For some reason, ideas in Hollywood come in pairs. Two asteroid movies. Two volcano movies. Two "backstage at SNL" shows. Here's another interesting two-fer I spotted when reading the latest casting reports. Both Fox and NBC have comedies in the works that will feature wheelchair-bound leads. Playing Chicken, Fox's pilot, will star Broadway baby Norbert Leo Butz as a "loudmouthed conservative" who is forced to move in with his lefty brother after an accident leaves him disabled. NBC's comedy I'm With Stupid focuses on two guys living in an assisted living facility. Christopher Thornton (pictured), who co-stars with Kevin Daniels in I'm With Stupid, was paralyzed from the waist down after a rock-climbing accident in 1992.Between these two shows and BBC America's Soundproof, which will feature a combination of deaf and hearing actors, it could be a banner year for the representation of people with disabilities on television. Not that you needed a study to tell you this, but SAG released a report a couple of years back on how grossly underrepresented people with disabilities are on TV. Hopefully, at least one of these shows won't suck. Television isn't about diversity. It's about the bottom line. If one of these shows is a hit, you can expect to see 80 odd duplicates. If these shows bomb, it will be forever and a day before you see a main character with a disability again.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-06-2007 @ 1:54PM
Jack said...
"If these shows bomb, it will be forever and a day before you see a main character with a disability again."
I doubt that statement. If the shows fail, it could be because the writing sucks, the acting sucks, it's in a terrible timeslot, etc. The lead's disability will likely be much less a factor in its success or failure.
Isn't House considered disabled because of his leg (not to mention his drug addiction)? Is it different because he's not in a wheelchair? Or because you know he's an actor pretending to be disabled? If so, how do you feel about the Fox show having a Broadway star pretending to be disabled and the NBC show starring a "real" disabled person?
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2-06-2007 @ 2:43PM
Bill said...
Jack, certainly the disabled people won't be the actual reason the shows fail. But executives are an irrational bunch. Pixar made a bunch of well written CGI movies with great voice actors and tremendous attention to detail, and Fox did a great job with Shrek. And all of them made piles of money. So the other studios learn from this that "CGI is in!" and start churning out 15 crappy computer animated movies a year. And when they flop, executives again don't notice the quality of the movie. They decide audiences don't like talking cows.
Most of these guys have no background in entertainment... they're like Alec Baldwin "VP for East Coast Television and Microwave Programming." But they have to justify their huge salaries and eventual giant severance packages.
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2-10-2007 @ 4:39PM
Steve said...
Dan Murphy played the mean bowling alley attendant in "Kingpin" and the meaner wheeler who gave orders to Ben Stiller in "There's Something About Mary". He also played an FBI agent in "Me, Myself & Irene". He is just one of the many disabled actors who have found only limited success on or off screen.
Accessiblesociety.org stated, "While more than 33 percent of SAG's performers with disabilities indicate a reasonable accommodation would help them in their work, 60 percent never ask for an accommodation -- even one so slight as having a cane nearby or asking a producer to face them when they speak." The reason for this, said the group, was because performers "fear employers would be reluctant to hire them."
I was a lead actor in many theatre productions before becoming disabled to the point of using a wheelchair. There are very few roles for actors with disabilities on the live stage.
A major factor in our lack of roles, on or offstage, is the fear that many people still harbor about PWD that they may be in our shoes (on our wheels)one day. It's hard to face the realities of life. It's easy to turn and go the other way when you see a person with a developmental or physical disability approaching in a store. How much easier it is to change the channel, lower the ratings and cause a show to be cancelled.
I hope to see both shows thrive, but I won't hold my breath.
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