OMG, Shane Klingensmith!

Remember 13-year-old Shane Klingensmith from World of Wonder's Showbiz Moms and Dads series on Bravo? (Ahh, memories.) Not so little now, Shane is a strapping high-school senior old enough to make babies with a vice-presidential candidate's daughter. But instead, he'd like you to vote for him in the Glamor Shots 2008 High School Senior Photo Contest (HS Senior Males division). He's attending Stetson on a music scholarship (hence the Stetson), says his mom Debbie. We had a look at the other contestants in his division and, frankly, it's no contest. But, gee, they grow up so fast, don't they?

What Are They Now?

Remember Duncan Nutter, one of the Dads in World of Wonder's Showbiz Moms & Dads series on Bravo? That talked-about show was four years ago and Nutter, his wife, and seven kids are still living in that four-room apartment in Queens, New York, he moved them to after uprooting the family from their five-bedroom house in Vermont – just so he and the kids could make it in show bidness. Now the New York Daily News has caught up with them and their struggle to make it simply through the day. The story was brought to our attention by Todd Radnitz, Showbiz Moms & Dads' producer, who still keeps tabs and who's now producing I Know My Kid's a Star on Vh1.

"We'd love to buy a house and live more normally, but we can't afford it," said Duncan Nutter, who teaches fifth grade at Public School 279 in Canarsie. There's $1,100 a month to Ithaca College for their eldest daughter, Grace; $400 a month for 16-year-old Ellie's gymnastics; $400 in gas. There's $600 a year in Little League fees and equipment for three sons, not to mention the basics of school books, computer supplies and a $200-a-month cell phone bill that includes five lines, plus medical expenses, clothing and birthday gifts.

(Photo: Goldfield for News)

Vote Now

For World of Wonder clips to be featured on Bravo's upcoming 20 Best Bravo Moments special, we need your help. Please go to Bravotv.com and vote for the one from Showbiz Moms & Dads, with four-year-old Debbie Tye getting spray-tanned to be pageant-ready, and everyone's favorite from Showdog Moms & Dads, the one with the woman explaining that her dog "bite me in my vagina." Won't you help? Thank you.

Podcast Moms & Dads

After a bracing round of Q & A in the Ring My Bell torture chamber, Shane Klingensmith, one of the stars of WOW's popular Showbiz Moms & Dads series on Bravo, is brought in for questioning in the conference room and seated in the chair usually reserved for James. Lobbing questions at the bright now-16-year-old high school junior are WOW leaders Randy and Fenton and Showbiz Moms & Dad's supervising producer Todd Radnitz. Sit back and learn virtually everything there is to know about this smart kid. Of course, in a couple of years he'll probably be a legit member of the Pod Squad when he's working at WOW.

(Watch the video)
(Listen to the audio)

Letter from Debbie Tye

Hey there!

Wow long time no hear! We are doing great! Emily and I have been on ET and Access Hollwood 2 times, and yes we even got an autographed picture of Ru Paul ! Emily was pretty excited when she realized who it was. Emily and Brenden are up for a Movie deal too! A producer was at one of the pageants she did and he just fell in love with her. We havent gotten any final information yet, but it looks great for both of them! WHOO HOO !

She has done a ton of pageants since the show and doing great. She recently won the Little Miss Citrus pageant which was on Access Hollywood. They love her on that show LOL. And she has won a few scholarship ones as well. We have 3 this month to do and hopefully she will win them.

Emily has grown so much since you saw her and she still talks about going to Hollywood and meeting everyone. She wants to know when we are going back!! LOL That was truly a trip of a lifetime, thank you again from the bottom of our hearts!

I am still getting slack for the show we did with you. No more death threats though so that is good. We were contacted to do Dr. Phil and Pat Croche, but turned them down. Just doing the entertainment shows right now and keeping a low profile. We still get recogonized alot and people ask her for her autograph. Some of the pageant moms we have met recently have been really wonderful too and ask to have pictures with Emily. I even had a pageant designer contact me about making Emily a new dress. She wants her on their website. How cool is that?!?!

I have attached several pictures of her including some new headshots. Wait until you see her now!

It was so good hearing from you, I have tried to call a couple of times and even emailed, but never heard back from anyone so I just figured out of sight out of mind. We did watch the new show and Emily informed me that hers was better ( go figure, the little diva LOL )

Anyway, here are pictures and if you ever want us again, you know where we are!!!!!

– Debbie and Emily

Just Kidding

Page Six Six Six has rediscovered the charms of the rapidly aging ingenue Shane Klingensmith of WOW's Showbiz Moms & Dads fame. PSSS ranks Shane with Aaron Carter and Jesse McCartney, faint praise at best, unless you're a pedophile. (Pagesixsixsix)

Where They Are Now

And speaking of Showbiz Moms & Dads, the cute little Jordan Moseley-Stephens, who arguably was the most likable in the series, has scored a role in the John Travolta-Uma Thurman movie Be Cool. She plays Cedric the Entertainer's daughter and sharp-eyed viewers will spot her in the trailer, waving and saying "Good morning, guys!" (See for yourself)

Nutter Update

Remember the Nutter family from WOW's Bravo series Showbiz Moms & Dads? People wonder what happened to them. They were like their own show within the show. This photo of the family, shot after their appearance on Oprah! in April, was included in a Thanksgiving letter from Showbiz Mom Cynthia to the show's supervising producer Todd Radnitz. Cynthia's teaching advanced biology, she says, and she and Showbiz Dad Duncan just celebrated their 20th anniversary. Eight-year-old Forrest played in the soccer all-star game and won the soccer championship for his school. Fifth-grader Isaiah is on the school gymnastics team. Aaron, 15, who toured with The Full Monty over the summer, was accepted into the Performing Arts School in Manhattan where he's a drama major. Grace will be a senior at Washington Irving High and, in July, filmed an episode of ABC Family's Switched, where two teens switch lives for four days, so there's still a bit of reality TV in her blood.

From left: Duncan Sr; Forrest,8; Isaiah,10; Emma,11; Aaron,15;
Ellie,13; Oprah; Grace,17; Duncan W,18; Cynthia (Click to enlarge)

Alumni Update

Little Shane Klingensmith –model, actor, singer – poses seductively from his own website, occasionally in a tiny wifebeater. Get all the latest news and press on this miniteen veteran of the first Showbiz Moms & Dads series from World of Wonder. Shane's "Big in Belgium" T-shirt is available from his online store.

Do You Haiku?

The Showbiz Moms & Dads messageboard over at TelevisionWithoutPity.com is still yakking it up. And we're still lapping it up. And they're keeping track of us. Recently, there was this posting from Reality-OD concerning our posting of their very pithy SBM&D haikus:

Heh. The TWOPers got another reference in Stephen Saban's weblog over at the production company World of Wonder. He loves our haikus! See the May 25th entry. (Actually, I've been enjoying his blog since I first discovered it during SBM&D. It's a goodie.)

I ask you, Saban,
Why only six episodes?
Don't be so stingy

Dear old TWOPers, we
Cannot guide you to one more.
Only Bravo can.

Meter? I'd Love To

Todd Radnitz, supervising producer of Showbiz Moms & Dads tells me the message boards are alive now with haikus devoted to the series' families. Haikus? Good God, what next? Showbiz Moms: The Opera?

Big hair, pretty feet
Make-up gun setting on "whore"
No crown means no love.

Memorize lines, starve
Hollywood, you puzzle me
Where's the Taco Bell?

Pixie Sticks so sweet
Sugary Red Number Three
Work your magic. Win.

Exuberant beast
Such pretty and sad children
Vermont weeps for you

Pa Nutter seems gay.
Look out, Cindy, the wet spot!
Oh, oh - number 8!

The Neverending Story

If you miss Showbiz Moms & Dads now that it's (sob) over, perhaps Catherine Joanna Cooke can help. She's obsessed. On her lovely website, you can revisit the Bravo series at your leisure. A flurry of sites, old news stories, the woman's nothing if not thorough. It's like a seminar on the Klingensmiths, the Tyes, the Barrons. Wondering what's up with Duncan Nutter's acting career? It's here. All of it.

And this letter, rife with exclamation points and a fresh point of view, came in over the weekend:

I am a huge fan of Emily Tye!! I think she is a little cutie and is very talented!!!! I am working on a website about her too!!! I have watched the video of her on showbiz moms and dads and she is too aodrable!!
~Alesha~

Showbiz Bons & Mots

Tonight at 9, the sixth and penultimate episode of Showbiz Moms & Dads, the hit reality series, airs on Bravo. Tomorrow at 9 is the bonus, by-popular-demand episode, in which the Hollywood-hopeful families return to talk about what's happened in the six months since they shot the series. The show's been a message-board favorite, inciting every emotion except ennui. Some memorable quotes from past shows--or words like "prosti-tots" that were inspired by the show--may pop up in tomorrow's episode and bring the memories flooding back. If you hear one of these, take a cold one out of the cooler.

"Act like a dancer and not an idiot"
"Pageant breakfast"
"You're 14. Don't start having sex for money yet"
"You cute but you not dat cute"
"Pageants are like dog shows. We just don't have best-in-show"
"In two or three years, you'll be stacked up just right"
"You're four years old--act like it"

Tye Food

The Tyes are in from Clearwater, Florida, spending a week in Los Angeles, doing things that outta-state people with kids do here (glam hotel, Universal Studios, Legoland). Last night, World of Wonder treated Debbie and David, Brendan and Emily, and Grandma Susan to dinner at Vert, the Wolfgang Puck brasserie inside the Hollywood & Highland shopping and entertainment complex. The producers and crew and sundry others involved in Bravo's hit six-part reality series, Showbiz Moms & Dads (of which Debbie and Emily are undisputed stars), joined them in a sprawling, almost-family reunion.

Since the series' premiere on April 13, Debbie and five-year-old Emily have been the victims of misguided criticism on Internet message boards and in chat rooms, with posters likening Emily to JonBenet Ramsey and Debbie to a cruel Svengalina who works her child to the bone on the kiddie pageant circuit. And that's just unfair. It comes, I think, from a preconceived notion of what stage mothers are like and the damaging effect they can have on their children, and they read it into every little infraction of parenting they think they see in Debbie. People like to see villains on TV. At dinner, it was obvious that Emily and her mom have a great bond. Debbie is much softer and thinner in person. And looks younger. Well, the camera adds 10 pounds, 10 years, and apparently 10 cents' worth of other people's opinions. Emily was not in bouffant with tiara and eyeshadow, nor did she jump onto the table, swivel her tiny hips, and sing into a Mr. Microphone; that's for the runway. She was polite and quiet, almost boringly normal. Between bites of food, she drew with markers and crayons on the backs of menus, and at the end of the long evening, she cried when she realized it was over. "This is what you call past her bedtime," said Grandma, laughing. "It's two o'clock in the morning at home."

I asked to take a couple of the drawings Emily had made during dinner so I could post them here, and I noticed that on one she'd written her name, um, creatively. "When she's tired," Debbie said, "she'll write her name backwards." And who doesn't?

Recapitulations

There's this guy, Chris Eades I believe he's called, who watches TV shows "so you don't have to," then lays into them on his Website, recaps, in such painstaking detail that during the analness of it all you can actually feel your own hemorrhoids forming as you read. Unlike the Cliffs Notes series that condenses plots, recaps seems to expand them. Recently, he took a look at WOW's Bravo series, Showbiz Moms & Dads. When read aloud, it sounds just like narration for the gay blind.

When we return from commercials, it's time to join Debbie2 as she phones her son's old agent. In an interview, she explains that as a child, Shane did a lot of commercials and modeling (we see some photos) but then a car accident put the kibosh on his career. They make an appointment for Tuesday, and we cut to them entering the garage office of Evelyn Stewart's Modeling & Talent Agency. I love all these people who work out of their garages! It's so suburban! Evelyn is impressed by how much Shane has grown, and they sit down on the couch to discuss his career. Amusingly while she's decorated the office with lovely furniture, behind the couch is the garage door, which just looks so wonderfully tacky. Fantastic!

'Showbiz' Buzz

The first episode of Showbiz Moms & Dads aired last night after positive advance press in The New Yorker, the LA Times, and TV Guide. Linda Stasi in the New York Post led her four-star review with, "The only thing wrong with Bravo's new series 'Showbiz Moms and Dads' is that each episode is only one hour long--and I would sit there for six hours a night and become a ruinous 'Showbiz Moms and Dads' junkie if I could. It's that riveting, that fascinating and that insane."

Those who watched it appear to agree. On the dishy message boards at Television Without Pity, which were abuzz over Moms' early buzz, viewers are now picking, bitching, and dissecting in hilarious detail. Please join the fun here. Two excerpts:

Personally, I kept thinking the whole thing was produced by Christopher Guest. Between Gay Mr. Nutter and Shane's mom thinking he had any sort of talent, this had mockumentary written all over it. Emily was really cute. God knows why her mom chose to slather her face with pancake.

Shane is awful! I mean, I know that a mother's love is blind but good Lord! Is a mother's love deaf too? He can't sing. He can't dance. He's not cute. And he's too young to be wearing that spandex mock turtleneck. He looks like one of the Roxbury guys. The Nutter family is very disturbing.

I'm Pretty, Mama

Most of the World of Wonder employees were pushed into this business by their mothers. (Hmm, you'd think one or two of those moms would stop by the office with a cake once in a while.) So the riveting six-part series, Showbiz Moms and Dads, beginning April 13 on Bravo, was an apt project for them to work on. The hourlong episodes show what optimism, hard work, and relentless determination can accomplish when parents act as their children's talent agents, managers, and wranglers. Especially during the tender young auditioning years when it's hard to tell who's crankier, parent or offspring. Supervising producer Todd Radnitz and his WOW crew followed five families all over everywhere as they entered beauty pageants, tried out for TV, and auditioned for movie roles. It was the kids who entered, tried out, and auditioned, that is, but the parents made it possible. And do the parents get any thanks? Do their kids seem grateful? Do they appreciate the hell, the extreme measures, the. . . the sacrifices made to arrange even the most minor go-see?

Although it doesn't premiere for a couple of weeks, the series is already controversial. Brian Lowry in a disgruntled review in Variety calls Showbiz Moms "the scariest, most gut-wrenching production anyone is apt to see," along the lines of "America's Creepiest Home Videos," inadvertently making it sound like must-see TV. The New York Post invoked the memory of JonBenet Ramsey, in part because the series follows Debbie Tye and her precocious four-year-old, Emily (above left), as they make the rounds of kiddie beauty pageants to the tune of $20,000 a year on entry fees, hair, makeup, accommodations, and clothes. Whether the parents are pushing the kids too far, following their own dreams rather than their child's, or just warping young values is up to the viewer. "You be the judge of that," says Radnitz, who comes to the defense of the moms and dads. "Some of the kids enjoy it and some don't. The parents think they're doing the right thing." And perhaps they're being unjustly persecuted. As exec producer Fenton Bailey told Variety, "Learning how to be famous today is more useful than learning Latin."

Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?

"Some parents are really tough on their kids," says Randy Barbato in today's NY Post. "The 4-year-old beauty pageant contestant getting a fake tan, for instance. But it just seemed relevant to look at parents who are involved with their kids in pursuing careers that involve fame." He's talking about the WOW documentary series, Showbiz Moms, which provides a look at the always-fascinating world of stage mothers (and a father) promoting their young protégées. It premieres April 13 on Bravo.

"Showbiz Moms" follows five parents as they shepherd their kids through beauty pageants, talent competitions and auditions. Barbato and supervising producer Todd Radnitz say they didn't go into the project with any preconceived notions. "I think, in some instances, some parents are living out their dreams through their kids," Radnitz says. "But I also think that, in some cases, the kids are truly enjoying it, and are convincing their parents to go along with it." One mother wants her 4-year-old daughter to be a beauty queen - and spends upwards of $20,000 a year on hair, makeup, hotels, entry fees and clothes.