Word: dreyfuses
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There aren't many times when network execs are so open to out-of-the-box ideas, and so Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who has spent the past four years raising her kids and living on fat Seinfeld royalties, is jumping in with hers. "It's not like I was dying to leap back into this," she says. "I was just excited by this idea." Her new sitcom, Watching Ellie, which debuts on NBC at the end of next month, is innovation packed. In addition to nixing the laugh track, using a single camera that follows the characters around, inserting songs...
...watch it and we go, 'God, it feels like a cable show,'" says Louis-Dreyfus' husband and Ellie creator Brad Hall. He means that in a good way. Not, as he says, like "God, it feels like a local public-access show." Says Louis-Dreyfus: "It's a reinvention of storytelling, which a lot of the HBO shows are. [NBC entertainment president] Jeff Zucker realizes that he needs to do something different or else he's out of a job." Zucker was so enthusiastic about breaking the rules that he originally suggested not having commercials interrupt the show. Then...
...lower expectations and buy time to let their show develop as it finds an audience, Louis-Dreyfus and Hall have made some unusual demands. They have asked to have their show be a midseason replacement. They have also offered to sell the network only 15 episodes a year instead of pushing for the full 22-show order most series crave. And they have requested, perhaps unsuccessfully (the final scheduling is still pending), that NBC put them on lower-key Tuesday night instead of in the middle of Thursday's "Must See TV" lineup, a spot so warm and cozy that...
...Hall, 43, and Louis-Dreyfus, 40, insisted on the 15-episode deal because they don't want to take any more time away from their kids - their nine-year-old will have his own office on the set to do his homework, while the four-year-old will get a playroom. They're the kind of family that have an electric car and are building solar panels on the roof of their house to provide all the electricity. Vegas is taking bets on the method the children will use to rebel against their parents...
...Northwestern, have set strict ground rules. They don't talk about work in front of their kids, they have a screening service block all nonemergency calls after 6 p.m., and they don't ferry work-related messages to each other. "That's about it," says Hall, looking at Louis-Dreyfus over their cappuccinos at Santa Monica's Ivy at the Shore. "Oh, and the sex has ended...