

1 note · View note

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Joss Whedon on Parkland students: 'I've been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.'

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, and Cameron Kasky raising their voices. (Photos: Getty/AP)

It’s been nearly a month since we watched Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez deliver a speech that helped ignite the #NeverAgain gun control movement. “The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us,” she said. “And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call BS.” While some people still find themselves marveling at how these students summoned the strength to become activists in the wake of the Feb. 14 mass shooting in their hallways — of course it’s not as simple as this generation was raised on the teen-led revolutions of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter films, though it didn’t hurt — one thing is clear: their efforts, which have already led to new legislation in Florida and are building toward March 24’s March for Our Lives, continue to be inspiring.

“Working in any kind of activism means hearing, ‘What kind of world are we leaving our children’ all the time. And to have the children grow up, turn around and say, ‘How about you don’t leave us anything — how about we take it? How about you just do better?” — it’s the most wonderful feeling imaginable,” Joss Whedon tells Yahoo Entertainment via email. “To have kids look at a society divided between the corrupt and the despondent and insist on real change… it’s galvanizing as hell. I’ve been writing about kids like these for a long while. I thought I was writing fantasy.”

The creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — the TV series that starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as the titular heroine who was crowned Class Protector at the senior prom and had a (temporary) tombstone that read “She saved the world a lot” — isn’t alone. As part of Yahoo Entertainment’s “Why Teen TV Matters” series, we reached out to showrunners from teen and family television series, past and present, to ask how these students from Parkland, Fla. have inspired them. Here, we present Part I of their responses.

‘They see through the bulls**t and they always will’

That it’s these teen survivors leading the call for change shouldn’t come as a surprise. Put simply by Jason Micallef, the showrunner of Paramount Network’s Heathers adaptation that delayed its planned March premiere to later this year in the wake of the Florida shooting: “They’re so awesome. I think right now our society lacks adult leadership and these teens have stepped in and filled that void.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, showrunners of Marvel’s Runaways, a Hulu series based on the Brian K. Vaughan comic that centers on six teens uniting against their supervillain parents: “The story of Brian’s original vision for the Runaways was adults aren’t always to be trusted, that sometimes it takes a new generation to rise up and fix the world their parents broke… That same message is being voiced by the Parkland survivors and all the teen activists filling a void of morality and leadership in our real world.”

13 Reasons Why showrunner Brian Yorkey also drew a parallel to his critically acclaimed Netflix series, which ignited a national debate about its graphic depiction of teen suicide and sexual assault: “We’re a show that is about teenagers struggling amongst themselves to solve their problems. We were criticized in some corners for portraying clueless adults — and I don’t think our adults are clueless, but I think they don’t necessarily know how to step in and be helpful in a world that these teenagers are facing. What we see in Florida are teenagers who are the only ones talking sense — the only ones willing to stand up and say this is wrong, and it can’t continue, and not to accept the status quo, but to demand change, and to not give up on it — and to me there’s nothing more inspiring. And it is at one level, tragic that it has to be teenagers to be the only ones talking sense, but on another level, it makes absolute sense because they see through the bulls**t and they always will.”

Winnie Holzman, creator of the seminal ’90s teen drama My So-Called Life, has long understood that fact. “Look,” she says, “they were pushed to the wall, and they were pushed in a way that was devastating, and their response was simply to tell their truth, and to say, ‘Listen to the truth, we can’t lie about this. We’re not gonna f***ing lie about something that just happened that is now our truth.’ And that’s exciting, and really that’s what galvanizes people.”

As Dan Perrault, showrunner of Netflix’s scripted series American Vandal, explains: “It’s great to see the people most deeply affected by this issue speak out and become one of the most powerful voices in the conversation. Regardless of whether they’re of voting age or not, teens have the ability to be hugely impactful.”

Matt Nix, of Fox’s The Gifted, remembered that from his youth: “As someone who was politically active as a teenager myself, I am inspired and it shows me that people of any age can get involved.”

Others are even more grateful for the reminder…

yahoo

‘You can be your own hero and save yourself’

These students — whose sense of purpose and passion have fueled six-figure contributions for the March for Our Lives rally from George and Amal Clooney, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, and Oprah Winfrey, among others — are more than an inspiration. For many, they’re a rejuvenation, as these next emailed responses prove:

Eileen Heisler (ABC’s long-running family comedy The Middle): “I have been tremendously inspired by the teen activists from Florida. The second I saw Emma Gonzalez’s speech I posted it and knew it was something special. This political climate has been very exhausting, and the uprising of these teens feels like a tipping point — certainly in reference to the gun issue — but also feels like it is ushering in a new wave of change that we desperately need. Their passion and commitment to act upon it gives me great hope for the future.”

Michael Mohan (Netflix’s Everything Sucks!): “The best word to describe the pure spirit of the teen activists in Florida is ‘contagious.’ And whenever I feel down about the state of this country, I am comforted in knowing that it is temporary, and the massive epidemic of people wanting to do the right thing is spreading. And while we all have to fight as hard as we can to make the present safer and more tolerant, these activists have let us know that the future is going to be in good hands.”

Lauren Iungerich (MTV’s Awkward, Netflix’s On My Block): “Those amazing kids are a beacon of light during a nihilistic time in our country’s history. They remind me how important it is to fight for what’s right in the face of adversity and against the odds. They are single-handedly changing the conversation and creating opportunity for all the cynics who have felt hopeless to light up again and get back to fighting. They are inspiring the creation of real community in our country and showing us that you don’t have to wait for a hero to save you — you can be your own hero and save yourself. I f**king love those kids!”

Mike Royce (Netflix’s One Day at a Time): “I just can’t get enough of how little baggage they have with all of the politics. They have none of the ‘Oh well, nothing ever gets done so screw it.’ They just say what they want and go after it. It’s awakened in me a renewed sense of, ‘Oh yeah, actually things can change.'”

Royce’s co-showrunner, Gloria Calderon Kellett: “I agree. Their headspace is proactive. If you want something done right, do it yourself. And that is what they are doing. I love that!”

Terri Minsky (Disney Channel’s Andi Mack): Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky and Alfonso Calderon and all the passionate, impatient, infuriated members of the #NeverAgain movement are taking unknowable trauma and inconceivable tragedy and turning it into power. I’m somewhat embarrassed to use a pop cultural reference for how I see them, but here it is: They are the human equivalent of the Wakanda warriors in Black Panther.”

Peter Paige (Freeform’s The Fosters): “I am beyond moved and inspired by those kids — they are taking the most unthinkable of tragedies and turning it into good. Their refusal to be silenced, to retreat, to be spoken for or down to — incredible. I truly believe they may well turn out to be the heroes we have needed for a very long time.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘My So-Called Life’ and ‘Parenthood’ creators on Parkland teens ‘changing the conversation’ on TV and in real life

A ‘Black-ish’ episode about kneeling NFL players was yanked by ABC. Why?

The inside story of Oprah Winfrey’s mind-blowing ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ moments

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

Man overboard in the 'Deadliest Catch' Season 14 trailer (exclusive)

yahoo

The wait is almost over for the new season of Discovery’s Deadliest Catch. As our exclusive trailer debut announces, the Emmy-winning reality show is back April 10. There’s a lot to look forward to, including the return of Josh Harris and the Cornelia Marie. But according to the network, there’s also “injuries and Coast Guard rescues stacking up at alarming rates.”

A Summer Bay deckhand falls overboard during one storm — the most serious issue for Capt. Wild Bill Wichrowski, who also faces one of the worst engine failures of his career and the loss of some of his crab quota to the Brenna A‘s young gun, Capt. Sean Dwyer. The Brenna A, unfortunately, also takes on more than $30,000 worth of damage after being bashed by a monster wave.

The Brenna A vs. the Bering Sea (Photo: Discovery)

The Saga comes into the season with a $750,000 makeover, putting the pressure firmly on Capt. Jake Anderson to produce. As the new footage reveals, he’ll have to do it without the help of his mentor, Capt. Sig Hansen, who literally throws him out of the Northwestern wheelhouse. For Sig, who’s feeling strong after his 2016 heart attack, this season is about proving he’s still the best in the business. That’s a title rival captain Keith Colburn of the Wizard desperately wants, though it won’t come easy. According to Discovery, “as the season wears on, a problem develops that could put Keith’s season — and life — in jeopardy.” Presumably that has something to do with him asking if there’s a fuel spill and ordering the crew into their survival suits in the trailer.

Josh Harris in the wheelhouse of the Cornelia Marie (Photo: Discovery)

All eyes will, of course, be on Josh Harris, who’ll again co-captain the Cornelia Marie with Casey McManus. “I was so happy to see the boat. I kissed it when I saw it,” he told Yahoo Entertainment before heading out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska last October. The boat itself has also been through a major overhaul, and most of the crew is new. “Everyone has questions. They’re about to get ’em answered,” Harris told us last fall. “We’re definitely back, and we’re ready to show the world what we can do at full force, a little bit smarter, and with a lot better boat.”

Fans will notice that the Time Bandit won’t be featured this season, but there is another returning character — mother nature. Per the network, “Forty-foot waves, hurricane force winds, heavy-machinery and massive icebergs are just a few reasons that no season is ever the same. Making matters even worse, the sea is terrifyingly heightened by this year’s super moon, a tsunami and some of the worst winter storms on record.”

Before setting sail, the captains will honor their friends and fellow fishermen of the Destination, a vessel in the Bering Sea crab fleet that was lost in February 2017.

Deadliest Catch Season 14 premieres April 10 at 9 p.m. on Discovery, preceded by the first-ever live episode of the pre-show The Bait at 8 p.m. in celebration of the series’ 200th episode.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

5 things you didn’t see at the 2018 Oscars: Our insider report

‘The Shape of Water’ fish man: Hot or not? We polled stars at the Oscars

Review: The Oscars show was both highly feminist and highly predictable

#_author_id:c4b4edd0-b171-11e4-b5fd-0d5c1f5abd78 #video #deadliest catch #discovery #sig hansen #discovery channel #josh harris #news #exclusive #exclusives #jake anderson #cornelia marie #keith colburn #sean dwyer #Wild Bill Wichrowski #casey mcmanus #_uuid:ee853822-a398-3137-a723-8a73d8c8f013 #_draft:true

2 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

David Attenborough lying on the beach with a turtle isn't the most amazing thing you'll see in 'Blue Planet II' this week

yahoo

Viewers of Blue Planet II have no doubt gotten emotional during the first six episodes of the BBC America series, but Saturday’s new installment, “Our Blue Planet,” will hit home in a different way — it makes it personal.

Much has changed since the 2001 debut of the original series, starting with our understanding of how humanity is impacting the oceans. “The oceans are more fragile, perhaps, then we thought before. That’s something that dawned on us during the making of the series,” Blue Planet II executive producer James Honeyborne tells us. “What we wanted to do in the [penultimate] episode was really inspire people, not make them feel they couldn’t do anything about it. It’s an inspirational story of heroic individuals, scientists, conservationists, whoever they are, who are out there working hard, tirelessly, in pursuit of making the oceans a healthier place again. And that’s vital for us, because the planet needs a healthy ocean. That’s fundamental to life on Earth.”

As you see in the sneak peek above, change can start with one person, like Len Peters, who has worked to save endangered leatherback sea turtles, the largest of all turtles, on Trinidad. Coming ashore to lay their eggs makes them an easy target for hunters. Peters began patrolling the beach at night to protect them (and was cursed and threatened with a machete for it). He encouraged tourists to visit the turtles and trained locals to be their guides. He continues to speak in schools to cultivate the next generation’s appreciation for the leatherbacks, which have now made a comeback on the island.

Scientist Steve Simpson uses a multi-directional hydrophone to record the sounds of the reef. Scientists have recently discovered that many fish on the coral reef rely on sound at key stages in their life — and that man-made noise is interfering with this. (Photo: Roger Munns/BBC)

Another fascinating sequence shows just how much scientists still have to learn. Marine biologist Steve Simpson is studying how fish in coral reefs use sound — “pops and grunts and gurgles and snaps” — to communicate with each other. While filming the family of talkative saddleback clownfish we saw earlier in the series, Simpson floated a decoy coral trout, one of the clownfish’s main predators, near the family’s anemone and recorded the large female’s alarm calls. “But that discovery has led to a serious worry,” narrator Sir David Attenborough says in the episode. When a small motorboat travels overhead, the fish become distracted. “Unable to make themselves heard above the noise of boats, the family can’t warn each other of danger, and so they are now vulnerable to attack,” Attenborough explains.

Simpson uses a model of a coral trout to record and study alarm calls in coral reef fish. (Photo: BBC 2017)

“We’re changing that world because of the sound we’re making,” producer Orla Doherty tells us. “We didn’t know this stuff even maybe 5, 10 years ago. There’s so much going on down there that we’ve just got no idea about.”

Some discoveries are particularly painful. In this week’s episode, Australian marine biologist Alexander Vail, who introduced the Blue Planet II crew to the tool-using tuskfish, nicknamed “Percy the Persistent,” we saw earlier in the series, admits he cried in his mask when he saw that 90 percent of the coral at Lizard Island had bleached in 2016. Warming seas can cause corals to lose their colorful algae, turning them white.

Scientist Alexander Vail studies the reefs around Lizard Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. While filming “Blue Planet II,” the team witnessed the worst bleaching event ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef. (Photo: Yoland Bosiger/BBC)

“I think what was so devastating for Alex was this is his backyard. This is literally where he grew up,” Honeyborne tells us. “He’s been snorkeling out there since he was an adult, and to see it devastated for the first time was shocking for him, and then to know that it was part of this huge picture of very fast change that appears to be happening — I’m sure his tears were very real. This is an unfolding situation that we’re in now. Probably half the world’s coral has been bleached to some extent in the last three years, and the impacts are great. Back-to-back bleachings [in 2016 and 2017] had never been recorded before. So for him, it was kind of an unprecedented disaster. Every time it happens, the corals become weaker.”

youtube

The “Big Blue” episode of Blue Planet II has already covered how prevalent plastic is, and how it travels from ocean to ocean, but this week, we meet Lucy Quinn of the British Antarctic Survey, who catalogues the plastic objects wandering albatross chicks have regurgitated after being mistakenly fed them by their parents. As you see in the clip above, a plastic toothpick can be fatal.

“Everywhere we went we saw plastic. Plastics are there in every ocean, and the extent of the problem is grave and huge and far-reaching,” Honeyborne says. “The really big bits of plastic are a problem in terms of entanglement. We were filming in British Columbia when we found a whale that had been entangled in the plastic fishing lines that link those pots. We stayed with that whale for a day until the emergency services were able to come out and cut it free. There’s the ingestion issues: Plastic bags, for example, get eaten by a large number of creatures, including turtles and albatrosses, and are clearly a threat. And that one toothpick — that was shocking what that did to that albatross chick. Every albatross chick feels so precious, doesn’t it? Just one disposable, single-use plastic killed it. Then, of course, as plastics break down, they become much smaller micro plastics, and they get eaten by all sorts of sea creatures, we’re now discovering. They’re finding plastics on the deepest trenches on the planet. We’re finding plastics inside the bodies of filter-feeders, like edible muscles and things like that. A lot of this is emerging science. Scientists are looking very intently at how the small bits of plastic interact with toxic pollutants, chemicals in the oceans, and are these plastics that are being ingested toxic? We don’t have all the answers here. We don’t know to what extent this is entering the food chain, but it is clearly a sort of cutting-edge issue that needs exploring.” (See: the possibility of a mother’s milk being contaminated posed as one potential cause of death for a newborn pilot whale calf in the “Big Blue” episode; the mother refused to let go of its body for days as she mourned.)

A scientist uses lasers to measure a whale shark, the largest fish in the ocean. In the Galapagos Islands, scientist Jonathan Green is trying to unravel the mystery of why large pregnant females arrive there every year. Protecting their migration routes is key to the species’ survival. (Photo: Jonathan Green/BBC)

Of course fishing is a danger, too. In this episode, shark biologist Jonathan Green of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project says it’s estimated that thousands, or tens of thousands, of whale sharks are taken every year. To save them, he’s trying to solve the mystery of where they give birth — and what route their migration takes — to get those waters protected. “A lot of these big sea creatures are long-distance migrants, they travel over thousands of miles of ocean, like the whale sharks do. That’s on the high seas and is largely unregulated and unpoliceable,” Honeyborne says. “That’s potentially a big issue for these creatures if they’re being hunted. Marine-protected areas are, if they’re well-managed and policed, effective at being able to reestablish and repopulate populations of sea creatures.”

An orca targets the nets of a Norwegian fishing vessel looking for an easy meal. Entanglement in fishing gear — nets and lines — is thought to be the single biggest threat to whales and dolphins around the world. (Photo: Audun Rikardsen/BBC)

Saturday’s episode profiles one such success story: Back in the late 1960s, herring had all but disappeared from the fjords of Norway, and orcas were being killed because they were viewed as fishermen’s rivals for the fish. But by regulating the fishery and protecting the whales, both populations are now thriving — so much so that a billion herring pour in during the winter, attracting 1,000 orcas that strategically hunt in pods (as we saw in the first episode of the series).

youtube

The message Blue Planet II wants to leave viewers with is there is hope — if we take action. “We asked [the scientists] all the same question: ‘How do you feel about the future?’ Unanimously, they were all optimistic. You could ask yourself, is that just part of the human condition? But no, I don’t think so,” Honeyborne says. “What we do know is that the oceans have an incredible capacity to bounce back, in terms of their health. I really good example of that in the U.S. is Monterey Bay, where 50, 60 years ago it was fished to a point where it was polluted and all the big animals in there had been hunted or chased away, and the whole ecosystem collapsed, died. Yet, today, when you go there, it’s one of the greatest spectacles in the oceans. The ocean does have a capacity to recover, if we just take that pressure off it and just give it a chance.”

Blue Planet II airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on BBC America.

yahoo

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Blue Planet II’: See what happens when penguins come between battling elephant seals

‘Blue Planet II’: How an octopus outsmarts a shark

The most heartbreaking sequence in ‘Blue Planet II’: A pilot whale mourning her calf

The most terrifying sequence of ‘Blue Planet II’: The Bobbit worm

Why ‘The Deep’ episode of ‘Blue Planet II’ is the one you can’t miss

‘Blue Planet II’ premiere: Bird-eating fish and 5 more sequences you’ll be talking about

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #james honeyborne #bbc america #david attenborough #_author:Mandi Bierly #orla doherty #_uuid:f147db29-1edd-3f25-8e2c-01d70884dc2e #_category:yct:001000086 #blue planet II #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews

2 notes · View notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

'Schitt's Creek' just covered Tina Turner and it's simply the best

David (Dan Levy) and Maura (Catherine O’Hara) swoon over a serenade from Patrick (Noah Reid) on ‘Schitt’s Creek.’ (Photo: Pop)

There’s no greater surprise on a TV comedy than when a character sings and it’s a) actually good and b) disarmingly touching. Schitt’s Creek nailed it in this week’s episode when David (Dan Levy) and mom Moira (Catherine O’Hara) braced for an open mic night serenade from David’s boyfriend, Patrick (Noah Reid).

#QueenMoira, the friend we all need. #SchittsCreek pic.twitter.com/prjUb3YR38

— Schitt’s Creek (Pop) (@SchittsCreekPop) March 1, 2018

But when Patrick began singing a beautiful acoustic version of Tina Turner’s “The Best,” both mother and son got misty — although only one of them was scripted to. “While we were shooting, Catherine was getting so moved by it that she just had to fit it into the character. At one point, she was like, ‘Well, I guess Moira can just cry,'” Dan tells us.

The episode aired Tuesday night in Canada and by Wednesday morning, Reid’s cover was No. 1 on the iTunes Canada soundtrack chart.

When you wake up to being #1 in the iTunes Canada Soundtrack chart… @olreid #SchittsCreek pic.twitter.com/nJG7UNIOE8

— Schitt’s Creek (@SchittsCreek) February 28, 2018

Now that the episode has aired in America on Pop, it’s available on iTunes here as well. Dan, who co-created the series with his father, Eugene Levy, says he’s always loved the song’s lyrics. “You never really think to listen carefully to the lyrics, but it’s such a stunningly written pop song,” he says. “I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that if we can find a way to do an acoustic version of this song, the lyrics are so beautiful.”

The show’s writers wanted to pepper moments into the season bringing new couple David and Patrick closer together, and Dan knew that Reid — who has a background in musical theater and an album on iTunes and Spotify — had a great voice they could use at some point. “We just thought what would be a great way to really show the audience that these two mean more to each other than they had initially expected or had ever thought,” Dan says. “We obviously went through a variety of different [ideas] — there’s the Say Anything approach to showing up to the motel, but we didn’t know what to do with that. The idea of an open mic night [at David and Patrick’s shop] we found really funny because it’s so disturbing to David, the idea that anyone would find that entertaining or enjoyable. Then on top of that, have his boyfriend spearhead the whole thing and ultimately sing to him — we just thought it was such a great way to showcase David’s biggest fear and then ultimately reveal that he had nothing to worry about.”

Love is in the air (and on iTunes). Get @olreid‘s beautiful take on “Simply the Best” from tonight’s #SchittsCreek here –> https://t.co/Grut64xuwR #Patvid pic.twitter.com/jFtkmq0CZ4

— Schitt’s Creek (Pop) (@SchittsCreekPop) March 1, 2018

The song selection was Dan’s, but the arrangement was all Reid’s. “I called up Noah and said, ‘Here’s the situation. We want like a really slow, nice cover. Do you want us to coordinate how we do that or do you want to take a stab at it?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, let me play around with it for a bit.’ About a month later, I got this little MP3 sent to my phone where he was just sitting with an acoustic guitar and he sang the song. I would listen to that if it weren’t on my show,” Dan says. “Needless to say, that moment far exceeded any of my expectations in terms of just how beautifully it turned out. That’s all thanks to Noah Reid.”

This isn’t the first time Schitt’s Creek has caused waterworks with music, though. In the Season 3 finale, Moira surprised daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy) by showing up at her belated high school graduation and singing lead on a dreamy cover of “Baby I’m Yours.”

What other TV comedies have used actors covering songs to such great effect? We’ll list some of our favorites, feel free to join in.

Murphy Brown: The titular Motown aficionado (Candice Bergen) serenaded her newborn with Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Women.”

youtube

The Office: Andy (Ed Helms) insisted on singing Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” as his goodbye.

youtube

Gilmore Girls: We’re counting it because Lorelai (Lauren Graham) karaoking Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” was funny, until Luke (Scott Patterson) walked in.

youtube

Selfie: This show lasted less than a season, but the memory of just-rejected Eliza (Karen Gillan) singing Sia’s “Chandelier” at the company karaoke party lives on…

youtube

As does that a cappella rendition of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World” Henry (John Cho) performs to an empty room.

youtube

Schitt’s Creek airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Pop. Catch up on the first three seasons on Netflix. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘I, Tonya’ deleted scene: Margot Robbie’s Harding spins bonkers Nancy Kerrigan conspiracy theory

5 items you could score from Russell Crowe’s divorce sale

Review: ‘The Looming Tower’ tells us 9/11 didn’t have to happen

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #murphy brown #the office #_author:Mandi Bierly #simply the best #the best #_uuid:ccea5fe6-e9bd-3931-813f-f14ada88278e #_category:yct:001000086 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #noah reid #eugene levy #pop #schitt's creek #catherine ohara #dan levy #tina turner

0 notes

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

The only thing better than the horses dancing in 'Ferdinand' is watching humans do it

yahoo

If you saw Ferdinand in theaters, you already know that one of the Best Animated Film Oscar nominee’s standout scenes is the dance-off between the elegant, arrogant horses and the rough-and-tumble bulls. The movie’s home release gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the battle, and we’ve got an exclusive sneak peek.

Choreographers Rich Talauega and Tone Talauega explain that when director Carlos Saldanha told them about the attitude of equine “opposing crew,” it felt like the world of ballet to them — combined with voguing, made famous by Madonna.

Choreographing the horses’ dance in ‘Ferdinand’ (GIF: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment)

Among the other special features on the home release: “Ferdinand’s Guide to Healthy Living” with John Cena, who voiced the bull with a big heart; “A Goat’s Guide to Life”; “Creating the Land of Ferdinand”; “Anatomy of a Scene: The Bull Run”; “Ferdinand’s Do-It-Yourself Flower Garden”; and “Creating a Remarka-Bull Song.”

Ferdinand arrives on Digital Feb. 27, and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD March 13.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Behind ‘Black Panther’: The hidden meanings of those stunning Wakanda costumes

‘Wonder Woman’ wasn’t alone: 15 great movies dissed by 2018 Oscars

Jennifer Lawrence gets candid about nude photo leak and Harvey Weinstein

#ferdinand #movie:ferdinand #madonna #exclusives #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #_author:Mandi Bierly #_uuid:3656ddca-b918-36bf-8091-c2b7ffa16882 #video #john cena #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #oscars #awards #exclusive

1 note · View note

mandibierly · 6 years

Text

'Blue Planet II': See what happens when penguins come between battling elephant seals

yahoo

No episode of Blue Planet II has more action than this Saturday’s “Coasts,” which shows the lengths to which animals go to survive the world where land and sea collide.

One memorable sequence, as seen above, follows King penguins as they tip-toe through slumbering elephant seals on the shore of St Andrew’s Bay in South Georgia, an island close to Antarctica. It’s breeding season for the elephant seals, which means the bulls are vying for power, and since it’s spring, hundreds of thousands of penguins are arriving en route to the colony (where 40,000 chicks await, but also, as narrator Sir David Attenborough says, “a trial of endurance” that involves shedding all their feathers and growing new ones). The penguins just need to make it through the obstacle course of elephant seals without getting caught in the testosterone crossfire.

“There’s certainly an element of Clash of the Titans with the elephant seals,” episode producer Miles Barton says of the moment conflict erupts. “We’ve seen the penguins and the elephant seals on beaches before. The key there was, we got a handheld movie camera rig so that the cameraman could move in amongst the elephant seals as they moved. It was like he was the King penguin making its way up the beach, and he would have to move to the left or the right according to where the elephant seals were thrashing.”

King penguins march through St. Andrew’s Bay in South Georgia. (Photo: Mary Summerill/BBC)

“It’s quite a dodgy business — you’ve got to leap out of the way,” Barton says. “I’ve been on those beaches, and you do go along armed with a stick. Although a stick against a three-ton elephant seal doesn’t do much. But you feel slightly safer carrying it anyway.”

yahoo

The stakes are even higher on the coast of Brazil for Sally Lightfoot crabs. Every day, they wait for the tide to go out and expose their feeding grounds — algae-covered rocks 100 meters from the shore. They leap from rock to rock to get there, hoping to stay out of the water. Why? Meter-long moray eels and clever octopus. To us, it feels like the Blue Planet II equivalent of Planet Earth II‘s viral “Iguana vs. snakes” sequence. For Barton, it’s a bit like Mission: Impossible. “Every day, this wave of crabs has to march out to those rocks with the low tide. Then when the tide comes back in again, they’ve got to repeat it all over again. There’s literally a gauntlet of moray eels and octopus in every pool. It’s amazing how some animals have to live their lives,” he says. Watch the clip above, and we guarantee you’ll be shouting “Go! Go!” at the screen. “I always like to surprise people,” Barton says. Somebody said to me, ‘I hate crabs. I’m not interested in crabs at all. But by the end of that sequence, I felt really sorry for it.’ To get people to feel empathy for a crab is a hell of a wonderful thing to achieve.”

Sally Lightfoot crabs queue up to leap from rock to rock at Fernando de Noronha, Brazil. These crabs appear to be afraid of water because that’s where predatory eels and octopuses lurk. (Photo: Miles Barton/BBC)

It was a challenging shoot, though. “It was just an incredibly slippery beach. You’ve got camera equipment worth 50 grand. Half the time the cameraman had to be up to his waist in water, because everything happens literally on the tide line as the crabs move in and out. What would happen is, our local guide, Joao Paulo Krajewski, who had actually studied these crabs, would go ahead and he would just trip across the rocks no problem at all. But it was very difficult for us to keep up with him. By the time we arrived, there’d been a couple of splashes and we’d missed it. So we split into two teams,” Barton says. “It was the fast team just carrying a camera in the hand with a beanbag and then running across the rocks as quickly as possible, slam the beanbag down, slam down the camera, and just get the moment when the moray eel would leap out of the water. Then we had a bigger camera with a longer lens, and if the behavior continued, we would capture that. Sometimes we would actually have two cameras on the same event, which meant you’ve got a wide and a closeup.”

Seeing the crabs slow down, scuttle, and leap from rock to rock was actually comical at times. “Occasionally they’d fall short and land in the water. Then they just paddle frantically to get out of the water. Of course, as soon as you see one of these eels leap out of the water, you realize what the crabs are so nervous about,” he says.

What really surprised the crew, however, was that there were nearly as many octopus as eels stalking the crabs. “The funny thing is that the octopus were so reactive to any movement above the water, a couple of times they actually grabbed hold of us around the ankles,” Barton says. “I suppose there was a shadow. But they would try to bite off a little bit more than they could chew, really.”

A Galapagos sea lion attacks a yellowfin tuna that it has driven inshore. This hunting strategy only happens on the Galapagos and had never been filmed before. (Photo: Richard Wollacombe/BBC)

In terms of “sheer drama,” Barton’s pick for the must-see sequence in “Coasts” is Galapagos sea lions banding together to herd their prey — 130-pound yellowfin tuna that can easily outswim sea lions in the open sea at speeds of 40 mph — into a cove. Two years before a team was dispatched, cameraman Richard Wollocombe came into the BBC offices and told producers a fisherman’s tale: “He’d been having a drink in a bar, and there’s a bloke who says, ‘The sea lions run the tuna up onto the beach and grab them off the shoreline.’ He initially said, ‘Well, I don’t believe that.’ We said the same to [Richard],” Barton says. “Then over that period of time, we got this fisherman to go out and put out a GoPro. That took about six months to [confirm his story]. Then we took another year or so to carefully plan the shoot.”

It’s a behavior that has only been witnessed there — and it had never been filmed before. On the first trip, the Blue Planet II team saw the cooperative hunting. But it was on the second trip that they realized the best way to really capture it was from the air. “That’s when we got our drone pilot, Dan Beecham, out there, and just by hovering above you could see the strategy perfectly,” Barton says. “You could see two or three sea lions bringing a group of tuna in. They get narrower and narrower into this channel, and then nip into sections and culverts that are created by the black lava in the Galapagos. Then you actually saw that the one sea lion would hang back and block the escape route. Then one by one, they could pick off these tuna. Sometimes they were able to grab them underwater. But every now and again, the tuna panicked so much they would leap out and be flapping around on the beach. Obviously it was a complete doddle then for the sea lions just to grab them.”

An Atlantic puffin with a beakful of food for its chick at Hornoya Island, Norway (Photo: Miles Barton/BBC)

For an action sequence that really pulls at the heartstrings, Blue Planet II traveled to Norway, where Puffin parents take turns traveling roughly 60 miles roundtrip to feed their chicks. Just when they’re about home, they have to fend off “pirates” — birds, namely the Arctic skua, who want to steal the fish. It’s heartbreaking, but also like watching a dogfight in Top Gun as the puffins maneuver to shake the skuas.

“We had an amazing bird cameraman, Barrie Britton, who can follow and predict the behavior of birds. If I was standing next to him and I saw the chase, I wouldn’t know whether the skua had made contact with the puffin, or where the fish had fallen out, or anything because it’s happening so fast. It’s only when you review [the footage] that you see all the detail,” Barton says. “You’d feel so sorry for the puffins. Initially there might be one skua, but as soon as there’s a sign of vulnerability in the puffin and it starts to go down, or drop its food, then three, four. It’s like the starfighters in Star Wars. The goodies and the baddies. They’re just being chased. It is an aerial duel. The trouble is, the poor old puffin, because he’s designed to swim underwater, he’s compromised, whereas the skuas are designed for aerobatics, and so they can twist and turn. They’re actually plucking the puffin’s feathers. They grab hold of their tails and shake them, and it’s always to shake the food out. The puffin may have been out feeding and flying for four, five, six hours. It comes back, and then it loses its food and has to go all the way out again. It’s a sad story.”

Ochre starfish are the main predators of limpets in rock pools at Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. But the limpets are known to fight back. (Photo: Paul Williams/BBC)

Heading to the rock pools of Canada to capture the battle between limpets (marine mollusks) and their top predators, starfish, Barton had another cinematic inspiration in mind: “I’d hoped we would get the best of Pixar,” he says, “but the great thing is, it’s all happening and it’s all real — all those creatures are that colorful.” The trick here was using time-lapse technology that could turn minutes into seconds. “You walk past a rock pool, you look in and you think, ‘That’s quite pretty, but nothing much is happening.’ But if you take time and move it the way the animals are experiencing it, then you see it’s kind of tooth and dagger, tooth and claw down there. All these mini dramas are just happening everywhere,” Barton says. (To us, the tone then becomes more like Tim Burton’s stop-motion The Nightmare Before Christmas.)

He loved the idea that he might be able to make viewers start to think of a limpet as a hero as it fends off a starfish. “Nobody’s interested in a limpet. But when it’s kind of crawling along with its little face out, you feel sympathy for a limpet,” Barton says. “Not only do they kind of look cute, but also they’ve got these cool defenses. One is a little protective shield that comes up. Who’d have thought that a limpet could deploy a [slippery] shield? The other is that it has its [friend, a scale worm] inside as a kind of guided missile that pops up from underneath the shell and gives the starfish a bite and sends him on his way.”

A Pacific leaping blenny in its nest hole in Guam, Micronesia. It spends almost all of its life on land using its tail to leap from rock to rock. (Photo: Chase Weir/BBC)

The last sequence we asked Barton to preview is a decidedly lighter tale. The most terrestrial fish on earth, the leaping blenney, lives on a few remote islands in the Pacific. “They’re extraordinary creatures because they have a unique form of locomotion. Every other vertebrate uses kind of the four-limb shuffle approach to traveling around. These curl their tails and flick — that’s extraordinary in itself — and they can go six body lengths,” Barton says. What’s particularly charming is that, like little birds or lizards, the males display colors to attract a mate. So they make their nest holes high up on a limestone cliff, then try to attract — and keep — the attention of females feeding on algae down by the tide zone and focused on avoiding being swept in by approaching waves.

“Any time a wave comes in, they leap away from it. This is the other fun thing about these fish: it’s effectively a fish that’s afraid of the water. It’s just like kids on a beach. They run down toward the waves, and then they run away from them. This is what the blenneys are doing,” Barton says. “But the problem for the males is, that keeps distracting the females every time they’ve kind of caught their eye. But eventually the females do head up toward the males, and they choose them. Then the males go completely demented, kind of wriggling and writhing. They’re not really designed for agile work on a rock, but they do their best. That black body with a bright orange fin really stands out. Then if she chooses, in she goes.”

Still, the courtship isn’t necessarily over: “The nice thing that I’d noticed was that the females weren’t putting all their eggs in one basket. They’d go along, sometimes they’d check out that one. But then they’d pop into the guy a meter or so down the way,” Barton says. “They were hedging their bets sometimes.”

Planet Earth: Blue Planet II airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on BBC America.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Blue Planet II’: How an octopus outsmarts a shark

The most heartbreaking sequence in ‘Blue Planet II’: A pilot whale mourning her calf

The most terrifying sequence of ‘Blue Planet II’: The Bobbit worm

Why ‘The Deep’ episode of ‘Blue Planet II’ is the one you can’t miss

‘Blue Planet II’ premiere: Bird-eating fish and 5 more sequences you’ll be talking about

#news #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #elephant seals #_author:Mandi Bierly #videos #video #_category:yct:001000086 #blue planet II #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #interviews #bbc america #penguins #animals #blue planet 2 #_uuid:6ff5da46-6feb-3d55-b0d7-81cb69b63665

4 notes · View notes