Pushing Daisies : The creator and some facts

This series at the begining received very good reviews and great fan support, but at the time, they couldn't change ABC's mind, and the network canceled the show. Fans tried to get Pushing Daisies picked up by another network, but that didn't happen either. There was also support for the idea of ​​immortalizing the series in a two-hour movie, as was done with its creator, Bryan Fuller's previous series, Dead Like Me, but this also failed to materialize.

To the dismay of the show's fans, it only lasted two seasons. ABC changed the show's time slot, and there was also a writers' strike at the time, which further hampered its ability to attract new viewers. The series's high production costs, combined with the other two factors, made it easy for ABC to cancel the show. The difference between Pushing Daisies and other series is that it offered a rarely told story that was not very popular on television at that time: how to live with death, having the responsibility and "playing" at being God, its visual-aesthetic proposal of the 50s and 60s adapted to the present, colorful, happy, but at the same time always linked with death.

The series was created by Bryan Fuller

Bryan Fuller is an aclaimed American television writer and producer. His television aesthetic is highly stylized visual aesthetic and magical, also with a touch of macabre story teling. His work is a mix of dark fantasy, horror and sharp comedy.

Pushing Daisies is often described as a forensic fairy tale.

In the past year Fuller has said: “We have a season three pitch, and the entire cast wants to come back, and we’re hoping we get to return to them. We just have to find somebody who wants to make it.”

From an unused story idea to a complete show

The central premise was taken from an unused idea from Fuller's previous show, Dead Like Me (another great series about grim reapers, but we will talk about it another time), where the protagonist touched people to kill them, but someone else was bringing them to life. Ultimately, this opposite concept expanded to a whole new show and universe.

The Whimsy and Heart of Amélie

Visually and emotionally, Pushing Daisies owes a massive debt to the 2001 French romantic comedy Amélie. Fuller has frequently cited it as one of his favorite films. The show has a hyper-saturated color palette, surreal production design, and emotional tone. As Fuller once explained: 

"Really sad things happen in it, but you never get bogged down in the sadness.

Like Daisies, it's really about human kindnesses."

A post-mortem examination of Pushing Daisies.

 I say: #PushinDaisies #ReWatch !!! PD Quotes HERE !

You can watch it again on HBO max 

Many people really don't think about the message and the story of a TV show, does it mean something? Maybe this is because  99% of the shows that people watch are meant to entertain, distract us and just give us a good brief time. There still are a few TV shows about doctors who live a constant drama and at the same time are having sex with a coworker, or what about Upper East Side teenagers living in a big city ... they have sex too ( all the time),  how about reality shows of women getting married with excons ? There are a bunch of shows like that.

I can name many other shows that are all the same or almost  just with different actors and different plot but basically doing the same things.

 Pushing Daisies was among the few TV shows that had a message, a different one. The whole show is sort of a metaphor or allegory for pure, eternal, faithful and undying LOVE with a necrophiliac twist. The question was: Are you capable of loving someone after he or she is gone?, when there is a big distance between lovers, can love survive?, when there’s an absence of physical affection is it worth loving that person? Would you love someone who you can't touch?

Ned (the pie maker) has the ability to bring people back from death, back to life. Ned has a complex life hiding this secret but it's a simple man overall, a hopeless romantic. The show doesn't talk or show any of his previous relationships, but probably he didn't have any meaningful relationships before Chuck ( The Lonely Tourist and best friend who is revived by him ). I believe that Ned was obsessed with Chuck (who represents the idea of what love is supposed to be) because she was the only person in Ned’s life who knew what It meant to lose someone and feel lonely.

The shows often talks about Ned’s childhood, which is similar to Chuck’s youth. They both had a good life overall, but they were trapped in different ways. Ned wasn’t supposed to get out of the Longborough School for Boys but he escapes and Chuck had the option of leaving her aunt’s house but she never did, until she was brave enought to do so. 

 In this show the thing that keeps Ned and Chuck physically separated is his gift. This gift (touching the dead and bringing them back to life) nowadays could represents a distance of physical or even emotional, but I guess there are 3 big elements that define the fate of most relationship are:

 

 -Distance: When lovers are apart, when they live in different cities, countries or even continents.

-Time: The years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes they spent apart or together. When distance is not a problem, the time they spent apart or the other way around . When there is no distance, time is ticking away…”will he/she change? When? Will we move in together? When? How long will this last?” Or the relationship last too long and the lovers get sick of each other.

 -Place: In this case it means the psychological/mental state of mind of the person according to a person's personal situation, employment status, economic status, maturity, the expectation that our family and society puts on us. etc.

Ned and Chuck's "only" problem is that they can’t touch, they can’t show their affection in a traditional, normal way: Holding hands, hugs, kissing, and sex. The show asks the viewers: Is it possible to love someone you can’t touch? Can love last through time? Or are you so desperate for physical affection that you are capable of losing the love of your life because of the lack of physical contact?  Ok, this is not what the creator of the show has said but, it is a good question. There are so many tv relationships that wouldn't be consider real enought if the characters on it wouldn't have sex. 

When I think about romance now, I think about Ned opening Chuck’s coffin at the graveyard, literally returning Chuck to the world of the living. Dead people, cemeteries, coffins... romantic or not ? part 2 soon.

Pushing daisies is a forensic fairy tale, which is full of romanticism and melancholy of the past and the things that are and can never be. Pushing Daisies is a show that is a feast to the eyes! Colors and combinations, a mix of the 50's style with the modern world in a city where we wish we could live, a perfect aesthetic that plays with somber and dismal issues in a world where love is worth waiting for, worth the sacrifice and it’s worth dying and returning to life for.

 Quotes and Caps Here!

The World of Pushing Daisies: Quotes

If you haven't noticed yet, I am in love with Pushing Daisies (aired on ABC from October 3, 2007, to June 13, 2009). The TV series was canceled by a stupid television network. The show was described as an American fantasy comedy-drama and the creator; Bryan Fuller is a genius! He created and wrote shows like Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Heroes, Hannibal, Mockingbird Lane, etc.

Starring Lee Pace as Ned, the series is about a pie-maker who has the ability to bring dead things back to life with his touch, an ability which comes with stipulations. Before 1 minute runs out the thing he brought back to life needs to be touch again (kill it again) or something else has to die. Once he touches a thing or a person, he can't touch it again or the person will die forever.

 The cast also included Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth, Ellen Greene, and Swoosie Kurtz. The series was narrated by Jim Dale, who sets a special mood for the stories.

 Labeled as a "forensic fairy tale", the series is known for its unusual visual style (perfect), quirky characters, and fast-paced dialogue, often employing wordplay, metaphor, and double entendre.

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Radio apps more popular than music channels ?

"Video killed the radio start" is the tittle of Bugles music video, the first music video played by Mtv in USA. Released on 1979 and directed by Russell Mulcahy  (famous music and movie director), Video Killed The Radio Star (VKTRS) became an iconic  music video of the 80s decade.

The song presents a character who is longing for the old days, the days when we only needed radio to listen to music and music was the only thing we needed from our favorite artists. The character is complaining about how things changed and it is up to the radio generation to always remind everyone else that the radio star came before. 

VKDRS is a criticism about new technologies and the new way artists are using it to sell records and expose themselves to the world. I would dare to say that, in today's world, TV is not the number one resource for young people to find out about the latest music hits or the top 40 around the world.

Back when Mtv was born and it looked like a good business, other music tv channels followed after and along with cable TV, they were the only media where we could see music videos. The 90s was the last decade of high popularity for Mtv, they killed many shows, specially since TRL was cancelled viewers AND artists felt the big void that shows like taht left. On 2006, google bought YouTube and through the magic of the WWW, we once again found another way to watch music videos but this time whenever we wanted, we had a different option.

On 2007, Apple Inc. introduced the I phone and a whole variety of phones brands offered us countless applications (apps). The apps made possible to take our music everywhere and I am not talking about the regular downloads, I am talking about RADIO !!!! online radio.

I don't know about you (whoever is reading) but I can't listen to the songs on my phone all day long, I need variety and the interaction that radio provides me with. The radio programs are made to entertain and make us feel accompanied through our day; the voices that we listen through the speakers are our invincible companions. We are free to choose the radio that best suits us, we even can choose a radio station that plays one kind of music.

 "According to the Daily Mail, U.K. radio listenership is at a record high, with "91.6 per cent of the population" tuning in each week. 

And listenership in the U.S is also increasing at a rapid pace, according to Arbitron, a leading media and marketing research firm in D.C. Arbitron found in a recent"Infinite Dial" study that 242 million Americans currently listen to the radio each week, and online radio consumption has doubled every year since 2001." -www.huffingtonpost.com

Since the creation of radio apps, especially since the creation of I Heart Radio (2008), regular radio station created their own apps so they wouldn't lose listeners. 

I believe radio is back in demand and it would be fair to say:

" Radio apps killed the video start "

Game Of Thrones Costumes Creation

from style.time.com

Michele Clapton worked on her own fashion line and was a stylist for musicians before embarking on a successful career in costume design for television. Now she’s the Emmy-award winning designer responsible for the lavish gowns and hard-edged armor on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Clapton's team works in a vast studio space that houses the making and cutting of costumes, the armor department, and breakdown – the process of aging, patterning or making materials look worn. Clapton enjoys the collaborative nature of the space, as "someone dying leather and fabric," while the armor department is "very loud and bashing things away." She calls creating armor her favorite thing to do because it "gives craftspeople a chance to experiment."

When creating the armor for the Unsullied, Clapton had specific parameters: a silhouette that communicated strength and a helmet with a point, as specified in George RR Martin's novels. Creating one look for a vast army of extras proved challenging, especially given the physiques specific to different shooting locations: "We filmed in Morocco where extras were narrow-shouldered, and then filmed in Croatia where men were huge," Clapton said with a laugh. The piece that brought the look together was the helmet that obscures the face. "Bending the points on the helmet creates a more elegant look." Clapton explained. On set, the helmets immediately unified the group as a "true army." Clapton recalled there were "all sort of issues when we were filming because they started behaving as a pack." The crew ended up creating a new rule: "You can't put your helmet on until you get to set."

The filming schedule can prove uniquely challenging. "Sometimes we shoot the after-battle scenes before the battle scenes," Clapton explains. In these instances, the armor goes to breakdown, and gets cleaned up as filming progresses. Of course, some material gets more attention than others: "Joffrey's armor doesn't get aged at all because he doesn't use it," revealed Clapton.

Other times, the department will create multiple sets of armor. With longer scenes, Clapton's team crafts two sets in metal and one plastic set – the metal can be heavy. "Some actors enjoy the weight," Clapton shared, "but you see it on screen briefly and they're wearing it for a day and a half shooting in it." Stunts can also necessitate altercations; such was the case for Brienne's fight with the Hound. Actor Gwendoline Christie's armor could not be shared with her stuntperson because "Brienne's stuntman is a man," Clapton reveals.