Film Courage: Can you give us examples of a show that you built off of a great character and then one where you started off of a great premise?
Troy DeVolld, Producer/Author: I’ll tell you my favorite from a character. There was a show that Bravo ran for many years called Flipping Out. I loved that show and I was there from the ground. One of the first things I did on the show was I went out and we had lunch with Jeff Lewis who was the star of that show, who is a really interesting guy who has actual OCD, and that was kind of the thing was the show was about him and the people that worked for him and how they deal with him having this very particular manner of doing things that is actually a medically diagnosed thing and about how he tries to bring himself in but sometimes can’t. I thought he was just such an interesting guy that when we did the pilot for the show there were so many times we would turn in a cut of the show and the note would come back like The show is called Flipping Out, he’s not flipping out enough. I was like He’s such a real guy, how do we satisfy the network but we also treat him like a person? There was one scene, and I almost never fight anybody about content, they were kind of underwhelmed by it. There was a scene at the end of the first episode where he goes to see his therapist and the therapist folds this Navajo blanket up into a big square and puts it over his face and says I want you to scream as loud as you can and he says I can’t (under the blanket) and I was just like my heart broke. I was like I feel so bad for him that this is a real thing that he has to deal with every day, that he knows drives people to work with him nuts but he’s like I can’t. I thought that was the most beautiful scene I ever had the opportunity to cut. It was nothing that I asked for, it was something that came back from the field as part of them following him as part of his day. Just still to watch that first episode I get choked up when I see that because I’m like this is a real person having a real life experience who is not being reduced to a cartoon character of himself for the convenience of the storytellers. That show went on progressively, I got the feeling watching it in later seasons, that there was a lot of playing things up for the camera. It might not have been as genuine as it was when I started on that show, we set that tone…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Producer Troy DeVolld, widely regarded as a leading authority on the reality television production process, boasts some four dozen credits spanning THE OSBOURNES to Food Network’s BIG BAD BUDGET BATTLE and bestselling books REALITY TV: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO TELEVISION’S HOTTEST MARKET and AND ANOTHER THING: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO THE TELEVISION NOTES PROCESS. He’s contributed to or been quoted in publications like TIME and NEWSWEEK and been seen on TODAY and SHOWBIZ TONIGHT. He’s a 1996 graduate of Full Sail University and the ninth inductee into its Hall of Fame.
BUY TROY’S BOOK HERE – Reality TV – An Insider’s Guide to TV’s Hottest Market: 2nd Edition
MORE VIDEOS WITH TROY DEVOLLD
CONNECT WITH TROY DEVOLLD
MORE MICHAEL WIESE PRODUCTIONS AUTHORS
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