Word: nelsons
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...YORK John Dunne, a former Republican legislator who helped devise the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the mandatory-sentencing legislation promulgated in the 1970s by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, is lobbying to end them. "This was a good idea 25 years ago, but the sad experience is that it has not had an effect," says Dunne, who also served in the Bush Administration. "Behind closed doors, virtually everyone will say these drug laws are not working, but they cannot say that publicly...
...these so-called shockumentaries. It's not just Fox, which has ruled the genre, but also ABC, NBC, UPN and even PBS (Nova has a four-parter called Escape! Because Accidents Happen). Most of these shows (except the Nova series) come from four Los Angeles producers: Bruce Nash, Erik Nelson, Brad Lachman and Eric Schotz. They carry out the networks' belief that the only TV young men will watch is extremely violent events shown two or three times in slow motion. When Jerry Springer's "Mom, Will You Marry Me?" begins to bore, and viewers get antsy during the expository...
While Nash has mastered the cinema verite of violence--kids being torn into by pit bulls, head-to-head collisions of tractor trailers, elephant-on-elephant violence--Nelson's company, Termite Art Productions, has focused on grossing people out (though it also makes programs for PBS). His Busted on the Job specials highlight food employees hocking loogies into tacos and an uber-Dilbertian secretary defecating on her boss's chair. Nelson's new Busted Everywhere for Fox is more of the same. He doesn't go along with Nash's excuses about storytelling or moralizing. "We thought it was funny...
...when talking about his new practical-joke show, UPN's RedHanded, Nelson, 43, gets as didactic as Nash. "We're creating a morality play. But the person isn't aware it's a morality play," he explains. "It's Candid Camera meets Seinfeld meets The Truman Show." Meets something really, really stupid...
...child of Mike Darnell, the Fox vice president of specials and alternative programming, who saved the network when it was drowning in failed sitcoms. In 1995, Darnell slotted Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?, after which there was no turning back to Herman's Head. The next year, after seeing Nelson's World's Most Dangerous Animals, he persuaded Lachman to turn out the edgier When Animals Attack for sweeps. Now Darnell comes up with 75% of the ideas for Fox's reality specials, grateful that the phrases world's most and caught on tape aren't copyrighted. Thirty...