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By Suzanne

Interview with Howie Mandel of "Mobbed" on FOX 3/29/11.

FBC PUBLICITY: The Mobbed Howie Mandel Call
March 29, 2011/9:15 p.m. PDT

SPEAKERS
Kim Kurland-Host
Howie Mandel – Executive Producer, Host - MOBBED

PRESENTATION
Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Mobbed with Howie Mandel. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to our host from Fox Publicity, Miss Kim Kurland. Please go ahead.

K. Kurland Hi, everyone, I just wanted to thank you for taking part in this call today with Howie. He is going to be talking, obviously, about our special, Mobbed, that’s airing on Thursday night at 9:00 after American Idol. If anybody has any followup questions after the call, feel free to email me. My email address is Kim.Kurland@fox.com. I think we can take our first question.

Moderator Great. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from Daedrian McNaughton from Premiere Guide Miami. Please go ahead.

D. McNaughton Hi, Howie, thanks for taking the call today. How are you?

H. Mandel I’m doing good and should I need any backup plans for my career, it’s a pleasure meeting you.

D. McNaughton Thanks. Can you make me laugh?

H. Mandel Well, if I can’t then your magazine, I would imagine, has other avenues.

D. McNaughton My first question is, Mobbed sounds like something where you’re bound to get …. Can you share with us what it is about?

H. Mandel Mobbed is based on an idea that’s been popular for the last 5 years online, a flash mob. They’ve been around for what seems to be a long time, and for those that don’t know what a flash mob is, it is the spontaneous eruption of song and dance by strangers in a very public place, whether it’s a mall or a train station. Billions of people have been downloading these, and I thought how can we bring this to television and why is it more than just this two-minute song and dance. Then I thought, what if we have to convey a private message. We all have something in our lives that we need to share, whether it’s telling your boss to take this job and shove it, whether it’s proposing to a loved one or telling someone you’re pregnant, and then what if we took this very private message and, unbeknownst to the receiver of this message, took them into a very public area and relayed this very private message in the most public, extravagant way possible with a thousand people in song and dance? How would they react? How would we pull this off? How can we do this?

This is the biggest undertaking, production wise, of something without a net. There’s no script. We don’t know how it will turn out. It’s a great blending of hidden camera, hidden agenda, and musical theater all in one. It’s like Glee meets hidden camera meets Jerry Springer. It’s got every emotion possible from joy, exuberance, to drama, to awkwardness, to thrills. It’s just the most exciting television I’ve ever been part of.

D. McNaughton Was there anyone who was not pleased or really surprised?

H. Mandel Well, everybody is incredibly surprised, and you have to watch it. I don’t want to give it away. This is a one-time special, and the idea that you want to wait and see whether we’re able to pull it off and how the person would react is the seed of the show.

D. McNaughton You’ve been in showbiz for a very, very long time. Do you have any plans of retiring anytime soon?

H. Mandel And this comes from Career magazine? You’re asking me if I’m going to retire? No, unless it’s forced. As long as people will allow me to do what it is that I want to do, and this is exactly what I want to do, and FOX was nice enough to allow us to do this. This is a huge undertaking for any network to give you this kind of money to produce something without a net. So, no, I have no plans for retirement.

D. McNaughton Finally, if I may, can you share with us a little bit on how your ongoing struggle with OCD has shaped your life and career?

H. Mandel Just a little bit on how my life was shaped? Sure a little bit. I deal with it each and every day. After this call, I’m on my way to therapy, and I’m medicated as we speak, and was medicated for this entire production. So, this has shaped everything I do, but I don’t know how to answer it any further or deeper than that. But, this was certainly a joy to work on, and I hope that everybody stays tuned after Idol and watches the show. Obviously, that’s a great vote of confidence from FOX to give me such a cherry spot on the schedule.

D. McNaughton Well, thank you very much, Howie, and all the best.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Alice Chapman Newgen from The Times Courier. Please go ahead.

A. Newgen Hi, Howie, thanks so much for talking to us today.

H. Mandel You’re welcome.

A. Newgen I have a couple questions, and the first one is: When the show airs for the first time, what are you going to be doing? Are you going to be sitting at home watching it with family and friends? And what’s going to be going through your mind at that time?

H. Mandel I hope everybody’s watching. I will not be with anybody. I get really nervous when a project, and especially this one, this one was such a triumphant-- just to sell this show was an amazing feat because you actually go in and you say hey I got an idea. I want to choreograph. I want to get the best choreographers. I want to get the best music people. I want to get the finest of everything. I want 26 cameras. I want to light two square blocks, two city blocks. I want cranes. I want everything that you can imagine that the most expensive exclusive television special could have. And then the normal question that a network would ask, “And then what’s going to happen?” and the answer is I don’t know. That’s what’s amazing about this show.

It was the scariest undertaking. I was so thrilled at that moment when they said okay, so thrilled, and it turned out so fantastically. It’s so scary. It’s nail-biting television, and I can’t sit and watch with anybody. I’m just hoping that people tune in and that they love it. I think that there isn’t anybody that there isn’t something in this show for, all ages. It’s fun for the whole family. If you like comedy, there’s great comedy. If you like drama, there’s great drama. If you like emotion, there’s an abundance of emotion. It’s just a great-- but I will not be with anybody. I can’t. I will be in the fetal position in a dark corner somewhere hoping and praying that everybody enjoys it.

A. Newgen Well, after you came up with the idea for the show, what was the next step in your involvement in firming up the format and the details? I’m sure you had to go to the highers up to be to work on it, but did you have a major input with the way the format is on the show?

H. Mandel Absolutely, and that’s part of the show. You’ll see that in the show. You’ll see what was always missing for me on the Internet is, I would see the end result of just a bunch of people dancing, but you don’t see what goes into it. This is-- you’ll see everything, and I’m involved and on camera, along with my whole producing team of choosing someone to prank, for lack of another term, to mob, and then deciding how we’re going to do it. And my input and pushing everybody to their limits, everybody, every department, whether it be music, whether it be the dance department, whether it be the set design department, whether it be the wardrobe department, I’m involved in every facet of it, and you will watch that. You watch the process, which actually adds more drama to it because you see how much is involved and how many people are involved, how many hundreds of people are involved behind the scenes, let alone the thousand people that are dancing. You see that, and we’re building to something that you’re clearly aware we have no idea how it will turn out.

A. Newgen Oh, good luck with the show. Thank you very much.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator Our next question if from the line of Terry Stanley from the LA Times. Please go ahead.

T. Stanley Hello, Howie, how are you?

H. Mandel I’m doing great.

T. Stanley Thank you. So, you’ve described lots of elements that are going into the show. What, no skywriting?

H. Mandel You know what? I would have done skywriting, but it was at night and skywriting at night, it just doesn’t have the same impact.

T. Stanley Got it. Will you talk a little bit, you touched on it just a second ago, will you talk a little or expand a little bit more on the sort of emotional underpinnings of this show, of staging this big reveal for someone in many cases, I think you said most of the key participants are strangers to the folks who are being surprised? So, just talk to me, maybe from your perspective and then from the whole broader perspective about putting on this real optimistic, seems very kind of a cheerleading, do-gooder kind of event for someone. Why would you do such a thing?

H. Mandel Well, it’s not necessarily a cheerleading, do-gooder event. It’s just an intimate, the basic concept was to take something that it is traditionally intimate and making it public and public on steroids. It’s not only, did you do it in front of everybody, but the message is being conveyed along with a thousand strangers. And not only is there a thousand strangers, but there’s a thousand strangers singing and dancing. And not only is there a thousand strangers singing and dancing, but is being recorded and for a television special. So, it goes beyond your wildest dreams.

And the idea, the emotion of it is, you don’t know how somebody’s going to react. You don’t even know -- you’re saying it’s uplifting... we don’t know that for sure. We don’t know whether, even if it’s a proposal, that somebody’s going to say yes. In fact, by choosing the, I’m using the wrong term, but by choosing the victim, we chose somebody that wasn’t cut and dry. We chose, whether it’s a proposal, we wanted somebody with somewhat of a rocky relationship, because we want to see how far we can push it and that’s me. I’m always one that wants to push the envelope. I want it to be a little edgy. I want it to be on the edge. I don’t want to just see, if it’s a proposal, I don’t want to see two people who have been together forever and for sure she’s just going to say yes and this is going to be her dream. I want it to be a little rocky. Maybe this will throw them. Maybe this will not work out the way we would hope. That gives me the nail-biting aspect of the show. It’s not clear-cut how it’s going to end and where it’s going to go to.

By the same token, even if it is a yes on a proposal, then I want to push it even farther and say, “Well, if you say yes are you willing, in a giant musical, to get married right now?” Is somebody that ready to take that plunge? These are all very “dangerous” choices. But, we wanted some danger. We wanted some funny, and before it’s even asked and before we embark on the actual mob, there’s a hidden camera element where we put people through kind of an obstacle course of emotions before we even embark on the mob. So, it was quite an undertaking, quite scary. But, if I feel comfortable then it usually doesn’t entertain me. If I feel like I’m on the edge and it’s somewhat awkward and somewhat uncomfortable, to me, that’s almost good entertainment.

T. Stanley Is there a possibility that this could become a series?

H. Mandel That’s up to the public. Ultimately, I just had this idea to do this special and FOX believed in it so much that, number one, they financed it.
Number two, they scheduled it in a plum spot, and if the audience should decide that they want to tune in or stay tuned in after Idol and watch it, I would imagine there’s a possibility that they could call me and ask me to do more, and I’m available.

T. Stanley Thanks, Howie. Good luck with it.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator Our next question is from the line of Reg Seeton of the thedeadbolt.com. Please go ahead.

R. Seeton Hey, Howie, thanks for taking the call. Can you talk about preparing for the event and some of the things you weren’t expecting to experience?

H. Mandel Well, in preparing for a flash mob, number one, I don’t nor does even the top choreographers in town, know a thousand dancers that are willing to show up. So, the first order of business was how do we accumulate this many people? We want it to look bigger than anything you’ve seen on the Internet, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen on television. So, how do we get these people? So we did things like, Napoleon and Tabitha who are renowned choreographers, made a YouTube video of the choreography and posted it. We were surprised to find that they have this huge international following. We only had 48 hours to put it together. People flew in from Canada just to dance with them, just to be choreographed by Napoleon and Tabitha. We had no idea what would show up and how many people, how big a crowd. Depending on that, that was very loose. It’s not like-- these are not paid performers. These are just people that will show up and be part of it, part of the public. So, that was one.

Number two was: Will the person that this is all meant to give a message to, will that person show up? Anything can happen in that two days, since we decide to do it. They don’t have to show up. And then if they do show up, how will they react? And will they just turn and run away or will they react badly or will this whole thing go south? The last lady was asking me about this very uplifting, well even something that can seem uplifting, like a proposal, can turn very dark. Somebody can be rejected. We can end up with a dance number to no one. You don’t know. And, then how will they react if they do stay? Will you get emotion? Will they become emotional? Will it be given away before? That’s also scary. There’s so many loose ends in this whole production that therein lies our fear. I didn’t sleep for almost a week just trying to put this together.

R. Seeton What is it about surprising people in real life that’s so rewarding to you?

H. Mandel Because I think that’s the only real reality TV there is. I think when people aren’t expecting it, I think it’s the most relatable television there is, because you put yourself in that position. You put yourself in their shoes. How would you react to that? And you’re getting something that’s not scripted, that’s not produced, that’s very real, and I think there’s something fascinating and we’re all fascinated by watching something real, whether that real be uplifting or you’re craning your neck and watching a train wreck off the side of the freeway. That’s what we seem to be drawn to. And that’s what, more than evening comedy, more than a joke, I like… when people, that’s why I like hidden camera. I like-- Allen Funt was my hero. I like seeing how people react in real situations.

R. Seeton Thanks, Howie.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator Our next question is from Simon Applebaum from Tomorrow Will Be. Please go ahead.

S. Applebaum Well, it’s Tomorrow Will Be Televised on … talk radio show. It’s an Internet radio show covers …. Howie, who did you get to coproduce this show with you? Did you talk to the Deal Or No Deal people … or who’s on board with you?

H. Mandel My partners are a company called Angel City Factory who was partners with me and a couple of other people, Three Arts, which is my management company, and Kevin Healy, who I did Howie Do It with, and Alevy, which is my company, are the four partners….and Howard Kitrosser and Darryl Trell, the young guys who originally came up with the concept.

R. Seeton How long did it take—I understand it took like 48 hours for you to gather the people in the flash mob, have them rehearse the number and do it, but how long did it take in terms of figuring these are the people we are going to surprise, or try to surprise, here’s where we’re going to actually physically do the routine and so on and so forth? Give me a sense of timeframe.


H. Mandel About a month. We hired a casting person to put ads in nationally in newspapers, asking people if they had, and various Websites asking people if they had a private message that they wanted help conveying and if they would be interested in doing it in a public way, and we got a lot of responses. In fact, on the show on Thursday night, at the end of the show, I have a call to action which I continue to produce to say if you have an idea or you have a message or a surprise, or you’d like to surprise somebody, or tell somebody, or quit a job or do something, contact us at a certain website. And then we started receiving video tapes and messages and my partners and I, we just screened them all and decide why we believe that this was a good candidate.

R. Seeton I’m assuming that everything so far, that everything was taped in advance. Was there any thought about doing the show live or at least doing the reveal live?

H. Mandel There was no talk of that because at the time when we did the show, there was no air date. If we did some in the future, that would be something to talk about, but at that time, nobody knew how it was going to turn out. So, it’s one thing for FOX to commit this amount of money to produce the show. It’s another thing for them to commit an hour of television to something. Now that they see that we can do it and it does work, who knows, the next time you see it, if we’re lucky enough to do another one, if you would see it live. But at that point, no, we just taped everything.

R. Seeton Howie, thanks very much. Good luck on Thursday.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator Our next question is from Jamie Steinberg from Starry Constellation Magazine. Please go ahead.

J. Steinberg Hi, it’s a pleasure to speak with you, Howie.

H. Mandel Nice to be spoken to.

J. Steinberg I loved the pumpkin you received recently.

H. Mandel Well, thank you, me too.

J. Steinberg I was wondering what makes a good contestant? What about the story pitch made you say we have to do that?

H. Mandel The two things that we looked for is relatability, number one. First of all, to the people that we are going to send the message to, we want them to be somebody that hopefully the audience is vested in and wants to watch and wants to see how they turn out. If you don’t care about the people, number one, then you’re not going to care about the show.

Number two, I wanted their story to be as much as usual and relatable, I wanted it to be unusual. I wanted it to be not just from A to B. I wanted to be able to take some turns, so if you were going to propose, I wanted it to not be, I think I mentioned this before, as smooth a relationship-- I wanted it to be a little rocky. I wanted to play with that rockiness. We do, in the proposal. In this particular couple, there are some trust issues that they’ve been grappling with, so why don’t we just take those trust issues and magnify them and have fun with that. We look for some layers, and we want it to be a little bit complicated and at the same time incredibly relatable and likeable and relatable people.

J. Steinberg You’re a big part of Twitter. Why is that such an important place for you as far as promotion and connecting with your fans?

H. Mandel More than promotion, it keeps me informed. Right now, the people I’m following I’m aware of what’s going on, and the people who are following me are aware of what’s going on, and there’s only 140 characters. I have ADHD. It’s a great way to communicate and not spend too much time on one particular subject, and I’m just a huge fan of Twitter.

J. Steinberg What would you like to say to everybody who is a fan and supporter of you and your work?

H. Mandel Well, keep supporting and keep watching and Thursday night, right after Idol, watch Mobbed.

J. Steinberg Great. Thank you.

H. Mandel Thank you.

Moderator And the last question we have is from Kristyn Clarke of popculturemadness.com. Please go ahead.

K. Clarke Hi, Howie, thank you for taking our call. I’m curious. Is there a story in particular that touched your heart while working on the show?

H. Mandel Yes, and it would be the one that you’re going to see on Thursday night, and I don’t want to give too much away because the whole crux of the show, you know that we’re delivering a message and you know if you’ve been watching the ads at all that it’s a proposal, but I don’t want to give away what was touching and what was emotional and some of the things we did because the surprise element of the show is what makes the audience and you stay tuned to the show. There are moments when I was touched and worried that it was going wrong and going south. Will it even happen? How will she react and can we go forward? Can we go all the way?

I was always, as a producer, I was always concerned with if it goes the wrong way, and there is no wrong way, can we create a train wreck? Can we make good television out of a train wreck? And the answer is yes. So, you don’t know if you’re going to watch something incredibly uplifting or you’re going to watch a phenomenally entertaining train wreck. Nobody really knows what it is, and I don’t want to give too much away.

K. Clarke How much research did you put into the flash mob phenomenon prior to the show?

H. Mandel Well I’m nuts about sitting on the Internet constantly, and I’ve been a fan. The first time I think I saw flash mobs was maybe five years ago, and I’ve been informed since that networks have pitched it numerous times. In fact, they’ve even shot pilots. I don’t know that FOX has, but other networks have shot pilots and it hasn’t really worked out, and I was wondering why 2 billion people are downloading these things or watching these things, or 20 billion people worldwide, we did some research, yet, they can’t make a television show out of it. And I think the missing ingredient was a story. What is the story behind the flash mob? Is there a reason for the flash mob? How do you build the flash mob? And how are people reacting?

It’s not just about-- it’s very passive when you see it online. A bunch of people are dancing in a mall and people just walk by and go, “Oh look, people are dancing,” and they snap a picture. But, what if we got into people’s lives and it was more emotional and there was a reason for it and you watch the people behind the scenes, how much it was at stake even for us as producers to try to build this and put this on. Therein lies about three or four different levels or stories. And that’s what television is. Television is a medium where we can tell a story and that’s what we’ve done using the element of the flash mob.

K. Clarke Of course. And finally, was there ever a time while filming that you were saying to yourself, there’s no way we are going to pull this off?

H. Mandel Yes, in fact, in the midst of it you’ll see me say that. In the midst of the production, yes. And I didn’t sleep for a week. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done, the most emotional thing I’ve ever done, and many times throughout it I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

K. Clarke Best of luck with the show. Thank you.

H. Mandel Thank you.

K. Kurland Are there any more questions?

Moderator There are no additional questions at this time. My apologies. Bill Harris from Sun Media just queued up. Please go ahead.

B. Harris Hey, Howie, how are you doing? I just wanted to ask in terms of your fascination with sort of watching people’s reactions, and I know that has been one of your main go to guys, both as a performer and as the things you like, with Allen Funt, etc, I’m wondering if there are limits to that in your pursuit of that. As long as we’re on a … I remember an episode of the Simpsons years ago when Homer puts police tape all around Ned Flander’s house, and then comes out laughing when Ned thinks his family is dead, and Homer’s laughing going, “That’s why it was so funny because you thought they were dead.” Have there been times in your life, either with standup or with this show or other things, where you’ve thought, “Geez, that’s a little too far. I don’t want to make people that uncomfortable.”

H. Mandel Well, yes is the answer to your question. I think one can go too far. I try not to go too far. Sometimes we make impulsive decisions. The beauty, and also the horror, of doing shows like this and doing what I do is you don’t know how people are going to react. You don’t know what button you’re going to hit. As much as that’s exciting or entertaining, I would be devastated if somebody was hurt by this. Ultimately, my goal is to entertain and especially with a show like this, entertain the whole family. I want kids to sit around. I want the parents to sit around. I want everybody to watch the show.

The answer to your question, one more time, is yes. I don’t intentionally go too far, but when you are dealing with something that is unscripted and you don’t know and it’s not somebody who has been hired, the person that the prank is on is not somebody that has been hired and vetted and they’re not reciting lines and they’re not being produced as it were, you don’t know where you’re going to take them. So, that is always an element of fear and angst in my world. And I have to say as much as people have written in the past that some of the hidden camera pieces I’ve done are mean, you have to also realize that if you saw it, then ultimately these people were on board and signed a release and were more than happy to be part of this. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. But, yes it can go very wrong. It can go bad. That is the excitement of doing the show and in no way do I want to see it go wrong. The Simpsons show, as you’re quoting from, is an animated show, and they can go much farther in animation then we can in real life and by no means would I ever tread that far where somebody thinks that a loved one is gone.

B. Harris And I was not suggesting you do that.

H. Mandel You will never see that on Mobbed.

B. Harris Do you think that, last thing, very quickly, do you think that this is almost a direct correlation to your standup route? Because it would seem to me that this sort of fascination with reaction, that’s what I hear time and again from people who are strong stand up comedians, like where you came from, where you kind of craved that reaction whether it’s good or bad. You love seeing that look in people’s eyes of what’s going on in their heads.

H. Mandel Well, what I do love, I always come back in all the different facets of my career, standup is still very prominent. I do 150 live dates a year, and what I love about it and what I do if you ever come see me live, a lot of it is improvised, and it’s an interaction between me and the audience. So, yes this is an extension. This is like FOX has given me all the tools and the toys that I can’t afford to take on the road and can’t be part of my standup act, and this is my standup act plus Glee plus the reality TV plus hidden camera on steroids.

B. Harris Alright. Thanks, Howie.

Moderator We have no additional questions, please continue.

H. Mandel So then, I just want to say since there are no questions, this is Howie talking, that I just want to thank everybody, number one, for participating in this. This has been such an important project as far as I was concerned. I never dreamed in my wildest dreams, that I wanted to do this, and from the first time I saw a flash mob online, and I never dreamed that I would be given the opportunity. I understand, I’ve been in the business for over 30 years and I understand production, and I understand the amount of money and what it takes to put on a show, and to go to a network with an idea that is virtually insane because this was a huge undertaking and I’m sure a lot of you on the line have seen the show, it’s a huge production. It’s a very expensive undertaking, and to have FOX support me in the sense that this could have fallen apart at any given moment, and they committed to me is just a huge joy and a pinnacle, one of the few pinnacles in my career, to just allow me to do this as a producer and to allow me to put it together. And the fact that once we put it together, and it’s a show that I’m very proud of, to give me this cherry scheduling spot is even another great pat on the back.

Hopefully, you and the press will support me and get as many of your readers out there to see it and just watch it and to enjoy it like I enjoyed producing it. Just enjoy it. I think it’s a great hour of television, and I’m proud to be part of it. I would love to do more but if I never get to do more, I’m so thrilled that I got to do this. That’s it. Thank you. And if you have any further questions, you’ll get in touch with FOX.

Update: FOX has ordered 8 more episodes of the show!

Howie Mandel scores another series, Mobbed on FOX

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