Which lines of dialog from Reality Rehab were taken verbatim or paraphrased from real quotes on actual reality TV shows (or were based on quotes producers or network executives have said on air or in the press)? Find out on pages 28, 42, 100, 101, 169, 191, 239, 249, 250, 252 and 253 of Reality Bites Back!
WATCH THE TRAILER:
STOCK CHARACTERS SPEAK: (New webisodes will appear every few days in early November, one for each Reality Rehab cast character.)
WATCH WEBISODE #1 (Nov. 1): The Desperate Bachelorette:
WATCH WEBISODE #2 (Nov. 3):The Angry Black Woman
WATCH WEBISODE #3 (Nov. 4): The “Real” Housewife
WATCH WEBISODE #4 (Nov. 5): The Top Model
WATCH WEBISODE #5 (Nov. 8): The Slutty Bitch
WATCH WEBISODE #6 (Nov. 8): The Douchebag Dude
WATCH WEBISODE 7: The Gangsta Guy (series conclusion) :
FULL-LENGTH FEATURE: 24-MIN REALITY REHAB EPISODE: (Stay tuned — the full feature episode will be uploaded early in November.)
JENNIFER L. POZNER(“Dr Jenn”; Executive Producer) is the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, and the producer and cowriter of this Reality Rehab project. She is founder and Executive Director of Women In Media & News and editor of WIMN’s Voices. A widelypublishedjournalist who freelances for corporate and independent print and broadcast outlets, Jennifer is also a noted lecturer on women, media, politics and pop culture. Jennifer has appeared as a media commentator on NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News Now, GRITtv, Democracy Now!, National Public Radio, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She has served as an adviser for and has been featured in several documentary films, includingI Was a Teenage Feminist and Miss Representation. Jenn is extremely indebted to and impressed by the entire Reality Rehab team, who worked entirely for free to pull this indy project together. This is her first time writing and producing a video project…she hopes you enjoy it! (Tell her what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.)
CECILIA LEDERER(“Desperate Bachelorette”) has been writing and performing comedy in New York City since 2006. She appears at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in improv and sketch, has done stand up at Caroline’s among other venues, and works for Comedy Central’sThe Colbert Report. She graduated from Williams College with a BA in English Literature and Film. She she is currently developing a screen play about Western culture’s virulent strain of celebrities.
BOB KULHAN (“Douchebag Dude”) is a founding company member of Baby Wants Candy and has performed for The Second City & TUTA Theatre Company. In addition, he has created several wildly popular one-man shows including: “Bing Faithful’s Very Merry Nondenominational Holiday Special†and “Shecky Kulhan: Theater of the Mind” & “Shecky Kulhan: Amuse-Bouche.” Please, if you have any decency whatsoever, go to www.BobKulhan.com and buy his upcoming holiday song “Christmas Hot Pants!†(to be released December 2010).
KENDRA LEIGH LANDON (“Top Model”) is the Founder/Executive Director of Abraxas Stage Company and performed in its inaugural production of the experimental rock musical Crazy Head Space. Abraxas is currently working with playwright Stephen Gracia and director Micheal LoPorto in the development of Next!, to be produced in 2011. As a member of Barefoot Theatre Company her credits include: Madeline(Next!), Sandy/Mother/Bobbi/Deb(Israel Horovitz’s New Shorts), Ruthie(North Shore Fish), Ellie/Madonna(Metropolitan Operas) and Rita(Does A Tiger Wear A Necktie?). Other theater credits include: Patricia(Extremities/ RT Productions), Vickie(The Mystery of Attraction/Worth Street Theater Company) and Norma Jean Baker(Miss Golden Dreams/The Actor’s Studio). Film: Osiris Ford, Living And Dining, Christmas With Amy, Beyond the Ladies Room Door, and multiple Raw Impressions, Inc.productions. Television: Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intentand All My Children. Kendra is a graduate of NYU TSOA. She is currently developing her one-woman show, Breathing for a Living, in collaboration with DJ Matt Bailer.
Allison Jones(“Angry Black Woman”) is a Brooklyn-based blogger and advocate for education equality and millennial leadership in public service. After graduating from Haverford College in 2007 with a degree in Sociology and Education, she is currently the External Affairs Manager for Explore Schools, a network of high performing charter schools in Brooklyn. In addition to her passion for education, Allison blogs about millennial leadership, social justice, and social media at allisonj.org. She was selected as a Social Change Leader by Greater Philadelphia Cares and a fellow in the NYU Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Service. Her work has been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, and more. In January Allison and several of her friends from Haverford will launch OnlyUp.org, an online journal on the future of social justice leadership. Allison is a mentor to a high school student through iMentor.org and a board member of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network-NYC Chapter. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
SHELBY KNOX (“Slutty Bitch”) is nationally known as the subject of the Sundance award-winning film, The Education of Shelby Knox, a 2005 documentary chronicling her teenage activism for comprehensive sex education and gay rights in her Southern Baptist community. She travels across the country as an itinerant feminist organizer, doing trainings, workshops and civil disobedience in the name of reproductive justice and sexual health. She is often called upon to provide a youth voice in the national media – she has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and The Dr. Phil Showand in Glamour, Bust, and Seventeen magazines. She’s written for Jezebel, Feministe, RH Reality Check, and the Huffington Post and she blogs regularly at www.shelbyknox.com. She was recently lauded as ‘The Next Gloria Steinem’ by Marie Claire and is one of Forbes 20 Most Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter. Shelby lives in New York City, where she is working on a book about the fourth wave of feminist activism.
WHITNEY MEERS (“Real Housewife”) has been writing, performing and producing comedy for film and stage since 2007. Credits include Comedy Central, Atom.com, Nerdist.com, Sidequesting.com, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, i.O. West, the People’s Improv Theater, the NC Comedy Arts Festival, The Hollywood Fringe Festival and Sketchfest NYC. She’s also a member of New York Women in Film and Television and is the proud owner of a $120,000 piece of paper from Cardozo Law School.
BRIAN MORELAND (“Gangsta Guy”) is a proud member of SAG and AEA. Brian is very excited to be a part of Reality Rehab, the video trailer satire project associated with the book, Reality Bites Back. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, he currently happily calls New York City home. Previous projects Brian has bitten into for TV are: two full seasons on NBC’s American Dreams (with Joey Lawrence and Leann Rimes), Cartoon Network’s 2 Fat Guys Stuck In The Internet, and Las Vegas Ballroom Boot Camp. Theater credits include CATS(Mistoffelees), Westside Story and A Chorus Line, to name a few. A huge thanks to all of this amazing cast and crew that made this project so much fun!
JESSE GARSON (Producer/Editor) has worked in Los Angeles and Houston as a video editor, animation director, and creative developer for games. He has created DVD extras for major motion picture releases like Terminator 3, Shrek the Third, and Monsters vs. Aliens. He established eYE iN tHE hAT pRODUCTIONS to create short works for DVDs, games for the iPhone and the web, and short humorous videos with local improv actors and musicians.
STEPHEN GRACIA (Screenplay, co-writer) is a graduate of Brooklyn College’s MFA Poetry program. His first play, Complete Control, was produced at the DUMBO Theater Exchange in Brooklyn, NY. Subsequent plays include: Subway Series and Fast Food Strategies (Producers Club, Manhattan), Waving and Drowning (DUMBO Theater Exchange), The Hunger Arts (Makor Theatre at the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan), Next (American Theater of Actors, The Sargent Theatre, Manhattan), and A Wig Full of Spiders (Harrogate Theatre and The World’s End Pub, Yorkshire, England, and a staged reading of Mohammad’s Radio (Bleecker Street Theatre.) His poetry has been published in Riverrun, The Brooklyn Review, and Slipstream, and he has read at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and ABC No Rio. He has published Other People in Perfect Cities, a book of poetry and No Art But Theft, a collection of lectures. His short story “Eat Junk, Become Junk” was featured on the “Telling of Tales” website. Stephen also records electronic music under the name Rhythm & Detonation and contributed an original score to a revival of Jeffrey M. Jones’s Crazy Plays at BRIC Studio and original songs to the Off-Broadway production of CJ Thom’s Eightballs at the Lafayette Theatre. Stephen is a member of and serves as Literary Manager for the Barefoot Theatre Company. He is currently working with director Michael LoPorto and producer/actor Kendra Leigh Landon on Next for production by the Abraxas Stage Company in 2011.
MICHAEL LOPORTO(Director) is One Night Only: A Benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS featuring Lea Delaria (The Loews Theatre, New Jersey), the off-Broadway production of CJ Thom’s Eightballs: A Cocaine Comedy (The Lafayette Theatre), the world premier of six of the nine plays that make up Israel Horovitz’s New Shorts featuring Lynn Cohen (The Studio Theatre at Theatre Row Theatres), Tongues by Sam Shepard (BRIC Studio), Fiddler On The Roof in 2004, South Pacific in 2005, Grease in 2007, and Annie Get Your Gun in 2010 (all at Park Playhouse in Albany, NY), the 35th anniversary production of The Indian Wants The Bronx by Israel Horovitz(Gloucester Stage Company), the first New York revival of Does A Tiger Wear A Necktie? by Don Peterson (The Looking Glass Theatre), and the world premier of Complete Control (DUMBO Theatre eXchange), the workshop production of Next! (The American Theatre of Actors), a production of an abridged version of The Hunger Arts (The 92nd Street Y), and a staged reading of Mohammad’s Radio (Bleecker Street Theatre), all written by Stephen Gracia. Michael is a founding member and the Associate Director of Barefoot Theatre Company and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
SANFORD HOHAUSER (Photography) is an accomplished photographer whose subject matter focuses on urban and found art, New York subculture, and natural landscapes. Hohauser is shipping and sales manager for the progressive media watchdog group FAIR, and provides video and archival support as a volunteer for Women In Media & News.
PHOTO GALLERY: BEHIND THE SCENES AT REALITY REHAB
“Hello: My Name Is…Slutty Bitch”:
One final costume check and… good to go:
Director Michael LoPorto gives notes as the Reality Rehab cast takes a last look at their script:
Therese preps a few test shots:
Michael and Jenn compare notes as the actors shoot their Confessional Cam scenes:
Allison films her Confessional:
Cecilia films her Confessional:
Michael enjoys Bob’s confessional:
Whitney gets Frankenbitten:
Everything you see on the Reality Rehab set is exactly what exists every day in The Black Apartment… no more, no less:
This neon Peep Show brought to you by the message: “Beauty is a byproduct of intelligence.”
What, you don’t have a marble phallus on *your* coffee table?
Not your momma’s chatchkes:
Filmmaker Therese feels Jenn up. (No, wait, this isn’t a REAL reality show. Actually, she was just adjusting her clip-on mic.)
THE BLACK APARTMENT: Photographs courtesy of the apartment.
CINDY GALLOP‘s background is brandbuilding, marketing and advertising – she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. She is the founder and CEO of www.IfWeRanTheWorld.com, a radically simple web platform designed to help change the world one microaction at a time, which launched in beta with a demo at TED 2010, and of www.makelovenotporn.com, launched at TED 2009. She acts as board advisor to a number of tech startups and consults, describing her consultancy approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’ Cindy shares Jennifer’s concern about the pervasive sociocultural influence of the type of role models that reality TV provides, and is delighted to support this project.
Larger versions of the following photos are available here and here.
Where the magic happened…
Where Dr. Jenn taught the Reality Rehab cast that “Spitting on someone is not an appropriate greeting,” and “You do not have to sob uncontrollably if someone you just met doesn’t propose marriage.”
Is that a gold-plated Gucci chainsaw, and taxidermy? Why, yes…yes it is…
This daybed was the perfect location for Reality Rehab’s “Confessional Cam”:
Making reading sexy again (also, where Douchebag Dude and Gangsta Guy beat each other up).
What happened after Top Model said she would let her uncomfortable heels act as art from now on? This:
“Mmmmmmm… tastes like wig.” — Douchebag Dude after making out with Desperate Bachelorette in this bathtub:
KENDRA LEIGH LANDON
STEPHEN GRACIA
