Interviews!

Here are the (long, long) transcriptions from the first two interviews I conducted over break. I deleted some irrelevant asides and interruptions. I also ended each answer before they began to trail off or become redundant. I left out the names just to be safe.

INTERVIEW WITH:
Senior VP Original Movies, Disney Channel

CB: Where did the idea come from? How did it get started?

MH: From the very first day I got here, we were looking to do a musical. The kinds of movies we did were more classic (?) comedies and sports movies and things like that, all things with kids in the lead, but we thought that a real win would be to do a musical with kids driving the picture like they drive all of our others, but we never found it. We got in business with some people at one point and they were going to do more of a broadway musical kind of style, but we didn’t want to do that style of music really, we wanted to do musical stuff that our audience of 6 to 14 year olds would respond to, and not have to sort of try to educate them about the history of broadway. We try not to be too school-like. We’re not PBS. We try to entertain.
So when the producer named Bill Bordin talked to Gary Marsh who’s my boss about doing a story about a high school musical with two kids from different sides of the school getting together to eventually be in it, he presented it as sort of a performance piece, and we’ve done those with, like, Cheetah Girls, which was all performance-based rather than breaking into song, but for this one we decided, well, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to turn it into a real musical, so we hired Kenny Ortega... to direct. So we brought him in and he said ‘well, when I saw this project High School Musical I thought it was going to be a musical, but it’s really not. It’s about a musical.’ He said, ‘I’d like to make a musical,’ and we said ‘well, we’d like to make a musical.’ So, with his help, we went through the script and found the places that were not only performances-- like the karaoke thing at the beginning and the Sharpay and Ryan on-stage stuff-- but also the places where we could actually, legitimately, break into song and use that to push the story forward...

CB: Why do you think it was so successful?

MH: I think first and foremost it was that cast... I think if these had been actors and actresses who were very skilled but didn’t have that extra something that Zac Efron has and that Ashley has, I think it might have been successful, but I don’t think it would have been nearly as successful. The other thing is, I think that it was about something that I think kids responded to, which is, wouldn’t it be great if high school were the kind of place where all the problems could be solved with a song. The kids who watch our shows go to places where they have to go through metal detectors to get into school, they have to go past the drug dealers and they have to deal with the gang members and stuff like that doesn’t take place at East High. You know, East High is an idealized kind of place, so I think that that wish fulfillment aspect of the movie made it popular, and it’s made it popular across the world I think.
I even talked to the Russians: the Russians wanted to do a version of the story, but they said ‘well we don’t have schools like that. We have schools where everybody’s the same. All the ballerinas go to the same school and all the scientists go to the other school’ and I said ‘well suppose you have a guy, a principal, who comes in and says I’m going to start a school where everybody mixes up and he’s the catalyst.’ They said, ‘oh, yeah that would work. There would be a lot of conflict and kids would get to know each other”...

CB: Why do you think there is such a broad appeal?

MH: I think the music has a lot to do with that. I think we really lucked out with the songwriters who we hired to do this. Each individual song, you know, is done by [a different person]. I think two or three are done by the same composers. But they really just hit it out of the park I think. Songs like “Breaking Free,” and in the second one, “You are the Music in Me,” and things like that, I think they had genuine pop appeal, sort of crossed-over...

CB: How do you think HSM has impacted or solidified values in American culture?

MH: Well, I think its hard to say what kind of impact anything has. I think, as Kurt Vonnegut said about his subjects, ‘It’s good propaganda for compassion.’ But I do know that across the country in high schools when they are doing High School Musical, because its something like 15000 different schools that were doing it, that the people who turned out for the auditions were not the usual kids who did it. They turned out but also athletes turned out, kids from across the spectrum turned out, so if that’s the only change that it makes-- that people feel free to try stuff that they haven’t done before-- I think that that’s monumental in terms of what a little entertainment can do.

CB: In general, do you think television should be a positive force in shaping cultural values?

MH: I don’t know. I think it’s a neutral thing. I mean, I think that in terms of shaping values, I don’t know how much impact it really has. I think that if you make stuff that people really love, maybe it makes them more aware of what they love. You know, everybody’s so bombarded with media and television. There’s so many different choices and so many of them are horrible. I suspect that it doesn’t have much of an impact except to sort of... reflect the coursing of the culture. But what we do is sort of a little different, because our stuff is definitely for kids and it doesn’t try and take on the issues... (interrupted)

CB: How does HSM compare to previous Disney Channel Original Movies?

MH: I think its within the realm. I think that without all the movies that went before it I don’t think that we could have succeeded with this, because I think that we’ve created a brand, which is, you know, these are movies that are made specifically for our audience with stars that are their age, that are stories about things in their lives, questions in their lives, identity and ‘who am I?” and things like that. Not a wide range of topics or of issues, but I think that without that 8 years or 9 years of setup, I don’t think that it could have been as big as it turned out to be because I think that it would have been ignored... I think that the other movies helped a lot.

CB: Do you think the solo careers of the stars in HSM are consistent with the feel-good, positive structure of HSM?

MH: They’re all aging themselves up a little bit. Corbin’s music is a little bit harder edged than what we would do, but still very much [within it]. I think that Ashley’s music is a little bit older, you know,more boy-girl stuff than aspirational stuff like in the movies. We don’t begrudge them the fact that they grow up. We just don’t do it on air, particularly. Vanessa, who’s got maybe the best voice of them all, I think she’s still finding her way. And Zac doesn’t have a music deal yet.

CB: Is there anything important that I missed?

MH: One of the things you might think about is that this is a very unusual way for musicals to be written. They are usually written by one composer and one lyricist and workshopped and changed and tested before audiences. We wrote all the songs in a couple of months, and we had to do it so quickly that we had to hand it out to different people. A guy named David Lawrence who does the underscore for High School Musical and High School Musical 2, is wonderful at taking the themes of the various songs and pulling it all together so that it feels like a unified musical but its committee-run.


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INTERVIEW WITH:
Editor-in-Chief, Tiger Beat Magazine

CB: What audience does Tiger Beat cater to?

LC: We cater to 10-14 with an emphasis on a medium age of 12.

CB: Why is this audience important to cater to? Why is this the chosen audience?

LC: I think it’s just an audience that is underrepresented in general that most people cater to, you know, sort of an older audience because they think those are the people that consume media but in turn there is the demographic of 10 to 14 year olds. And they are savvy to media, they are savvy to celebrities, they are savvy to pop culture, and there really isn’t anything out there for them and when Tiger Beat started in 65 it became very clear that this was an audience that wanted to consume this type of media. So we’ve been doing it ever since.

CB: Who are the most popular stars of today?

LC: Right now it’s the Jonas Brothers [who] are becoming hugely popular. They are probably the most popular thing that we are going to see in the past five years, which is when we started back up here in Los Angeles and prior to that it would be, for us, the popularity of *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears, but in terms of nationally popular, it’s a little bit different now because with the internet you have people consuming all kinds of media. So say with NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, those were hugely popular, sort of adults like them, kids like them. Now, young people are perpetuating such popularity with the Jonas Brothers that maybe adults still don’t know who they are, but they are huge for us. They stand to be, I think, potentially bigger than what NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were because I think that more young people are sort of paying attention to the media.

CB: When did the scales tip from High School Musical and Hannah Montana stars?

LC: Well, you know, Miley, I would say, is our second most popular, and then Zac our third. You know, High School Musical has now gone through two movies, so the people who were the core audience became a little bit older and the people who are new to High School Musical are a little bit younger, so the Jonas Brothers have an appeal to younger audiences, but also have that tween and older teen demographic because they’re not a youth-oriented project, per say. Soon enough you won’t have to watch the Disney Channel to see the Jonas Brothers. They are getting airplay on KIIS [LA’s pop radio station]. They are sort of transcending. You know, you weren’t hearing High School Musical songs on, like, KIIS or the big major market radio stations. So, I’d say it changed, really, within the past six months. But Miley is a really close second. And I think the reason why Miley isn’t on par with the Jonas Brothers is just because they’re boys and we cater 99% to girls, and they like boys better. But we have seen a lot more female cover celebrities also in the past five years than we’ve seen in a long time, with, like Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, Aly & AJ, Emily Osment, now Selena Gomez is coming up...

CB: What makes the Jonas Brothers different?

LC: They’ve got a really catchy sound, which first and foremost is really important, but they’ve also got a band de lour (?) and generally, if you are looking at the big picture, like over time, bands are always going to be more popular than a TV show or movie star. Because, like I said they can have a wide variety of audience. You don’t have to watch the TV, you could be anywhere listening to the group or what have you. I think with the Jonas Brothers, their sound’s just really catchy, but also they are three cute boys. The slightly older teens might be attracted to the fact that they are sort of hip and cool, but the younger teens are liking the fact that they’re cute and they’re message is very positive and they’re not too edgy, so they aren’t edging out a certain population. They’re really mainstream, so when you look at if something’s going to be hugely popular with the young people it really has to be very clean, not mature... Their whole thing is wearing their purity rings and everything... When you’re kids, you have to sort of gauge what your parents allow you to consume so that, I think, perpetuates them. That’s the same thing with NSYNC, the same thing with Backstreet Boys, the same thing with Britney. But, in terms of the Jonas Brothers, I think its just sort of the right time as well because their hasn’t been a huge band since the late 90s for this demographic, so they were ready.

CB: Let’s back up a bit. Why do you think High School Musical found so much success?

LC: I think its the same thing with High School Musical is that (pause) there was this time where maybe the popular music is a little bit more hip hop and rap-oriented... and when you have that, that sort of automatically pushes the demo higher I think, because their videos are more risqué, their lyrics are more risqué, you know the whole thing, their whole image is a lot more mature. So I think that, like I said, there really wasn’t something out there for them to consume, that they were allowed to, that they didn’t have to hide. It came along-- It’s the same thing as Grease, sort of all-American, mainstream clean music that was catchy but also had a positive message. The feedback I got from a lot of readers is that they actually really did relate to a character, be it the character who felt popular but didn’t know which way to go, or the person who didn’t fit in. I really think that they did a very good job of writing that movie even though it was written for kids. They did a very good job of sort of hitting what you are going through at that period, so they just nailed it. And the time was right. It just spread like wildfire. And since they were allowed to consume it it just kept going and going and going. And High School Musical I think saw the popularity with the first run and maybe didn’t so much with the second run, but again the stars are getting older and you are seeing a little bit more of their personal lives. That maybe could have some effect on why maybe the success didn’t last as long for them. And the fact that the Jonas Brothers are coming up. There isn’t room for having too many of the hugest acts. There always has to be a latter.

CB: Hannah Montana? Same reason for success?

LC: Same reason. The thing with I think both Miley and the Jonas Brothers that have and will really help them is that they are both really fan friendly and have used the media. The Jonas Brothers actually cultivated a myspace forum and presence well before they had ever released their second album, which was with Hollywood Records. So they already had a huge audience, which is sort of unusual. I think that if you sit down with them, and you see their presence online and everything, they seem normal. They seem funny, they seem cute and endearing. So they had already cultivated that. And the same thing with Miley: when you hear her talk or when see her, she feels really tangible. And I think that’s what helps her is that the girls feel like they both want to be her best friend, but want to be her, so both of those things with the younger stars is just really helpful. And Miley, you know, she’s very self-deprocating, she tells a good story, she has all of those things that really project well in the media. And people pick up on those things.

CB: How do you represent the stars in your magazine? Visually, content-wise?

LC: It depends. We do a little bit everything. We do the silly content of just being sort of dreamy and cute. We do a little bit more of the positive sort of messages, that we talk about, using celebrities to focus on their positive attributes or how they deal with the life phases you are going through at twelve-years-old, like if you are not feeling very self confident or maybe you don’t have enough money to buy clothes, then we’ll highlight somebody like Selena Gomez or Ashlee Simpson who like to shop at thrift stores. So we try to make the reader feel as normal as possible using messages from the celebrities, who granted, have a superhuman life that is not relatable on so many levels, but on certain levels they are. You know they did at one point, even before they became famous, go through like everything that the kids have gone through, so for us, we don’t deal with the scandalous side. We don’t talk about drugs. We don’t talk about smoking. We don’t talk about sex. I mean, that stuff can and will be handled by others. We don’t need to do that. We really focus, as I said, on trying to get positive messages out there, but without being too heavy-handed because I think they really do listen to and absorb this media in a way that sort of affects them...

CB: How do you portray the boys differently than the girls?

LC: We will talk some style stuff from the girls or we will talk some beauty stuff. We don’t handle a lot of style or beauty. If we do beauty the girl is usually talking about how it’s nice to just wear lip gloss and mascara. You know what I mean? Because they’re not really allowed to wear make-up. But for the boys... it’s really focused on, like, Corbin doing his zero gravity thing-- He actually went up in a zero gravity plane, so we have a first person talking about how cool it is to learn about science, because that’s important to him. The same thing-- how they deal with, even a broken heart or whatever. I guess they are treated differently because you can’t really pose the girls; we don’t say how beautiful they are and how much you want to be like them. But we do talk about the guys looks more, we build up their looks more than we talk about how gorgeous the girls are.

CB: How does Tiger Beat solidify cultural values and ideals, even if they aren’t the most realistic?

There is definitely a fantasy world that you live in when you dive into a magazine that’s all celebrity. Regardless of whether the intent is there, everybody builds up celebrities as if they have perfect lives or what have you. You’re sort of exposed to that [other] side, exposed to those elements in your life at all times, so its sort of nice to be able to not have to deal with that when you are consuming this. Yeah, you know, there are always messages, I can only speak for us, in terms of, you know, not giving up, or following your dreams, or words of encouragement or words of self confidence and what have you. However, I don’t think we explicitly let on that these steps will make you a star. It’s more like, in your everyday world. Like if you are having a bad day, or you’ve got your heart broken or somebody tells you you can’t do something, you know, you can. And, you know, it’s sort of those words of encouragement, even if its through a magazine, even if its just a small percentage of people, internalize it and it can affect them.