PALEY FESTIVAL: ABC’S “MODERN FAMILY”
The cast and crew of Modern Family (Steve Levitan, Jason Winer, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Sofia Vergara, Ed O’Neill, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Eric Stonestreet) were the guests of the Modern Family panel at the Paley Festival last night.
If you want a full line by line of what happened – check The Futon Critic.
Here are some highlights from EW‘s visit to the panel:
Funny guy Ty Burrell earned the biggest applause from the audience. Sofia Vergara also got a cheer for not playing the typical golddigger and proved to be very popular among her coworkers. In addition to getting praised for her comedic skills, Burrell joked that “we Google her everyday.” “I’m Googling her right now,” Eric Stonestreet added.
Spoilers: Bowen recently filmed a scene at the Grove shopping plaza in Los Angeles, in which she gets into a brawl with a security guard. Fred Willard will return as Phil’s father.
Will Mitchell and Cameron ever show some physical affection for each other? Stonestreet said they’re too busy raising a child, but if the show goes on for many more seasons, it’ll happen “in due time.”
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Modern Family Heads To Hawaii
Executive producer Steve Levitan confirms that the entire cast will fly to Maui next week to shoot an episode slated to air in May.
“We’re going to show them on a family vacation,” reveals Levitan, adding that the trip coincides with Jay’s birthday. “Jay thinks that he and Gloria are going by themselves for this romantic getaway, and she surprises him by inviting the entire family.”
The first part of the two-part episode will be set entirely at the airport as they set off on their big trip. “Initially, we were just going to do [the airport episode],” explains Levitan. “And then as we were shooting it we decided that [viewers] would be somewhat disappointed if we didn’t follow through on the [actual] trip. So now the entire family is going to Hawaii.”
Source: EW
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All in the Modern Family
The WSJ has a great article about Modern Family; here are some of the highlights:
What do you call a mother of three, naked under her trench coat that gets caught in a hotel escalator just as she randomly bumps into her father and his much-younger Colombian wife whose 11-year-old son is trying to woo a girl with the help of his uncle, his uncle’s partner and their adopted Vietnamese baby daughter, who was dressed by one of her fathers in one of his feather boas for Valentine’s Day?
The new face of network-television family comedy.
…
The strong appeal stems, in part, from the many different types of characters for many different types of Americans to identify with. “The whole show is a send-up of contemporary culture, a mirror of the contemporary American family and something of an amalgam of many different sitcoms that came before it,” says Richard Dubin, a former TV writer who is now a professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
…
The writers dig into some of the tensions between straight parents and gay children that emerge even within the realm of relatives that love and mostly accept each other’s lifestyles. Jay cares about spending time with his son’s partner, but when the chosen activity is racquetball, he worries about being in a locker room with a gay man, telling the camera documentary-style, “I mean, for me it’s a locker room. For him, it’s a showroom.” When Cameron runs into Jay and his friends outside a restaurant, Jay introduces Cameron as a “friend of my son’s.”
“They have been so smart in the portrayal of what it means to be gay in a family that tries but sometimes fails to be totally welcoming,” says Jeffrey Richman, a writer who has worked with Messrs. Lloyd and Levitan on sitcoms like “Frasier,” and is gay.
…
In 2008, Messrs. Levitan and Lloyd were coming off a high-profile failure in “Back to You,” a workplace sitcom with big stars: Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton. Friends since they worked together on the staff of “Wings,” the writing partners would meet at their office and casually bat around ideas, telling tales about their wives and kids. “We were licking our wounds and we would just end up telling funny stories about what happened that weekend at home,” Mr. Levitan says.
Late that summer, they pitched the idea to Twentieth Century Fox Television, which wound up producing the show (and, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.). Mr. Levitan described a (slightly embroidered) incident when he went into his eldest daughter’s room to tell her to shut off the computer and go to bed, then heard a voice from the computer say, “Nice boxers, Mr. Levitan.” (She was Skyping with a friend.) This resurfaced in an episode of “Modern Family” when Claire, played by Julie Bowen, finds herself, in undergarments, getting ogled by her teenage daughter’s boyfriend who is hanging out in the daughter’s bedroom, via video chat.
Read the rest of the story on The WSJ.
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MODERN FAMILY vs. PARENTHOOD
Will Parenthood become the family of choice for the TV audience? Will you stick to Modern Family or finally discover “The Middle” ? With the end of the Olympics in sight, which family will win your heart?
Here is some info about the new family “Parenthood”:
It was once a feature film and then a television series that was quickly canceled but a decade and a half later inducted into the “Brilliant but Canceled” series. Now NBC is giving it a go once again. Brought to millions of televisions across the country (or so the network hopes), Parenthood features an all-star cast of television veterans who are playing one big, happy, colorful and somewhat dysfunctional family.
More info about Parenthood at Star Pulse.
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It’s All Relative – How ‘Modern Family’ Became TV’s Best Comedy
California Chronicle has a story about Modern Family and its creator Steven Levitan. We really liked this quote from him:
One of the show’s strengths is that everyone has a different favorite character. “Someone will come up to me, he might be a big, burly trucker, and you think he’s going to say he likes the Ed O’Neill character. But he’ll say, ‘I really like Mitchell,’” the gay character played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “And I’ll think, I did not expect that from you. I get that all the time.”
Here is another important news:
Levitan and Lloyd will do 24 episodes this season, and then age the family naturally for next season. After producing iconic series like “Frasier,” which ran for 12 seasons, the prospect of doing the same with “Modern Family” is daunting, to say the least.
“It makes us feel like we’re at the base of K-2,” Levitan says. “We’re just trying to make it to the next destination. I think the show has legs, but we’re going to take it one season at a time.”
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Hulu Movers & Shakers – Modern Family #20
Hulu Movers & Shakers report for the week of February 15th through February 21st shows “Modern Family”‘s episode “My Funky Valentie” as number 20, guess you can’t wait for a new episode…
| Top 20 Videos | ||
| Rank | Series | Video Name |
| 1 | Family Guy | Extra-Large Medium |
| 2 | The Simpsons | Boy Meets Curl |
| 3 | House | 5 to 9 |
| 4 | The Office | The Manager and the Salesman ?+2 |
| 5 | The Cleveland Show | Buried Pleasure |
| 6 | American Dad! | May the Best Stan Win |
| 7 | Lost | The Substitute |
| 8 | Family Guy | Dial Meg for Murder ?-4 (3rd Week in Top 20) |
| 9 | Burn Notice | Enemies Closer |
| 10 | 24 | 11:00 PM – 12:00 AM |
| 11 | Human Target | Lockdown |
| 12 | Grey’s Anatomy | The Time Warp |
| 13 | 30 Rock | Anna Howard Shaw Day ?+2 |
| 14 | Movie Trailers | Shutter Island (Movie Trailer) |
| 15 | It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia | America’s Next Top Paddy’s Billboard Model Contest |
| 16 | House | Moving the Chains ?-13 |
| 17 | The Bachelor | Week 7, Part 1 |
| 18 | Archer | Mole Hunt (Aka Pilot) |
| 19 | The Bachelor | Week 7, Part 2 |
| 20 | Modern Family | My Funky Valentine ?-12 |
Source: TV by the Numbers
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‘Modern Family’ in Australia
Modern Family was just included in the “Top TV to watch in 2010″ list of the Australian magazine Brisbane Times. Here’s what they say about Modern Family down-under:
Modern Family (Ten)
Concept: The foibles of an extended American family, including neurotic siblings (she has an excruciating husband and wild kids, he has a gay partner and adopted baby daughter), their dad, his new Colombian wife and stepson, are captured in a documentary.
Star factor: Married With Children’s Ed O’Neill is the name you’ll recognise but the show’s breakout stars are Jesse Tyler Ferguson (gay son Mitchell), Ty Burrell (“I’m the cool dad” brother-in-law Phil) and Rico Rodriguez (dad’s new stepson, Manny).
Verdict: A gentler twist on the discomfort of The Office and Arrested Development, dark enough to entice, not so dark it intimidates and gentle enough to hit its mark as a commercial comedy. An absolute winner.
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Modern Family Scoop
This scoop comes to us from E! Online:
Fight, fight, fight! In an upcoming ep, Jay (Ed O’Neill) tries to toughen up Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) by teaching him a few wrestling moves, and Mitchell puts his newfound skills to use defending Claire’s (Julie Bowen) honor in an Apple Store. This could possibly turn out to be better than Claire and Mitchell’s ice-skating routine and/or Mitchell’s closing argument. We heart Mitchell!
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WGA Awards Backstage Report – Modern Family
The team from ‘Modern Family,’ led by Steve Levitan, revealed that his characters are Hawaii-bound for the show’s freshman finale. “It won’t be about Hawaii,” Levitan explained. “It’ll be about a family on vacation.”
Levitan says that ‘Modern Family’ won’t be seeing a lot of celebrity cameos. “We like our cast,” he said. “We get approached more and more every week by people who want to do the show. We’re so flattered, but we want to keep it on check and not do too many guest stars. Our cast can do no wrong in my eyes. Only when it’s exactly right do we want to bring someone in.”
Levitan made two trips to the press room during the evening. His team won for New Series and Levitan picked up a solo statue for Episodic Comedy for writing the show’s pilot. (The latter award tied with an episode ’30 Rock,’ titled ‘Apollo, Apollo.’)
Source: AOL Television
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‘Modern Family’ writer on WGA win: TV is ‘so screwed up and mismanaged’
- Image via Wikipedia
Modern Family took home the trophy for achievements on the small screen at the annual Writers Guild Awards, held yesterday in Los Angeles.
New series: Modern Family.
Episodic comedy: “Apollo, Apollo,” 30 Rock, written by Robert Carlock, and the pilot of Modern Family, written by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd.
While accepting one of two awards for Modern Family, creator/executive producer Steve Levitan told the crowd that because TV was “so screwed up and mismanaged,” many of his writing peers have been rooting for the single-camera comedy’s success on ABC. “Thanks for that, Jeff Zucker,” Levitan said — a reference to the NBC Universal Chairman’s failed attempt to launch Jay Leno’s show in prime time, which put many writers out of work this season.
Source: EW.
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Going to a wedding?
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