Brendan Smith is one of the writers on 'My Boys.' He is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL and lives in Silver Lake, CA with his dog Ozzy. He likes Iron Maiden, green chili cheeseburgers, and The Big Lebowski.

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Notes from the Writers' Room, Week Four

Hello, boys and girls.

A lot goin’ on this week. Mostly…

RANDOM NOTES:

A. Yes, this episode was our homage to one of our favorite shows, Project Runway. I’ve mentioned the fact that we – the writers of My Boys – are all Lost-nerds, and that we spend a lot of time talking about life on that particular island. (Down-time, of course. Time off the clock. Wink, wink.) Well, we also love Top Chef and Project Runway, and thought it would be fun to do our own version of one of those programs. You know… have the dudes create their own food or shirt-making competition or something.

So we did. Hope you liked it.

B. Most of us were hoping that Jillian would win Project Runway.

She didn’t. Christian did. What can you do?

C. I gotta tell you, dear reader, we really tried to land a real-life Sports Dude for this episode, because it’s something that we’ve been wanting to do from “day one”. Our options, though, were limited to NFL players because everyone else (NBA, MLB, NHL) was, uh, working when we were. Make sense?

So… we used some connections to send a script to Jessica Simpson’s (alleged) guy, Tony Romo. (Or his “people”, at least.) He passed. Then, we went to Emmit “Dancing With the Stars” Smith. He considered… but passed. Then, Donovan “I love Chunky Soup” McNabb. He considered, was apparently “really interested because he wants to act”, but passed.

Somebody called Terry Bradshaw’s people - a move that would’ve thrilled the fifth-grade, St. Bernard’s School, Mt. Lebanon, PA version of me - but he wasn’t available, either.

There was even an idea about offering a role to POSH SPICE in hopes of landing hubby David Beckham, but… we didn’t. Sorry. There you go.

Luckily, in the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, right before we were scheduled to shoot episode #203, we cast an actor to play Sports Dude X. Enter Hayes MacArthur… a guy who looks like he could start for any MLB team. When all is said and done, I’m really glad that Hayes was able to step in at the last second. Shooting days can be really long – it takes about a half a day to shoot one of those damn poker scenes – so the possibility of Sports Dude X saying, “You know what? I’m gonna go have dinner with Will and Jada, I’ll see you guys later,” in the middle of shooting? Pretty high.

And that… would totally suck.

D. Lindsey Stoddart, aka “Wendy”, was truly pregnant when we shot this episode. Seriously: She was not wearing a pad. In fact, Lindsey and her husband, the great Paul Vaillancourt, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl just a few short weeks after Lindsey finished her latest turn as Brando’s ex.

Lindsey and Paul are old friends of ours, so we’re all really psyched about “Isabelle”!

E. This was not the first time that a My Boys guest-star was basically on her way to the maternity ward when she did the show. You might remember Nicole Sullivan’s turn as “Kimmie” during the first season (“The Promise of a New Season” and “Off Day”). Nicole was incredibly pregnant during her days on the set, but was kind enough to wait until she was done to give birth to her son. Now, she and her husband Jason Packham are the proud parents of Dash.

Believe it or not, Dash took his first steps in OUR PRODUCTION OFFICE during a lunchtime visit a few weeks ago. Totally cool.

F. Dare I mention that the legendary Jay Tarses, aka Jack Briscoe, aka “the coach from Teen Wolf,” aka a huge Hollywood writer in his own right, is also related to our other Exec Prod Jamie?

G. Is there anything worse than running into an ex and the new “significant other”?

H. Now that Brando’s short stint as a Soft Hits DJ is over, here are 10 more Soft Hits that made us laugh in the writers’ room:

CHICAGO – “If You Leave Me Now”

10CC – “I’m Not in Love”

TODD RUNDGREN – “Hello, It’s Me”

LITTLE RIVER BAND – “Reminiscing”

HALL AND OATES – “Sara Smile”

AMERICA – “Ventura Highway”

SEALS & CROFTS – “Summer Breeze”

AL STEWART – “The Year of the Cat”

THE CARPENTERS – “Superstar”

CROSBY, STILLS & NASH – “Southern Cross”

I. I’m dizzy from all the quotation marks in this blog.

Next up… Andy and Mike take an improv class! Improvalicious.

TTFN,
Brendan Smith