4.6 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Scott Silveri has written and produced sitcoms for more than 20 years. In all that time, he never encountered a TV family that looked anything like the one he grew up in -- with a mom, a dad...and a brother with cerebral palsy. He changed that with his show Speechless on ABC. Silveri tells us about looking to his own past for stories, and why he was determined to make a family comedy and not just a "disability show."
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0:00.0 | From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business. |
0:04.7 | I feel like it's our jobs to depict life and to depict reality, |
0:09.3 | and there's very little depiction of disability on TV, and I don't quite get why. |
0:15.2 | Television writer-producer Scott Silvery has worked on sitcoms for more than 20 years, |
0:20.4 | and in all that time, he never encountered a TV family |
0:23.3 | that looked anything like the one he grew up in, |
0:26.0 | with a mom, a dad, and a brother with cerebral palsy. |
0:30.1 | He's mined that past with his show, Speechless, on ABC. |
0:34.2 | Silvery tells us about asking his family for permission to borrow some of their stories |
0:38.5 | and about finding an actor who really has cerebral palsy to play a teenager who is wheelchair-bound |
0:44.5 | and lacks the ability to speak. |
0:47.1 | But first on the news banter, Wonder Woman rescues Warner Brothers. |
0:51.3 | Stick around. |
0:52.0 | It's the business from KCRW. |
0:59.3 | Music Warner Brothers. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW. I'm joined by my colleague in banter, Matt Bellany of the Hollywood Reporter. Hello, Matt. |
1:03.7 | Hi there. So Wonder Woman, as rolling into the theaters, pretty much as we speak right now, the weight on this film. It's pretty big because of two |
1:13.3 | things. It is the female-fronted superhero film that a lot of fans have been wanting. And it is |
1:20.4 | also Patty Jenkins. She is now the woman to have directed the most expensive film ever. And, you know, her resume included a small independent film monster some years ago, |
1:32.7 | one Charlese there on an Oscar. |
1:34.9 | And she went on to do a lot of TV. |
1:36.5 | She was offered Thor. |
1:38.2 | But a lot of people, I think, would look at that and say, |
... |
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