Friday, April 13, 2007

MTV Redux - New Networks

In 1981 a few of us ventured into the land of MTV, The Movie Channel, Nickelodeon as part of a company called Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company. Over the past year many of those executives who spent the last 25 years building that company and lauching shows such as Spongebob SquarePants, Rugrats and networks such as NickJr, NickatNite have recently left to form a new company called New Networks. The plan is to have 101 internet channels of special interest. Herb Scannell, former, President of Nickelodeon and Fred Seibert, former head of Hanna Barbera and CEO of Frederator.com have teamed up.

Herb Scannell and I worked closely together at the Movie Channel including teaming up on the Star Wars "Robot Giveaway". Fred was learning his way around creative areas of on air promotions. This New Network is going to an interesting laborator to watch.

Leatherheads starring - George Clooney, Renee ZellWeger and Me

Well not exactly. The phone rang a few days ago. The person on the other end of the line said in her "southern accent", "I am calling from George Clooney's production company about Leatherheads, a 1920's football movie. Will your schedule allow you to be a paid extra in our film over the next few weeks.". I said yes and then she spent the next 10 minutes explaining the role and with a list of everything I needed to bring.

She explained "We will be filming in an older football stadium in Charlotte called Memorial Stadium. Your part will be to be a fan in the stands. There may be closeups and ther shots so you need to bring and where the same clothes for those days."

Filming starts on Monday, April 16th for these scenes. This is the first time I have been on a movie set running multiple days. A close friend of mine was an extra recently in the Ricky Bobby movie with Will Ferrell filmed here and was in the movie for about 10 seconds at the bar. I know my years of a Knicks, Rangers, Giants and Carolina Panther fan will now be paying off.

A white dress shirt
A dark tie
A Fedora (hat)
Dark Pants
Plenty of water
Books and other things to occupy my time.


I am looking forward to this mini-adventure.