[EARLBNY]

Thanks for the info. He's going to make Chet jealous.

[azure angel]

^ I want to see that

[Amaranto]

It should be fun

[EARLBNY]

I want Chet to hook up with Rachel to create even more drama.

[Impossible Girl]

It's happening!! I'm directing my first episode of television. Prep officially starts Monday #dreamscomingtrue #thankyoulifetime

X

[broken melody]

I'm so proud of Shiri! I'm sure she'll do great

[Impossible Girl]

^ I agree

[azure angel]

Wow, congrats Shiri!

[Impossible Girl]

I love that everyone is happy for her

[EARLBNY]

Thanks for the info. That's going to be the episode that wins best director. Beyond proud.

[-x-Lilac-x-]

Can't wait to see Ioan Gruffudd in Unreal, I really like him.

And congrats to Shiri, that's amazing news. This'll hopefully open more doors for her in the directing world

[Impossible Girl]

^ hopefully

[Amaranto]

thats awesome

[EARLBNY]

I just received some cool UnREAL news via my Google Alerts.

UNREAL: AFTER THE FINAL NECKLACE
Vulture editor Gazelle Emami in conversation with Lifetime’s UnREAL co-creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, cast members Shiri Appleby, Constance Zimmer, B.J. Britt, Craig Bierko, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Josh Kelly and Executive Producer Carol Barbee. Milk Studios (450 West 15th Street). Tickets $30 (includes an hour in the Vulture Lounge with complimentary drinks following the event).

UnREAL: AFTER THE FINAL NECKLACE – Vulture Festival

[Impossible Girl]

thanks for the link!

[QUOTE]The parallel is pointed: Co-creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro spent three years as an associate producer for The Bachelor, and Lifetime and A&E’s co-parent Disney also owns ABC, currently airing the 20th season of The Bachelor. Grantland’s Mark Harris called Unreal “the shrewdest brand extension of the year — the unexpected night bloom of a franchise so smart it’s even figured out how to monetize our contempt for it.”

Unreal combines provocative feminist meta-critique and high melodrama, creating a mise-en-abyme hyperreality that takes the motivations of two categories of women equally seriously: the show’s producers and its contestants. A less intelligent show might have reduced Everlasting’s contestants to ****ty, shameless bimbos and its producers to haggard, sexless nerds, but Unreal’s complexity falsifies such a binary. Unreal argues, in the multiplicity of its characters, that there’s no feminist value to be found in decrying “that kind of girl.”

Critics took notice: Willa Paskin and Emily Nussbaum both called Unreal “irresistible,” the show has won two Critic’s Choice Television Awards, it’s generating Emmy chatter, and Lifetime ordered a second season — premiering June 6 — within a month of the first’s release. In equal measures dark and brilliant, Unreal is to Lifetime what The Sopranos was to HBO, what Weeds was to Showtime, what Mad Men was to AMC: a pole that would vault an entire channel into new legitimization.
Unreal’s critical success allowed Lifetime to examine which of its assets were most valuable to that success — chief among them a certain self-awareness of Lifetime’s brand in the hands of talented female writers, directors, and showrunners. “In some ways I feel like I stumbled into this magical kingdom of all of these women who really want to hire female directors,” Shapiro told me. “They are behind this show. I hear stories from my other friends who have had pilots go other places, and it’s heartbreaking hearing what they go through compared to what my experience has been, which is just, like, unconditional, complete support at every turn.”

Indeed, hiring women has “actually [made] our content better,” said Liz Gateley, Lifetime’s EVP and head of programming. “Look at our top five movies of last year — the top five were all directed by women. If you look at Unreal, arguably our most important scripted series ever, it’s created by women and starring women.”[/QUOTE]

How Lifetime Became One Of The Best Places In Hollywood For Women