Benjamin TraversCarter Bays '97 and Craig Thomas '97, co-creators of the television comedy, "How I Met Your Mother" (CBS), sat down with President Michael Roth '78 and nearly 200 Wesleyan alumni at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, Calif. on Jan. 12. What followed was all Wes! In addition to the video below, you can view photos taken during the event in this online Wesleyan Flickr gallery. [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ex0APhXYKo[/youtube] View 11 other videos featuring Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are in the links below: Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl504Uh8HFc Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdT0tXGBm-c Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV4cP6l8JW0 Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7lRQdgQpaw Part 5…
David LowMike White ’92 has created (with actress Laura Dern) a new comedy-drama for HBO, Enlightened, which premiered on HBO in early October. White also wrote all 10 episodes for the first season, and directed two of them. Other directors include co-executive producer Miguel Arteta ’89, Jonathan Demme, Phil Morrison, and Nicole Holofcener. Enlightened tells the story of Amy Jellicoe, played by Dern, a self-destructive executive at a large company who has a hugely dramatic meltdown in her office and is sent to a New Age treatment center in Hawaii, where she swims with sea turtles and heals. She returns to…
Cynthia RockwellJan Eliasberg ’74 of Aquinnah Films directs the episode of N.C.I.S.-Los Angeles that airs on Nov. 8 on CBS at 9 p.m. The episode, entitled “Greed,” marks the second time Eliasberg has been tapped to put her directorial perspective on the dramatic action series featuring a Naval Criminal Investigative squad working in conjunction with local Southern California law enforcement. Eliasberg, a theater major at Wesleyan who earned her graduate degree in directing at the Yale School of Drama and studied in London, says that she enjoyed directing plays by Bertolt Brecht and Shakespeare for “the large-scale themes, examining where the…
Stephen K. Friedman ’91 has been promoted to president of MTV. Since the fall of 2008, he has been general manager, and he will now oversee MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV.com, MTV Hits and MTV Jams. During Friedman’s tenure, MTV has had five consecutive quarters of growth, and launched such successful shows as Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Life as Liz, and the upcoming Teen Wolf. He joined MTV in 1998 and started MTV’s strategic partnerships and public affairs department. As general manager, he launched mtvU, the channel dedicated to college students, in 2004, and helped shape the channel’s Emmy Award-winning…
For three years, Dana Delany ’78 brought a refreshing jolt of energy to ABC’s Desperate Housewives, in which she played the intriguing and conniving Katherine Mayfair. After displaying remarkable chemistry with actor Nathan Fillion on another popular ABC show Castle, she will now star on the same network in her own program, Body of Proof, which premieres on Tuesday, March 29. Delany plays Megan Hunt, a medical examiner who formerly was the first female head of neurosurgery at a prominent U.S. university hospital. Hunt takes on a new career when a car crash leaves her unable to continue performing surgery.…
The cable debut of 9500 Liberty will be Sunday, Sept. 26th, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT) on MTV2, mtvU (MTV’s 24-hour college network), and Tr3s: MTV, Música y Más (formerly MTV Tr3s) as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. The critically acclaimed documentary, 9500 Liberty, is directed by Annabel Park and Eric Byler ’94 and chronicles the social, political, and economic impact of The Immigration Resolution, a law closely resembling Arizona’s SB 1070 that was briefly implemented in a Virginia county in 2008. “The decisions our elected representatives make on immigration reform now will impact our audience for generations,” said Stephen Friedman…
During the Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast on NBC on Aug. 29, several Wesleyan alumni received awards in the top categories: Bruce C. McKenna ’84—Co-Executive Producer, Outstanding Miniseries, The Pacific. The Pacific received 8 Emmy Awards, more than any other program. Matthew Weiner ’87—Executive Producer, Mad Men, Outstanding Drama Series; Writer (with Erin Levy), Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, Mad Men, “Shut the Door. Have a Seat”. Mad Men received 4 Emmy Awards. Bill Wrubel ’85—Co-Executive Producer, Modern Family, Outstanding Comedy Series. Modern Family received 6 Emmy Awards. Awarded August 21, 2010 at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony:…
A streaming video of his talk is now available online here. Note, this is a 270MB video and may take a moment to load in your browser. Quicktime is required to view the video. You also may download the video to your desktop. Bruce McKenna ’84 returned to campus on March 30 to talk about his work on the new HBO mini-series The Pacific, which debuted on March 14 and continues on Sundays at 9 p.m. through May 16. The sprawling show tracks the intertwined real-life journeys of three U.S. Marines—Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge, and John Basilone—across the vast canvas…
Olivia DrakeBruce McKenna ’84 is the lead writer for the HBO series The Pacific. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced this as follow up to Band of Brothers, for which McKenna also wrote. According to a Feb. 28 article in The Los Angeles Times, McKenna accompanied a locations crew to a tiny coral island near Guam known as Peleliu to prepare for the $200M show. A ridge there is laced with hundreds of caves -- undisturbed for more than half a century -- where Japanese troops hid out from U.S. Marines during one of the WWII's deadliest conflicts. "There are still skeletons…