Michael Poryes

February 7, 2011 World Screen

 

This interview originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2010 issue of TV Kids.
 
As co-creator and executive producer of the hit shows Hannah Montana and That’s So Raven, Michael Poryes definitely knows how to relate to the tween audience and, in particular, girl viewers. He talks about the new show he is working on, Life with Boys, about a 13-year-old girl who lives with her father and three brothers. Nelvana Studio and YTV in Canada have partnered to produce the series, which is set to premiere on YTV in September 2011. Classic Media will manage TV distribution in all territories worldwide—excluding Canada, Latin America and Asia (except Japan), which will be handled by Nelvana Enterprises, and Australia, France and the U.K., which will be covered by Helion Pictures.
 
TV KIDS: You have worked on prime-time shows and on shows for tweens. How do you get inside the heads of tweens and write material that is relevant to them?
PORYES: My first job was on Facts of Life, where I wrote for four girls and then I wrote a show called Small Wonder, which was [about] a girl who [was] half robot, then I wrote Out of this World, and she was a girl, but she was half alien! Are you seeing a trend here?
 
TV KIDS: I don’t know what you are trying to say about girls, but that’s for another conversation!
PORYES: Yes, they all are half alien anyway! Any parent will tell you! The jobs I’ve always gotten have been very female-oriented. I wrote on Veronica’s Closet. I wrote on Cybil. My mindset in everything I wrote in prime time, from a girl to a woman, was always from a female perspective.
 
When you make the switch to writing for kids’ shows, a lot of writers fall into the trap of saying this is just a cute little kids’ show and I’m going to write it from the parent’s perspective and I’m going to dictate to the kids. I have never approached writing that way. I really do approach it from the character. When you write kids’ shows, you cannot lose sight of the fact that you were a kid once and there are universal truths that were true when I was a kid and that are true with kids now and will continue to always be true with kids: friendships, enemies, fitting in, insecurities, dealing with parents, being an outcast, trusting and being disappointed. All these things, no matter what’s going on, if it was 30 or 10 years ago or if it’s today or 20 years from now, will always be true. You don’t want to get into the trap of trying, as an adult, to get into today’s trends of the hip things going on. You don’t want to get into that; you want to stay at the universal truths and the universal emotions and then to fold in the trends.
 
When you are writing, the secret is just to wear your emotions right up on your sleeves, remember back to when you were that age and write in a very, very empathetic, sympathetic way, but not a preachy way. Then you truly get into the perspective of a teen girl and a teen boy. When I was a teen and wanted to ask the girl out, what was I feeling? Boys today at the same age go through the same thing. What was a girl going through waiting for me to ask her out?
 
TV KIDS: She was waiting for the phone to ring!
PORYES: Exactly! I put myself into it as a guy, I take away all the macho stuff, and I’m left with a girl, and that is what I start to put down. I love it. With this kind of programming you feel as if you are doing something important. You feel as though you are able to offer little bits of advice without being preachy and share things you wish you would have known then. But [you’re] doing it in a way where everything doesn’t always work out and sometimes the lesson, per se, is that you are going to lose sometimes and, through losing, if you come away with a little bit more knowledge for next time, then you win.
 
Children today are so much smarter than we were. They get it, they truly get it, so the other thing is to never write down to them, don’t write to the lowest common denominator. Write with respect about real relationships and real friendships. And never approach stories from, Oh, that would be funny, but instead from, What’s this about? What’s the real situation? Because once I have that and I have real characters, I will always, always be able to find the funny.
 
TV KIDS: You mentioned passing on valuable lessons. As a parent, I can certainly say that my daughter would rather hear them from a character on a TV show than hear them from me.
PORYES: Oh, my God, I have a 15-year-old boy—are you kidding me? He’d rather hear it from Burn Notice than hear it from me! I totally understand that. I can tell you about one of the episodes of Hannah Montana that I am most proud of. It was about Hannah taking advantage of Dad’s time, thinking Dad is always going to be there and if something better comes along for me, I can change my plans. But Billy gets fed up and insulted. He doesn’t want a big party, he just wants to spend time with his kid, but Hannah is not finding value in that until she meets someone whose father is overseas in Afghanistan and through that she realizes what those kids go through not having their parents there. When that kid tells Hannah, “I would give anything to spend five minutes with my dad, anything,” she puts on a concert in tribute of military families. We invited real military families and we had a song written especially for this. It resonated so much that kids after they watched the episode—I heard this from parents—were just a little bit nicer. Just a tad! And that’s all I needed to hear. The biggest compliment that I’ve gotten on Hannah Montana is from parents saying, “Finally, a show I can sit down and watch with my kids.” And that is exactly what I am going for with Life with Boys.
 
TV KIDS: Tell us about Life with Boys.
PORYES: Life with Boys is a concept and a show whose time has come. I think that kids are ready for not yet another gimmick show—a show about a singer or a dancer, or someone who knows karate or somebody that is magical. All fine premises and nice shows, but kids are now ready for a lower-concept character-driven show about the truth. And this show is about a 13-year-old girl who lives in a house of boys: three brothers, a single dad and a male dog! She can’t win! I think even the goldfish are all male! It’s about how her life is affected by having been raised in this house. She is, therefore, a little bit tomboyish, she’s tough. She’s going to want to be on the boy’s wrestling team and she is going to be one of the best wrestlers on that team, but what does she do? Everyone is going to perceive her as some macho guy and not a girl. So it’s a show about, How do I live my life out there realizing that the boys on the outside are just as disgusting as the boys I live with? And I’m attracted to them, Oh, my! It’s about, What will I learn from dealing with boys on the outside that is going to inform how I deal with my brothers at home?
 
I also don’t want to make this show so girl-centric. This is going to be the first show where a boy can state his case. Where boys can talk about why they do certain things, and be proud of it. She might be saying, “Why did you just take the milk carton out of the refrigerator and drink from the carton, what’s wrong with a glass?” Now we’ve never had that answered before, but in my pilot, the answer is simple: the boy is just going to say, “Well, I’d have to go to the cabinet, open it, there is a selection of glasses, I’ve got to choose which glass I want. Then I take that glass and I put in on the counter. I have to go to the refrigerator and get the carton of milk, pour the milk into the glass. I don’t know how much milk I want. Do I want a sip? Not a sip, do I pour less or more? That is another decision. Then I pour the milk in the glass and I drink it. And now what am I left with? I’m left with a carton that I have to put back in the refrigerator and a glass that has to go into the dishwasher after I’m done with it. Now I have just spent 40 seconds of my extremely valuable life for a five-second sip out of a carton. Now, you tell me, who is right?”
 
You are going to have the guys watching going, “Yeah, that’s right!” And you’re going to have the girls say, “OK, I see your point, but it’s still disgusting!” And those little tidbits will be salted into real stories about how to deal with guys.
 
We are going to examine all of those things in a very real, warm and funny way. When I look at what’s out there in the kids’ TV landscape right now, I don’t see that.