Saturday, July 17, 2010
Over the Hills: Adam DiVello on the MTV Phenomenon
Adam DiVello has plenty of dirt on Lauren Conrad, Whitney Port, Audrina Patridge, Kristin Cavallari and Heidi Montag and her bizarre relationship with Spencer Pratt, but the creator and executive producer of MTV’s hit reality shows “The Hills” and “The City” isn’t about to spill the beans.
He maintains that what you see is really what you get on reality television, and the series finale of “The Hills” Tuesday night closed a significant chapter for the gaggle of Los Angeles youngsters whose lives DiVello has followed for the past five years, ending with Cavallari moving on from longtime love interest Brody Jenner and leaving for Europe.
But he is already moving on to the next reality project, although he’s mum on specifics.
“People enjoy watching other people’s lives unfold,” DiVello says. “For ‘The Hills,’ there was an aspirational element, but at the core of it, any teenager who is still in high school or college and is wondering what their future will be like can relate.” DiVello started his career at MTV in 1997 as a personal assistant in the network’s video tape library. He quickly worked his way up, eventually producing shows such as “Spring Break” and developing “Room Raiders” and “Say What? Karaoke,” among other programs.
When Liz Gateley, his boss at the time, suggested a reality show centered around a California high school — a sort of “Beverly Hills, 90210” for the reality TV generation— DiVello jumped at the chance. The show, “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” followed the lives of a group of suntanned and spoiled frenemies, turning Conrad and Cavallari into tabloid mainstays. DiVello eventually started his own production company, and pitched the network “The Hills.”“I wanted to take Lauren and follow her to Los Angeles,” DiVello recalls. “She wants to be a fashion designer, and I thought it was so aspirational, this little girl from Laguna Beach who always wanted the boy but always lost him to the bad girl. She was kind of every girl.”
And the rest is reality TV history. “The pieces all came together perfectly,” DiVello says. “Lauren had met Heidi at fashion school in San Francisco, and Heidi was looking to move to L.A. I had found Audrina by the pool in their complex. Whitney Port was an intern at WWD, and had applied for an internship at Teen Vogue.”
After shooting the pilot, MTV gave a green light to the project, and Anna Wintour agreed to allow the camera crews in Teen Vogue’s Los Angeles offices, where both Conrad and Port were interns. “Before you knew it,” says DiVello, “Jason Wahler came back into the picture, and a season later, Spencer came into the picture, and their lives just started to unfold in front of our eyes.”
Nevertheless, “We were surprised that it became such a pop cultural phenomenon,” he says. “You never expect to you will be landing covers of Us Weekly every week, or the cover of Rolling Stone. Luckily, Lauren was a character America knew, and she was magic. Everything that she felt was on her face. We didn’t need the confessionals. You really knew what she was thinking by looking at her.”DiVello claims Conrad’s emotions were real and raw, not scripted. “It is all based in reality and it is their reality,” he says. “We don’t come up with characters. We have a story team that works on the show, and they talk to the kids constantly, and they are always BBMing and texting with them. They always know what’s going on in their lives, and we choose what we do and don’t want to follow.
“If someone is getting their wisdom teeth out that week, it’s probably not something we want to follow,” he says. “But if she is having her wisdom teeth taken out, and has some huge event she has to go to that same night and has to miss it, then it becomes a story...People ask me all the time if we write it, and my answer is always that we write it in the edits.”
As for the made-for-primetime boyfriends — Brody, Justin-Bobby and, most toxic of all, Spencer — they naturally and quite fortuitously came into the picture.
“We would never tell [the girls] whom to date, and whom not to date,” DiVello says. “This is all them, and in the situation with Audrina and Justin, it was such a great, relatable storyline. There is always the one girl who is in love with the bad boy. It was fun watching her grappling with whether she should be with him or not.”As for the train wreck behavior of Heidi and Spencer, which ranged from her Barbie doll transformation to his newfound faith in New Age crystals, DiVello underscored that their actions were always their decision. “People ask me a lot if what they are doing is real, and how much of it we are in the loop,” he says. “I say, ‘We show up and shoot.’ We never know what’s really going on. We were lucky enough to get Heidi and Spencer’s wedding on tape and we watched the evolution of that relationship...[Heidi and Spencer]...have probably been through the most media wise, and that changes people. They were living their lives on the show and in the media. I don’t think you can come out of that unchanged.”
But when it comes to the (slightly) more grounded members of the cast, Lauren and Whitney remain the break out stars. “Lauren is a very smart girl,” DiVello says. “I think that one day she will be a great producer herself. She gets it and has a good handle on the business. She has been very successful with her books and her clothing line. Whitney was a fan favorite, because she was there every listening to Lauren and giving her advice. When she fell down in Hilary Swank’s Oscar dress, everyone fell in love with her.”
Looking ahead, DiVello has been talking with studios about a new scripted concept. He’s started pre-production on the next season of “The City,” and the team is honing in on new locations and cast members. “We end the season with a big cliffhanger for Whitney, which will change her relationship with Kelly Cutrone.” Speaking of the People’s Revolution chief, she has played a key role in both “The Hills” and “The City,” and her presence has done much to spice up the sometimes mundane world of these twentysomethings. “Who doesn’t love Kelly Cutrone?” DiVello says. “She is definitely unguarded and says exactly what she is thinking. She brings with her this wisdom. She has been in business for a long time. She is the ultimate fairy godmother for these kids. When she sees BS, she calls it.”
After five years, DiVello already knows he is going to miss the cast and crew of “The Hills.”
“The only thing we write are those ‘Previously on’ scenes at the beginning of each episode, and they always end with something like ‘I was about to discover that everything is about to change.,’” DiVello said. “[At the wrap-up party], I made a shoutout, and I said that this time it’s for real. Everything is about to change for everybody.”
Olivia Palermo & Johannes Huebl: Porto Cervo Lovers
Living the good life overseas, Olivia Palermo and boyfriend Johannes Huebl enjoyed a relaxing holiday in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, Italy earlier this week.
Spending a little time on friend Valentino Garavani’s yacht, the "City" beauty donned a cute swimsuit as her man dutifully hosed her down following a dip in the refreshing waters.
Johannes looks amazing but Olivia could use a new swimsuit, this one isn't doing her any favors!
credit - celebrity-gossip.net /
~Kelli at Hills Freak
~Kelli at Hills Freak
Josh Hansen reaches top of "The Hills"
If you're like 2.5 million other viewers, on Tuesday you tuned in to watch the final episode of the MTV series "The Hills." In that final episode, two-time defending X Games Super X champion Josh Hansen appeared due to his relationship with Stephanie Pratt, one of the stars of the wildly popular reality TV show. The two met after the final season of the show had started production, and their relationship became significant enough that Hansen figured prominently at the end. Hansen's story is well known among supercross fans. The 26-year-old from Colorado was a rising star with several national amateur titles before going pro at 17. He accrued six regional supercross podiums between 2004 and 2005 before he lost his focus. Between a hard-partying lifestyle and a revolving door of sponsors, Hansen was on his way to being written off by the racing community as another story of lost potential.
But the past year has seen Hansen do more than just raise his profile through reality TV. He was tapped by one of the godfathers of the supercross industry, Pro Circuit's Mitch Payton, before last summer's X Games to ride a Pro Circuit Kawasaki -- a decision that paid dividends for both parties. In April, Hansen returned to the supercross podium at Salt Lake City, winning the 250cc Lites and re-establishing himself as a threat well beyond the one-off arena of X Games. As he gears up for his shot at an X Games three-peat, it's tough not to root for Hansen. And now, thanks to "The Hills," that's exactly what millions of casual X Games fans who don't know a two-stroke from a four-stroke will be doing.
"A lot of people follow that show," he said when we asked him what it was like to be a part of "The Hills." "It's kind of crazy because I've never followed the show. I didn't know people were so pumped and hyped on it. However, I just want to be Josh the Dirt Bike Guy."
ESPN.com: Josh, how did you wind up meeting Stephanie Pratt and becoming a part of "The Hills" TV show?
Josh Hansen: Dingo [Luke "The Dingo" Trembath, star of the TV show "The Adventures of Danny & The Dingo"]. Dingo introduced me to her and got us set up right before the Vegas supercross. So I did my thing out in Vegas and came back and went on a date with her and then started hanging out with her.
Did you know who she was or anything?Well, I kind of knew about "The Hills," like the show. Dingo explained it to me. But I didn't know her personally or anything, so it was just kind of like whatever. I just kind of went into it like, "Whatever happens, happens." She ended up being cool, and I've been hanging out with her and she's been fun. And then it just carried on and MTV got a hold of me. I wasn't really interested at first, but I did a few shows. At the ending of the show, Stephanie and I talked, and it was just a good closing to the show for her and her finding, I guess, love. It was a good ending for both of us.
I went over to Pro Circuit to see Mitch Payton at the time all of this started. He had just heard that you had been spending time in Hollywood and wasn't too into the concept of you being around that scene and hanging out with "Hollywood people."
Yeah, I think Mitch was pissed, but it wasn't like I was just up there partying every night and not doing [anything], you know? Yeah, I went up there and was doing the show and was hanging out with Stephanie, and then I would come back. I was riding and doing my stuff. After he saw that, he was fine. He just wanted to make sure I was on top of my stuff. That's what I was doing and that's what I'm doing now.
As far as the show, did they write you into it or just kind of drop in on what you and Stephanie were doing?
I don't know. ... They didn't really have to write in anything. It was all natural, you know? It was what we were working with and it just fit so good for the show. It made Stephanie happy, and I was good. I figured if it was time to go ahead and do the show, it was probably better to do it toward the ending -- like the last two final episodes -- because then it was done forever. The show ran for six years, and you ended up being a big part of the final episode. Leading up to it, Mitch started following the show and knew the storylines and everything. I kind of sensed he was into the whole thing and you riding at the test track as the curtain came down on the show.
I think everybody just thought the worst about the whole thing right off the bat. Like, "Oh, Hansen is done racing" or "Hansen is already screwing up and going back to the old Hansen." It wasn't really like that. I think everybody was looking at it from the outside looking on in. I'm a racer, and I feel like I'm a good racer and I feel like I have the personality to do some stuff outside the sport. Nobody else really does it. I'm not going to just stick in my own little world of racing. It comes natural to me. This is what I do. This is how I want to be. People either support it or they don't. This is the way I want to live my life.
Lauren Conrad to Pen "Darker" Novel Series
Lauren Conrad is going rogue.The L.A. Candy author says that for her next work of literary mastery, she's planning a darker spinoff of sorts featuring one of her current characters.
"I'm going to take Madison from the book and do a darker series," she said at The Hills finale party. "I already wrote a little bit and it was really fun."
L.A. Candy focuses on Jane Roberts, a young woman who moves to Hollywood, gets a job with an event planner and eventually lands a reality show.
That all sounds vaguely familiar ...
Like LC, Jane isn't always happy with her fame and the attention it brings, while her friend Madison takes the opposite approach and just eats it up.
Again, feels like we've heard this somewhere.
"I think it would be really fun to do it the other way, with someone who loves it," Conrad said. "Someone who loves fame and plays the game well."
She certainly has enough real-life material to draw on.
Lauren is still working on the third book in the Candy series, but we're already looking forward to reading the exploits of crazy Heidi Montag ... er, Madison.
credit - thehollywoodgossip.com, thanks for the heads up Sara! : )
~Kelli at Hills Freak
~Kelli at Hills Freak
Friday, July 16, 2010
Olivia Palermo: Visual Postcard From Paris
We love our friend Olivia Palermo (star of The City), who keeps us posted on her travels. Here, she's sent us a visual postcard from Paris, where she just spent a romantic weekend with her boyfriend Johannes Huebl (we call him Johotness).
What I packed:
Jet Set ballet pumps keep me quick on my toes - and they're ideal for cycling in, too.
Nancy Gonzalez passport cover, from www.gift-library.com.
Kif If cardies - I can't leave the house without them! I always have at least one in my bag; they conveniently scrunch down to nothing.
Bensoni dress - it's one of my favorite summer dresses. The pattern is divine, and I love the effortlessly chic cut.
My Valentino couture clutches for instant dress-up.
My iPad.
Finally, I can't leave without Johannes!
Brody and Avril: NOT Filming a Reality Show
“Avril & Brody’s reality show,” reads the headline of an In Touch story, which goes on to assert, “Brody Jenner has been pitching a reality show about his new romance – now he’s just got to convince his girlfriend Avril Lavigne to co-star.”Really?
According to a so-called “insider,” Jenner “came up with the idea for a reality show, and he’s begging Avril to do it… She’s in love with him, but isn’t sure about it, yet she doesn’t want to tell him no.”
No worries…
Lavigne won’t have to say no, because – contrary to In Touch’s claim that “Jenner has been pitching a reality show” – he is currently NOT trying to peddle a program about their relationship.
Gossip Cop spoke with Jenner’s agent – the guy who would actually be pitching the show – and he assures us Jenner’s not working on a reality show.
'Hills' Creator Adam Divello Explains Why Series Ended On Brody Jenner
He's always been there for the girls. Even after ending relationships with both Lauren Conrad and Kristin Cavallari, Brody Jenner was their male bestie: listening to all their boy problems through mascara tears. So, when it came down to the perfect ending for "The Hills," it seemed just right to have Brody be the main focus of it. And, the show's creator, Adam DiVello, gave MTV News the perfect reason why."I think in the terms of a 'Sex And The City,' there's always that Mr. Big and I think Brody was our Mr. Big," he explained. "He was our Mr. Big and it's nice that he was there at the end. I feel like [it was like] in the season finale of 'Sex And The City' when [Carrie] kind of looked down and saw her cell phone and saw the last name, that guy was there for the very end."
While we kind of love that reasoning, Adam also enlightened us to what Brody, and Kristin for that matter, were like that final day of shooting for that sort of magical, and sort of surreal, "Hills" final scene.
When we showed up to Paramount that day we kind of walked Brody through it, and he was shocked," he recalled of shooting the finale. "I believe Kristin kind of started to cry a little bit. I think she was surprised when she showed up as well. We had a great time. [Viewers wondered,] 'Were these things shot on soundstages or were they shot in their apartments?' But I think everyone knows it was a reality show, obviously."
What do you think of comparing Brody to Mr. Big: fair or unjust? Did you like that the finale ended on him?
credit - Jocelyn Vena @ mtv
~Kelli at Hills Freak
~Kelli at Hills Freak
Hills Freak Chats with Roxy Olin
I had the pleasure of talking to Roxy Olin on the afternoon of the 'City' finale. Roxy was waiting to board a flight to Florida and could not have been nicer about chatting with us. Hills Freak: If you could describe all your cast mates in 3 words what would they be?
Whit: loving,compassionate,and a complete goofball!
Kel: mama bear, hardass, unpredictable.
Olivia: fashionista, bitch, ice Queen.
Erin: Ambitious, adorable, hard.
We think you and Alex are adorable together, any chance we'll see him on S3 & what can we look forward to in season 3?
Roxy: Thank you so much. I'm down for him to film its just hard because he lives in LA and I'm in NY. I'm hoping everything goes as planned and that in season 3 the cameras will come home with us more and show even more of our personal relationships inside and out of work.
What was your favorite scene to film? Roxy: I loved filming when Whit and I had a cake fight. That night was soooo fun.. My face hurt after from laughing so hard! We also filmed a scene at a very provocative dance class that never made the cut. Whit and I both can't keep a straight face when being sexy!
What's been the hardest part about portraying your life in front of the camera?
Roxy: I think the hardest thing has been learning to have a filter! I start talking and forget the cameras are there and then I'll watch and be so humiliated!
Please tell us 3 things we don't know about you
Roxy: Things you don't know about me:1.I'm a dork! I love just being at home with my dog watching dvds of Summer Heights High.
2.I'm hopeless Romantic (I have romantic tattooed on my back)
3. I'm addicted to chocolate!
If you could raid one person's wardrobe who would it be?
Roxy: If Edie Sedgwick was alive I'd have to say her closet. I also would love to raid Mick Jaggers closet.
Celebrity crush?
Roxy: My celebrity crush is Travis Barker. Kelly loves to tease me about him at work!
Is Olivia as awful as they make her out to be?
Roxy: Olivia is exactly how she is on screen off! EXACTLY. Three Makeup items you can't live without?
Roxy: My favorite makeup products are YSL lipstick in Rouge Pur and I love Dior Mascara.
Whats your favorite candy or other guilty pleasure?
Roxy: M&M's! I'm addicted! Another guilty pleasure is I love doing those at home striptease Carmen Electra videos
Will we see you on Brothers & Sisters next season?
Roxy: Yes I will be on B&S. I'm filming next week!
Huge thank you to Roxy Olin!
~Kelli at Hills Freak
~Kelli at Hills Freak
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