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Back in 1999, the writer Arthur Bradford made a documentary called How’s Your News, in which he and a group of mentally disabled people traveled the country, conducting man-on-the-street interviews. For years, Bradford had been working at a summer camp for the mentally disabled, teaching a video production course, which turned into this. Now it’s going to be a show on MTV, and it looks great.
The How’s Your News? team will easily be the most charming and lovable people on television. In your face, cast of Bones. The How’s Your News? team do not play games, and they do not care about your bullshit. They just want the facts. What’s obvious in the original documentary, and looks like it will be obvious here, is the fact that everyone is having so much fun, and how much Arthur Bradford and the rest of the crew love everyone involved, so that what could easily be the most exploitative thing ever made becomes the exact opposite. Nice. This looks so good that I only barely mind that Kathy Griffin is in it. Of course she uses an unpretentious, heartfelt show about stripping away our preconceptions and keeping everything in perspective as an opportunity to perpetuate her D-List schtick, because, you know, always got to be on. Hollywood. A tiny drop of UGH in an ocean of YES!
How’s Your News? premieres this Sunday, February 8th, at 10:30 PM on MTV.
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Holy shit, Betsy the Bird is creepier than the Chicken Lady.
This looks really good. I love when Bobby starts hitting the dummy with the mic.
I am so excited for this! My mother is the guardian for a mentally disabled adult, so I think she will really appreciate this show.
I like this, but I’m kind of bothered by MTV playing up the “From the creators of South Park” bit and then chopping it up with Rob’s Fantasy Factory and Jackass 3 or whatever promos. Maybe I’m just bothered that I’m going to have to watch more MTV.
Wow! It is impossible not to love these guys. I love how the one guy is totally not impressed with Betsy the Bird. The look on his face is like, “That’s just fuckin stupid.” And he just walks away. Brilliant!
It could have been so bad but they did a great job of showing the guys how they are without taking the piss. In fact the disabled guys are the ones taking the piss outta the normal people and they’re obviously having a lot of fun. Good for them!
The only time I felt a little bit bad was the look of shear terror on the poor kid’s face when he hears the guy he’s interviewing say he’s in for murder, but he’ll be OK.
It is too bad that MTV is putting it out. It should be on network in prime time.
The show looks good, but MTV? I can’t imagine MTV’s usual target audience watching this.
And that bull poker thing is insane. I thought we evolved past that ancient Roman circus stuff, but I guess people will just always have a part of them that enjoys watching people getting potentially mauled by crazed animals in a giant arena.
Well it was cool until Kathy Griffen had to go and ruin it. Hopefully shes not in any other episodes, or in any other form of media for that matter.
Sue Harrington is my favourite.
I know I’m supposed to be guilt tripped into saying this looks awsome because it involves disabled people being empowerd but quite frankly I coudn’t watch this for more than a few minutes. Interviews can be boring even with good reporters so watching a bad reporter interview boring people for a whole 30 minutes does not apeal to me.
Not to mention I don’t even think is very empowering, its like kids say the darndest things except for the mentally handicapped. We get to feel warm and fuzzy inside because they say the darndest things, and we have a good laugh at other peoples reactions to them. Not that any of the reactions are especially candid because whenever we see a handicapped person we imediatly try as hard as we can to pretend that they are just like us and all we get to see is a poor imitation of a normal interview.
I’m sure everyone involved in this movie had the best intentions, which is nice comparing to the normal greedy motivations behind most shows on MTV, but I don’t think the final product is anything special.
“How’s Your News” was first profiled on “This American Life” a few years back – you can check it out in the NPR archives. Great story, great program.
I couldn’t resist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnIvrMXx0pE
In response to me, “whenever we see a handicapped person we imediatly try as hard as we can to pretend that they are just like us,” that is just plain shameful, sir. oh yeah, learn how to spell.
Sue kind of reminds me of tina fey
killer