The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington signed on to a letter to members of the U.S. Senate on March 20 calling for Congress to block a D.C. bill that would protect LGBT students from discrimination at religious schools operating in the city. The letter, which was signed, among others, by Cardinal Donald Wuerl calls the Human Rights Amendment Act approved by the D.C. Council last year an attack on religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of association in the nation’s capital.
The letter also calls on Congress to kill another bill approved by the Council and signed by Mayor Muriel Bowser, the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act. That measure would prohibit D.C. employers from discriminating against employees based on their personal reproductive health choices, including a decision to have an abortion. D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton joined city officials in strongly disputing claims that the two bills would infringe on religious freedoms or freedom of speech. The Archdiocese of Washington oversees 139 Catholic parishes and 95 Catholic schools in D.C. and five counties in Maryland.
The campaign is being led by Ted Cruz. His “disapproval resolution” would require passage from both chambers of Congress and the signature of President Obama. Ain’t gonna happen.
Anthony Johnson has the story of a Catholic high school teacher whose rant sparked outrage among alumni, including actress Susan Sarandon.
SOMERVILLE (WABC) —
A Catholic school teacher in New Jersey who went on an anti-gay rant on Facebook has sparked national outrage among alumni, which includes a former “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member and Garden State-raised Susan Sarandon.
Now, Imacculata High School in Somerville is distancing itself from theology teacher Patricia Jannuzzi.
It all started with the comments, which said gays “want to re-engineer western civilization into a slow extinction”
Jannuzzi went on to post, “We need healthy families with a mother and a father for the sake of the children and humanity.” She also states the idea that gays are protected under the 14th Amendment is “bologna.”
Students had these opinions about her Facebook rant.
“I had Ms. Jannuzzi this semester, and the way that she is being perceived here as somebody that’s a hateful person, it’s just not fair,” one said.
“I’ve talked to her a few times, all good things,” another added. “I’ve never heard anything bad from her, so I was surprised hearing this.”
Former student Scott Lyon was shocked to hear his former teacher’s comments. He posted a photo of the child he is raising with his husband in Los Angeles and wrote, “I found your classes and teaching during my time at IHS to be focused on love and acceptance. I can’t help but be offended and disappointed by the position.”
Lyon’s aunt, actress Susan Sarandon, supports her nephew’s comments.
“So proud of my nephew Scott and the dialogue he started,” she wrote. “High school is a tough time anyway. Students don’t need teachers making it even more difficult.”
The administration made Jannuzzi take down her controversial post and issued its own statement, saying, “Through our investigation, we have determined that the information posted on this social media page has not been reflected in the curriculum content of the classes she teaches.”
Celebs slam Catholic school teacher’s anti-gay post
3/12/2015 USA Today by Sergio Bichao, (Bridgewater, N.J.) Courier-News
SOMERVILLE, N.J. — An anti-gay rant by a religion teacher at a Catholic high school in New Jersey is drawing the ire of alumni across the country, including a former Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member and New-Jersey-raised Susan Sarandon.
On her now-deleted Facebook profile earlier this week, the veteran private Catholic school teacher said gays or gay activists “want to reengineer western civ (sic) into a slow extinction” as part of their “agenda.”
“We need healthy families with a mother and a father for the sake of the children and humanity!!!!!” wrote Immaculata High School teacher Patricia Jannuzzi, adding that the argument that gays are protected under the 14th Amendment is “bologna.”
The school has since forced Jannuzzi to take down her Facebook page, which was no longer visible Wednesday evening, but not before others took screenshots of the rant and shared it on social media.
Immaculata principal Jean Kline on Wednesday distanced her school from Jannuzzi’s comments and said that “through an investigation, we have determined that the information posted on this social media page has not been reflected in the curriculum content of the classes she teaches.”
In her statement, Kline said the school “takes this situation very seriously.”
“We are dedicated to creating a school environment that promotes mutual respect and provides a challenging academic program, rooted in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.”
It remains to be seen whether the school’s response will allay reaction by alumni, some of whom remember losing a gay classmate to suicide.
Former Real Housewives cast member Greg Bennett, who graduated from Immaculata in 2004 and who had Jannuzzi as a teacher his senior year, shared the screenshot of Jannuzzi’s post on his Twitter account, asking his 165,000 followers to sign a petition addressed to school administrators calling “for action to be taken and hate speech to stop at Immaculata.”
“I don’t think that she should influence the minds of students on a daily basis,” Bennett said Wednesday, calling attention to other posts by Jannuzzi on her Facebook page that called for “closing the borders.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Sarandon, who graduated from Edison High School, shared a letter written by her nephew, Scott Lyons, to Jannuzzi, his former teacher at the high school.
“You have a responsibility as a teacher to lead by example and the words that you have been throwing out there are detrimental to the well being and health of the youth that you inspire,” Lyons, who has an adopted son with his husband, writes. “I am certain that the pope himself would take issue with your extreme point of view on homosexuality.”
In a Facebook post with more than 4,000 likes, Sarandon wrote, “High school is a tough time anyway … students don’t need teachers making it even more difficult.”
The online petition had nearly 550 signatures as of Thursday morning with comments from alumni such as Susan Keith of New York, who recalled one of her classmates at Immaculata committing suicide because he was teased for being gay.
“I left this school after being told in religion class I must live a celibate single life if I had gay ‘feelings,’ ” writes Doug Bednarczyk of Marlton, N.J. “Around the same time, a gay classmate committed suicide.”
Lucas Bernardo, of Philadelphia, says he was 16 when he took a class taught by Jannuzzi.
“I didn’t feel comfortable in her class with the negative messages about gay and lesbian people she was preaching to us,” he writes. “I remember arguing with her about such topics and being in total disbelief that such blatant hate could be taught in a religion class.”
Bennett, who now lives in San Francisco, said he has mostly positive memories of Immaculata. While he remembers Jannuzzi being “obsessed” with Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ, he doesn’t recall her ever making anti-gay remarks.
Bennett said he came out as gay in college and is no longer a practicing Catholic.
“Kids today are brought up with Glee and gay characters everywhere. I didn’t really have that,” he said. “It could be that her students would see through this and think she is just a crazy person. Either way, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going into a class taught by someone who so blatantly thinks who I am is defective in some way.”
The petition, which is addressed to Kline, Sister Anne Brigid Gallagher, the assistant principal, John Hack, director of alumni relations, and Monsignor Seamus Brennan, parish pastor of Immaculate Conception, calls the teacher’s postings “unacceptable and reprehensible.
“This kind of behavior needs to be stopped. There is a line between believing in God and professing anti-homosexual sentiment to the public. We should be preaching the good word of the Lord, not creating a hostile and combative environment.”
Kline said the school is reviewing its social media policy for employees.
“It is the policy of the school that all faculty and staff demonstrate respect and sensitivity to all people at all times and to avoid offending any individuals or groups,” Kline said.
The statement does not say whether the teacher will be reprimanded.
Like many pioneering TV series, ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat,” a sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family running a Western-themed chophouse in Orlando, Florida, débuted to impossibly high expectations, hand-wringing, and prickly waves of preëmptive backlash. In an unusual twist, this hazing came from the man whose life the show was based on.
If “Fresh Off the Boat” emphasizes family warmth, it’s complicated by sharp details.
In an essay in New York, Eddie Huang, the celebrity chef, Vice TV host, and author of the memoir “Fresh Off the Boat,” merrily trash-talked his own collaborators, including a Chinese-American producer, whom he called an “Uncle Chan,” and the showrunner, Nahnatchka Khan, an Iranian-American. “What did you buy my book for?” Huang yelled, frustrated that the show had bowdlerized his story, which included whippings by his father, an immigrant restaurant owner. “Just make A Chink’s Life . . . With Free Wonton Soup or Soda.” Thousands of words in, Huang tossed out a few lines of praise, but the impression he left wasn’t great—if he saw his sitcom as a sellout, who were viewers to disagree?
At the heart of this rant was the question of what makes TV bold: Huang wanted something pungent, like an FX anti-hero dramedy, or like the nineties sitcom “Married with Children,” the type of show that would underline (and maybe glamorize) his violent youth, his charismatic dick of a dad, and the roots of Huang’s own flamboyant persona. That desire wasn’t sheerly egotistical: Huang was eager to push back at the cliché of Asian men as passive, genitally cheated nerds (“the eunuch who can count,” as he puts it in the book)—a Long Duk Dong stereotype still visible on shows like CBS’s “2 Broke Girls.” Huang wanted “Fresh Off the Boat” to “go hard,” like his nineties hip-hop heroes. In the process, he was claiming TV’s own bad-boy role, the provocateur who shoves authenticity down the throat of The Man. Think Roseanne; think Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle.
In reality, of course, the bad-boy provocateur very rarely gets final cut on a network family sitcom—it’s a genre more prone to compromise than a Senate bill. Even the edgiest shows have limits: Al Bundy never hit Peggy, after all. So it’s no surprise that, aesthetically, “Fresh Off the Boat” fits right into ABC’s sweet-tempered slate of comedies, which includes the subtly retrograde “Modern Family,” the wonderful “The Middle,” “The Goldbergs,” “Black-ish”—a smart new show that I’ll get to in a moment—and the unfortunately bland “Cristela.” Like all these shows, “Fresh Off the Boat” is brightly lit, with an A plot and a B plot. The jokes aren’t dirty and nobody gets his butt whipped. The parents—patriotic restaurant-manager dad, Louis (Randall Park), and proudly alienated mom, Jessica (the terrific Constance Wu)—love one another. There’s even a “Wonder Years”-esque voice-over, performed by Huang, and an ensemble of adorable children. It’s a comedy the whole family can watch together—which may be either an insult or a compliment, but is definitely a business plan.
Yet, even in its half-dozen early episodes, those burnt first pancakes of sitcoms, the show has a radical quality, simply because it arrives in a television landscape with few Asian characters, almost none of them protagonists. Khan, the showrunner (who wrote for Seth MacFarlane, and who produced the wicked ABC sitcom “Don’t Trust the B—— in Apartment 23”), is her own sort of provocateur, an expert at slipping rude ideas into polite formats. She uses the Asian-American family to reset TV’s defaults. The characters aren’t the hero’s best friends; they’re not macho cartoons or eye candy, either, as on some cable dramas I could name. This can be an unpleasantly clinical way to talk: it places the critic in the camp of the bean counters, not the gonzo rapscallions. But simply watching people of color having a private conversation, one that’s not primarily about white people, is a huge deal. It changes who the joke is on. “Fresh Off the Boat” is part of a larger movement within television, on shows that include the CW’s “Jane the Virgin” and Fox’s “Empire”—a trend that’s most influential when it creates a hit, not a niche phenomenon.
Reading the book, then watching the show, you get why Huang was frustrated: without a cruel bully for a father, Eddie’s taste for hip-hop feels more superficial—in the book, it’s an abused kid’s catharsis and an identification with black history. But, if the show emphasizes family warmth, that theme is complicated by sharp sociological details: the only black kid in the school calls Eddie a “Chink” and smirks at his hip-hop T-shirt; Jessica grabs every free sample at the supermarket, then gives the employee a hilariously dismissive wave; Louis hires a white host to attract customers (“A nice happy white face, like Bill Pullman,” he explains firmly). There’s no violence, but there are specific immigrant perspectives, shown through multiple lenses.
In one of Khan’s most effective gambits, we see Eddie through his mother’s eyes as often as we see her through his. In the book, Jessica is a brazen, mysterious goad to her son; on the show, she’s a full character, Eddie’s equal in cultural alienation, even if her escape is Stephen King, not the Notorious B.I.G. In one of the most interesting early episodes, mother and son are both drawn to Honey, a trophy wife who lives next door. Eddie sees a hot MILF he can show off to the boys; Jessica sees a kindred spirit who will eat her “stinky tofu” and bond over “Dolores Claiborne”—then pulls away when she realizes that Honey is the town home-wrecker. The show hits every awkward angle of this triangle, including a surreal fantasy sequence in which Eddie, inspired by his hero Ol’ Dirty Bastard, sprays Capri Sun on gyrating video vixens. (His mom intrudes, complaining that he’s wasting juice, while his father offers the women free samples from the restaurant: “Come on, Fly Girls. Try a rib! Tell a friend.”)
In the final scene, at a block party, everyone’s loneliness collides, as Eddie gropes Honey, and Jessica sees her neighbor’s humiliation. Opening her heart to a fellow-outsider, Jessica seizes the karaoke mike to serenade Honey with an awkward, earnest rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” The sequence doesn’t “go hard”; it goes soft, quite deliberately. But somehow it still manages to find strangeness within its sentimentality. “Fresh Off the Boat” is unlikely to dismantle the master’s house. But it opens a door.
ABC’s other new family sitcom, “Black-ish,” created by Kenya Barris and Larry Wilmore (who left to do “The Nightly Show,” on Comedy Central), has had fifteen episodes, giving it more of a chance to grow than “Fresh Off the Boat”—and in that time the series has transformed from hokey formula into one of the goofiest, most reliably enjoyable comedies around. Early on, the show kept aggressively re-stating its thesis: Andre (Dre), a successful adman, is worried that his four kids aren’t black enough. Growing up rich in a white suburb, they don’t remember a time before Obama; Andre Junior is a nerd, not a thug. Andre’s biracial wife, Rainbow, an anesthesiologist, is less concerned about race. Each week, Dre tries to toughen the kids up, terrified that if they don’t get “blacker” he’ll have failed as a father.
The problem with the show, initially, was that Andre himself felt so off-putting—childlike and abrasive, a man-baby in the Homer Simpson mode—that it was hard to buy his marriage or his success, let alone his lessons. Rainbow, played by the fantastic Tracee Ellis Ross, was trapped in the gruesome role of wife-as-mommy, the sighing goody-goody. It’s hard to even remember that version, though, because, once “Black-ish” settled in, it began, like so many smart sitcoms, a quiet reinvention. Andre got more insightful; Rainbow became a glamorous dork with a temper and her own loose-limbed charisma; the kids clicked, too; and Andre’s workplace became a reliably hilarious setting for him to brainstorm about his troubles. It helped that he began to acknowledge his own outsized personality, too, rather than presenting it as interchangeable with authentic urban blackness. “I’m a lot,” Andre says, about his parenting. “If they can get past me, they can get past anything.”
A funny Valentine’s Day episode featured a date night that went downhill—a sitcom chestnut that paid off, miraculously, owing to sharp dialogue and the couple’s great chemistry. Andre and Rainbow sniped over his mispronouncing the word as “Valentimes.” They revisited a childbirth scenario so awkward that the doctor asked her, “You mean he’s actually part of your life? Because plenty of women successfully raise children alone.” They argued over whether or not Andre saw Gene Hackman at a roller rink. (“You think everyone is Gene Hackman!” Rainbow fumes.) In the best tradition of the mainstream sitcom, the show felt both new and familiar, giving the show’s marriage emotional roots.
As these relationships became more organic, “Black-ish” also got looser with its ethnic humor, with plots about Andre competing to be a black Santa Claus (he loses out to a Mexican woman) and microaggressions on a baseball field. When Rainbow notices a gray pubic hair, Andre tells her, “You look distinguished, going all Frederick Douglass down there.” When their daughter dates a French boy, a co-worker of Andre’s says, “I cheated on my husband with a French-Canadian. His Frenchness was so powerful that I forgot he was Canadian.” Andre’s mother tells Rainbow, “You are too hard on the kids. If I didn’t know you were mixed, I’d swear you were Chinese.”
In the show’s most outrageous episode, a ski trip becomes an outlandish parody of Martin Luther King Day. Rainbow throws sardonic air quotes onto “Doctor,” because King had no medical degree; Andre Junior admits that he’s never fully absorbed King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, because “I always kind of zone out when people start to tell me about their dreams.” The jokes overlapped, turning flippant, wild, verging on misfire—an elbow in the ribs of boomer earnestness. In a safe sitcom structure, it was a different kind of risk: inside jokes in an outside voice. ♦
It’s been a full two decades since prime-time television has seen an Asian American family sitcom. But ABC’s new show Fresh Off the Boat, loosely based on celebrity chef Eddie Huang’s memoir, is changing that. Though the very first Asian American family sitcom, Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl, was canceled due to poor ratings and lack of interest back in 1995, Fresh Off the Boat has already stirred up considerable buzz. It’s also a significant moment for many Asian Americans, who have largely been excluded or misrepresented when it comes to the mainstream.
But testing the waters won’t be easy for Fresh Off the Boat. Will the show resonate with a non-Asian audience? Will it manage to undermine stereotypes or end up reinforcing them? Will its jokes be lame?
So we wanted to discuss the series from an Asian American point of view. This week, Slate’s Jennifer Lai will be joined by Phil Yu, creator of the blog Angry Asian Man, along with Asian American female rapper and comedian Awkwafina.
Jennifer Lai: I was so impressed (and shocked!) that this week’s sex talk scene directly came from Huang’s memoir. In this scene, Louis explains to Eddie that the best thing about America is that you can have lots of premarital sex, unlike in Taiwan, where the girls are too conservative. In the memoir, it’s obviously a lot more vulgar—Eddie’s father actually uses the term “sports fucking” to explain how girls in America are willing to have sex for “fun” or “just practice”—but the idea is basically the same.
Phil Yu: That scene certainly busts some stereotypes, and draws a huge difference between the Huang family and my family (and many of my Asian friends’ families too). My parents NEVER talked about it. I cannot even imagine what “the sex talk” with my Korean American dad would look or sound like.
Awkwafina: With a primetime show, there are definitely limits on what we can talk about, especially pertaining to some true but kind-of uncomfortable aspects of growing up in an Asian household. But being sexual is not so much an aspect of growing-up Asian as being slapped with a backscratcher when you’re caught smoking Marlboro menthol lights is.
Lai: It was all pretty unrealistic and ridiculous—what Asian parent, let alone any parent, would approach the sex talk with their 12-year-old son that way? (“Don’t go to Arkansas, they outlawed all the fun stuff.”) But it all just goes back to what Constance Wu has said before—that she doesn’t have to represent every Asian mom ever, and that she shouldn’t have to. While that exchange might be unbelievable to most of us, that conversation actually really happened to Eddie Huang IRL!
Awkwafina: That scene was done strictly for the humor and less for the relatability. I did have the sex talk with my father, and he did tell me to “use a bag” and it was literally the most horrifying moment of my entire life. But this talk didn’t happen until I was 16.
Lai: What did it mean for you guys to see an Asian American dad talking to his son about sex like this?
Yu: This scene is pretty radical. Asian males have a long, storied history of being de-sexualized on screen. We are perceived as not sexy, not having sex, not being sexual, and being clueless about sex. Even coming from Louis, who, up this point in the series, has mostly been the goofy dad character, it’s just refreshing to see an Asian male figure (who has clearly had sex) just trying to have a frank talk about it, as awkward as it plays out. It was also funny and awkward to see little Eddie, the Asian kid, be part of the age-old, time-honored quest to understand sex… and track down porn.
Awkwafina: Eddie is definitely that quintessential kind of horny little kid, and it’s cool to see that portrayed on television as well.
Yu: Can I just say that I was never so clueless that I would mistake a godawful sexual harassment training video for a dirty movie?
Lai: Right? The best part is that all of the kids – not only Eddie—mistake it for a dirty movie. Even with their different backgrounds, all of them are on the same level—in the dark—when it comes to puberty and sex. But do you think Eddie’s sleepover really got him closer to acceptance from the white kids at school?
Yu: Baby steps. That damn kid Brock sabotaged Eddie’s social climb.
Lai: Or did it just make him seem more weird? Jessica did offer pork bone soup to them, right?
Yu: It’s good for hearing.
Lai: I was honestly surprised though, that there weren’t more “Ew! What’s that?” moments at Eddie’s house when they were sleeping over. I don’t think Jessica offered them Hi-C Ecto Coolers like Brock’s mom would have done.
Awkwafina: I remember the first time I brought people over to my grandmother’s house—they definitely judged the way that I lived and how different it was from the way that they lived. But they didn’t say “ew.” It was more of a silent judgment.
It was around that age that I started to appreciate the non-Asian friends who warmly accepted my grandma’s ox-tail soup or steamed red bean buns even though they had never tried them before. This was when I was around 8 or 9-years old, well into high school.
Yu: There was always a fear when other kids came over that they’d think your house or family was weird. The weird decorations, the smell. Maybe that’s why I started hanging out with more Asian kids.
Awkwafina: It was intensely nerve-racking. I had some Asian friends in elementary school, and I remembered feeling like I could relate to them when I first went into their homes, like I understood certain things about them by default.
Lai: When you guys had sleepovers, did you try to make it as “non-Asian” as possible? Did your family order in non-Asian food for dinner?
Yu: Pizza. Pizza all the way.
Awkwafina: YES PIZZA!!
Yu: It was universally accepted. Non-threatening.
Awkwafina: But I guess that’s kind of racist in its own way too… Assuming the white kids who are coming over will love the pizza. Imagine if we went over to someone’s house and they went out of their way to cook chou tofu.
Lai: Good point. My mother once made steamed broccoli, stir-fried chicken, and rice for dinner, and even that seemed totally foreign to my elementary school friends, who couldn’t use chopsticks. On the flip side, what was it like for you guys to sleepover at non-Asian friends’ houses?
Awkwafina: I remember it looking like the house from As Good As It Gets. There was always a difference I felt staying in someone else’s house. It was like a dream world. I remember feeling like “one day, I’m going to live like this.” Cabinets stacked with wholesale Chewy bars and speakers hidden in the ceiling that play light jazz.
Lai: They had so many different types of cereal, tons of candy and snack foods, and juice. Walking into my non-Asian friends’ homes was like an absolute fantasy. It was like walking into every show I’d ever seen on TV.
Yu: Haha. I remember seeing allllll the snacks, “People eat like this?”
Lai: We all experienced a bit of culture shock at sleepovers. I hope we get to see Eddie experience that on the show too.
Awkwafina: I also think that a suburban house in Orlando is always going to be different from a tiny apartment in Queens. I’ve been to some very Americanized Asian households, and it seems like the Huang’s household on TV is rather Americanized.
Lai: How so?
Awkwafina: For instance, the interior of the house doesn’t have any new years decorations or any of the kind of half-assed interior decorating that most Asian moms do. My grandma, for instance, was the most ratchet unnecessary decorator in the world. She was super into the calendars you get for free at the Chinese supermarket, (very obviously) fake plants. She had this whole cabinet filled with little glass things and figurines.
Lai: Same! But my house had a bunch of mirrors and mysterious figurines of old wise Chinese men with beards. What were yours?
Awkwafina: Fat little children riding a radish. Literally like 10 heads in the radish.
Awkwafina: I like the grandmother on the show—she kind of reminds me of the grandma from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. My own grandmother definitely had that old-world “Mao took my house” vibe, but she also watched the Nightly News, OJ, and Court TV on a constant loop.
Mad Men‘s Jay R. Ferguson is set for a lead role in the ABC/ABC Studios untitled Dan Savage comedy pilot.
Written by David Windsor and Casey Johnson loosely based on the life of gay activist and author Dan Savage, the single-camera project revolves around the O’Neals, a seemingly perfect All-American family. When the youngest son comes out of the closet, all the family secrets are revealed and the family proves to be quite typical and not so perfect. Ferguson, will play the father, Pat O’Neal, a good-natured, affable cop with the Chicago police department.
Ferguson’s casting stems from the talent/development deal he signed with ABC Studios in August, following their collaboration last season on the Save The Date pilot.
Ferguson, repped by Paradigm and Wishlab, will next be seen reprising his role as Stan Rizzo in the final episodes of Mad Men.
The Dan Savage pilot is executive produced by Johnson, Windsor, Savage, Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, Dan McDermott and Brian Pines.
1/26/2015 The Hollywood Reporter by Lesley Goldberg
All four pilots hail from ABC Studios.
ABC added to its pilot pickups Monday, adding dramas from established production companies (Shondaland, Fake Empire) and comedies from “It Gets Better” LGBT activist Dan Savage and a half-hour that reteams the stars of National Lampoon’s Vacation.
On the drama side, The Catch hails from Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder executive producers ShondaRhimes and Betsy Beers. Written by JenniferSchur (Hannibal) and exec produced by Shondaland duo Rhimes and Beers, the drama centers on a gutsy female forensic accountant who exposes fraud for a living and has finally found fulfillment both at work and in love until a case comes along that threatens to turn her world upside down.
From ABC Studios, where Shondaland is under a rich overall deal, Julie Anne Robinson will exec produce and direct the pilot. Helen Gregory and Kate Atkinson will co-produce. Should Catch earn a series pickup, Shondaland would have four shows on the broadcast schedule. The production company currently produces ABC’s entire Thursday night lineup, all of which are considered shoo-ins for renewals.
Broad Squad, meanwhile, hails from Fake Empire’s Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz(Gossip Girl) and marks the company’s second project at the network following Astronaut Wives Club. The drama is inspired by true stories and follows the first four women to graduate from Boston’s Police Academy in 1978.
BessWohl (Flightplan) will pen the script and exec produce alongside Savage, Schwartz, Len Goldstein and Kapital Entertainment’s Aaron Kaplan. The drama marks Kaplan’s third pilot pickup of the season, following CBS comedy Life in Pieces and Fox’s untitled Dana Klein half-hour. Alexandra Lyndon will also produce the drama.
On the comedy side, the untitled Savage comedy is a single-camera semi-autobiographical entry based on the LGBT activist/boundary-pushing columnist’s life. It centers on a picture-perfect family that is turned upside down when the youngest son comes out of the closet. What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real. Savage is responsible fororganizing the It Gets Better photo campaign following the passage of Prop. 8 and numerous other anti-gay legislation.
Galavant, Trophy Wife and Don’t Trust the B alum David Windsor and Casey Johnson will pen the script. Savage, Hypomania Content’s Brian Pines and DiBonaventura Pictures Television’s Dan McDermott will produce.
The comedy comes as NBC is poised to launch its Ellen DeGeneres-produced comedy One Big Happy about a single (gay) woman who expands her family with the help of her straight best friend in March and as ABC has found success this season with family comedies about African-Americans (Black-ish) and Asian-Americans (the well-reviewed and upcoming Fresh Off the Boat).
Rounding out the four pilot pickups is Chev& Bev, a single-camera comedy starring Chevy Chase and BeverlyD’Angelo as two baby boomers who are fun, relevant and living a selfish retirement when their world is turned upside down and they are suddenly left to raise their grandchildren.
The comedy, in development for more than a year and with a penalty attached, will be written by Brad Copeland (My Name Is Earl) and exec produced by Kapital Entertainment’s Kaplan (whose pilot haul grows to four). Chase and D’Angelo will star, reuniting the National Lampoon’s Vacation stars. The comedy marks Chase’s first broadcast gig since he exited NBC’s Community.
All four pilots hail from ABC Studios.
The orders bring ABC’s comedy orders to three and dramas to seven.
“Chev & Bev” reunites National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation duo, the Savage show is loosely based on gay columnist’s life
ABC has picked up two new comedy pilots, one that will reunite beloved comedy duo Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, while the other explores the life of sex columnist and activist Dan Savage.
“Chev & Bev” will see Chase and D’Angelo on screen together after a string of “National Lampoon” films including the iconic “Christmas Vacation.” The pair will play retired baby boomers living a “selfish retirement” when they are suddenly left to raise their grandchildren.
The Savage project is loosely based on the background of the syndicated newspaper writer and found of the “It Gets Better” campaign. Currently untitled, the series will follow an idyllic family turned upside down by their youngest son’s coming out as gay.
Both shows are single camera, and both were produced by ABC
On Monday ABC announced the latest additions to its list of pilots that it’s picked up for 2015. Along with a new show from Shonda Rhimes and a TV adaptation of National Lampoon’s Vacation, the network has greenlit a single-camera comedy based on Dan Savage’s young life.
The as-of-yet untitled sitcom will center around a “picture-perfect family” dealing with its youngest son’s coming out, The Hollywood Reporter notes: “What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real.” Savage himself is on-board to produce.
ABC’s pilot will mark Savage’s first venture into network television following a limited run on MTV with two It Gets Better specials and a season of Savage U.
We knew Dan Savage was funny, but we’re hoping his wry wit and balls to the wall attitude (literally) translates to our small screens.
An as-yet-untitled Dan Savage comedy was picked up by ABC and, as The Hollywood Reporter revealed, it will be “a single-camera semi-autobiographical entry based on the LGBT activist/boundary-pushing columnist’s life. It centers on a picture-perfect family that is turned upside down when the youngest son comes out of the closet. What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real.”
Savage once told Outthat he wanted Andy Samberg to play him in the movie version of his life. “My God, have you seen that man’s mouth? His teeth?” Yes, Dan, we have, and we totally agree: It would be perfect casting.
Savage is responsible for co-founding the It Gets Better video campaign with his husband Terry Miller after a spate of high-profile gay gay teen suicides, it’s actually his sex advice column, “Savage Love,” which is his real claim to fame. It is in its 24th year, and his Savage Lovecast, a weekly podcast version with more than 200,000 listeners, is one of the top 50 podcasts on iTunes. His memoir The Kid, about adopting his son, was adapted into a popular staged musical.
But Savage is no stranger to the television format: He and Miller have created It Gets Better specials for MTV as well as hisSavage U, where he visits college campuses and answers dating and sex-related questions. Of course his ABC comedy will have some big competition—with the Ellen DeGeneres-produced NBC comedy, One Big Happy, about a single lesbian set to premiere this March.
He’s been included on Out‘s annual Power List and was most recently featured in last year’s Out100, agreeing to be photographed at San Francisco City Hall on September 11, 2014, as an homage in LGBT icon Harvey Milk. “I don’t play dress-up very often,” he told the magazine, “except when my husband and I go to International Mr. Leather.”
It looks like LGBT activist Dan Savage is making his next move.
The “It Gets Better” founder is slated to be the focus of a semi-autobiographical, single-camera comedy on ABC, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The show, still untitled, will follow the younger years of Savage’s life and the experiences of his family following his decision to come out of the closet.
“What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real,” The Hollywood Reporter notes.
According to Entertainment Weekly, “David Windsor and Casey Johnson will write and executive-produce with Savage, Brian Pines and Dan McDermott.”
Dan Savage, who writes a sex and relationship advice column, is also widely known for his work with the “It Gets Better” project, a campaign that aims to help queer youth understand that their circumstances will get better and cultivate change throughout the world in terms of LGBT tolerance. He also runs a weekly podcast focused on love and sex advice called “Savage Lovecast.”
