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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
How did you figure this would make a good reality show?
One of the mantras I like to preach, as silly as it may sound, is that reality shows at their best can be documentaries for the masses. They can be something that presents real-life situations in a way that they're entertaining enough to draw a big audience. Now, you can't do the kind of depth that you can with "Devil's Playground," but you can still explore topics that are really interesting and provocative. So I called Daniel Laikind and Steven Cantor, the producers of "Devil's Playground," and said, "Hey, I have this idea. I think we can do this right." They were a little bit hesitant because reality shows have a certain connotation, but after one long phone conversation, they saw that what I wanted to do with it was respectful and provocative but not insulting. We went about quickly developing a show that was based on that, took it out in two days of pitches, and instantly it was sold to UPN.
What were the surprises along the way in pulling the show together?
There were several different surprises. The first surprise for us was the initial strongly negative reaction that people had to the announcement of the show. Because the thought of doing a show that was disrespectful to the Amish -- I know this sounds strange, but it had not even occurred to us. We had always intended to do something that would be respectful.
The second surprise was the strong reaction the city kids had to the Amish kids and how harsh they were at the start. But if you look at how tourists treat Amish people when they're in Amish country, they don't look at them as people. They often look at them as objects. The reason we chose not to soften that and really chose to present that in all of its rawness, even though it's uncomfortable, is that it forces people to look at their behavior and the level of tolerance that they have. I think it's fascinating to see people being very critical of that aspect of the show.
People have been critical of showing how negative the city kids are to the Amish?
Yeah, I've read a lot of that. To my mind, we would've been highly irresponsible had we either coddled them and only put them in there with people who would pussyfoot around them, because that's not what the city's like, or if we'd toned down how the city kids were treating them. We felt it was important to put it all out there.
But the third surprise, and the most pleasant one of the whole experience, is, even though the Amish are people who have never seen an escalator or a parking meter or an avocado, they will break out with philosophical comments about life and priorities that are so wise and so thought-provoking. They place an importance on family, community and faith, and that's something, for those of us who are worried about when we're going to get a bigger car or a big promotion, that makes all of us look at our priorities. That's one of the messages that I really hope comes out of people watching the entire arc of the show, because that's something that's consistent throughout it.
