EVIL PUPPET MASTERS

Lost has gotten a lot of credit for expanding network executives’ vision of what a prime time television cast should look like. This article from the Detroit News examines the strides that have been made in adding minorities to television shows, while asking the question, is it to “fill a quota” or are these characters given true depth. Quote from Sandra Oh in the article:

“Are they picking the best actors and actresses for the roles or are they saying ‘We gotta get a Chinese guy and a black woman to make this show work?’ ” …

“Because if that’s what the networks are doing, then they might as well keep things lily white because that isn’t real diversity…”

Mentions Lost and Six Degrees in the article.

Doing a little surfing on the ABC.com site to see if they had any new goodies up for the BR shows and I noticed that they have a separate page for the music on Six Degrees. They give a better write up on Jakob Dylan there, plus a link to find the songs on iTunes (though only “Here Comes Now” is available at this time). It looks like they will have audio clips on the site eventually as well.

Cool.

Someone went through a lot of trouble to put together this biography of Jay Hernandez, who plays Carlos in Six Degrees.

Something to add to your “six degrees of JJ Abrams’ nepotism” scoresheet — Jay had a role in the movie Joy Ride, which was written by JJ

Dude. Just DUDE. If you watched last week’s premiere of Six Degrees, then you heard the song “Here Comes Now” by Jakob Dylan, which is the theme song for the show. That song is already up on iTunes.

And, according to this press release, Jakob is going to continue to debut some of his songs on the show. Quotage:

New songs written and recorded by Dylan will also be utilized in the show on a regular basis… The songs will be available on iTunes (http://www.itunes.com) soon after their airings on Six Degrees.

According to “Six Degrees” Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, “I’ve been a huge fan of Jakob’s for years — his music has soul and heart and makes you feel good. I’m thrilled to have this chance to work with and get to know this incredible artist.”

“Stardust Universe” will premiere in tonight’s episode and other songs are in the works and could show up in future episodes. To me, this is just another example of “outside of the box” thinking by both JJ and Jakob. It is standard practice to have artists write songs for movies that are inspired by that movie, thus the plethora of movie soundtracks. In this case, Jakob is writing new music that is inspired by a television show and all that is unique about New York. These songs are in turn debuting on Six Degrees, giving the show an even more symbiotic connection to its viewers.

I just think that’s all kinds of awesome.

Pardon our dust Speaker and I are still tweaking and trying to bring stuff back up to snuff here at the EPM. In the meantime, I am going to do a little blogging to catch you guys up, okey dokey? Also, the feed is not working currently, but we’re working on that as well. Now, let’s get to it.

Stu Zicherman talks about casting in New York, where Six Degrees is being filmed. Snippet from the article:

Above all, Zicherman wants to find actors who “feel like New York people.” He adds, “Every kind of person is walking around the street, and the idea on our show is that at any moment, any of them can walk into your life. We want to find actors that feel unique, that could realistically be part of New York.”

Let’s see if I did this right…