MOBBED: Howie Mandel hosts new unscripted special MOBBED airing Thursday, March 31 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.
That's right. The Flash Mob itself, simply as entity, now has a television show, and Howie Mandel is the host. Mobbed premieres tonight, and the show basically attacks people with Flash Mobs. People have something they want to tell people, and they've decided that the way to do it is to surprise them with hundreds of people dancing and singing.
How do you turn that into a show? Well, you get the background, play up the story behind why someone would make such a decision, check out the planning, and then... Bam!
In case you aren't sold on this one, Howie was recently available to talk about the show, and maybe he can sell you on this.
By the way, I've managed to catch the first episode, and you don't want to let yourself make your conclusion just on the premise. It's actually a pretty cool show.
Host Howie Mandel and thousands of strangers will help special guests plan extraordinary surprises for friends, loved ones or co-workers. These unknowing participants will be stunned by surprise performances that lead to fantastic reveals that include a husband learning that his wife is pregnant and a marriage proposal, among others. Throughout the hour, the guests will be shown prepping for the event – rehearsing their routines and refining their speeches – all while receiving guidance from host Mandel. On the day of the big event – with the hidden cameras rolling – the detailed plan comes to fruition and suddenly explodes into a song-and-dance spectacle they are sure never to forget. What begins as a few dancers evolves into a grand-scale performance that wraps up with a life-changing announcement for the participants like nothing ever seen on TV. MOBBED airs Thursday, March 31 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.
Q - Can you tell us a bit about the show to start?
H. Mandel - Mobbed is based on an idea that’s been popular for the last 5 years online, a flash mob. They’ve been around for what seems to be a long time, and for those that don’t know what a flash mob is, it is the spontaneous eruption of song and dance by strangers in a very public place, whether it’s a mall or a train station. Billions of people have been downloading these, and I thought how can we bring this to television and why is it more than just this two-minute song and dance.
Then I thought, what if we have to convey a private message. We all have something in our lives that we need to share, whether it’s telling your boss to take this job and shove it, whether it’s proposing to a loved one or telling someone you’re pregnant, and then what if we took this very private message and, unbeknownst to the receiver of this message, took them into a very public area and relayed this very private message in the most public, extravagant way possible with a thousand people in song and dance? How would they react? How would we pull this off? How can we do this?
This is the biggest undertaking, production wise, of something without a net. There’s no script. We don’t know how it will turn out. It’s a great blending of hidden camera, hidden agenda, and musical theater all in one. It’s like Glee meets hidden camera meets Jerry Springer. It’s got every emotion possible from joy, exuberance, to drama, to awkwardness, to thrills. It’s just the most exciting television I’ve ever been part of.
Q - Was there anyone who was not pleased or really surprised?
H. Mandel - Well, everybody is incredibly surprised, and you have to watch it. I don’t want to give it away. This is a one-time special, and the idea that you want to wait and see whether we’re able to pull it off and how the person would react is the seed of the show.
MOBBED: Howie Mandel (L) and choreographers Tabitha (C) and Napoleon (R) surprise unsuspecting participants in the new unscripted special MOBBED airing Thursday, March 31 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2011 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Eric Vlasic/FOX
Q - When the show airs for the first time, what are you going to be doing? Are you going to be sitting at home watching it with family and friends? And what’s going to be going through your mind at that time?
H. Mandel - I hope everybody’s watching. I will not be with anybody. I get really nervous when a project, and especially this one, this one was such a triumphant-- just to sell this show was an amazing feat because you actually go in and you say hey I got an idea. I want to choreograph. I want to get the best choreographers. I want to get the best music people. I want to get the finest of everything. I want 26 cameras. I want to light two square blocks, two city blocks. I want cranes. I want everything that you can imagine that the most expensive exclusive television special could have. And then the normal question that a network would ask, “And then what’s going to happen?” and the answer is I don’t know. That’s what’s amazing about this show.
It was the scariest undertaking. I was so thrilled at that moment when they said okay, so thrilled, and it turned out so fantastically. It’s so scary. It’s nail-biting television, and I can’t sit and watch with anybody. I’m just hoping that people tune in and that they love it. I think that there isn’t anybody that there isn’t something in this show for, all ages. It’s fun for the whole family. If you like comedy, there’s great comedy. If you like drama, there’s great drama. If you like emotion, there’s an abundance of emotion. It’s just a great-- but I will not be with anybody. I can’t. I will be in the fetal position in a dark corner somewhere hoping and praying that everybody enjoys it.
Q - After you came up with the idea for the show, what was the next step in your involvement in firming up the format and the details? I’m sure you had to go to the highers up to be to work on it, but did you have a major input with the way the format is on the show?
H. Mandel - Absolutely, and that’s part of the show. You’ll see that in the show. You’ll see what was always missing for me on the Internet is, I would see the end result of just a bunch of people dancing, but you don’t see what goes into it. This is-- you’ll see everything, and I’m involved and on camera, along with my whole producing team of choosing someone to prank, for lack of another term, to mob, and then deciding how we’re going to do it.
And my input and pushing everybody to their limits, everybody, every department, whether it be music, whether it be the dance department, whether it be the set design department, whether it be the wardrobe department, I’m involved in every facet of it, and you will watch that.
You watch the process, which actually adds more drama to it because you see how much is involved and how many people are involved, how many hundreds of people are involved behind the scenes, let alone the thousand people that are dancing. You see that, and we’re building to something that you’re clearly aware we have no idea how it will turn out.
MOBBED: Howie Mandel and a flash mob surprise unsuspecting participants in the new unscripted special MOBBED airing Thursday, March 31 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2011 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Eric Vlasic/FOX
Q - Will you talk a little bit on the sort of emotional underpinnings of this show, of staging this big reveal for someone in many cases. I think you said most of the key participants are strangers to the folks who are being surprised? So, just talk to me, maybe from your perspective and then from the whole broader perspective about putting on this real optimistic, seems very kind of a cheerleading, do-gooder kind of event for someone. Why would you do such a thing?
H. Mandel - Well, it’s not necessarily a cheerleading, do-gooder event. It’s just an intimate, the basic concept was to take something that it is traditionally intimate and making it public and public on steroids. It’s not only, did you do it in front of everybody, but the message is being conveyed along with a thousand strangers. And not only is there a thousand strangers, but there’s a thousand strangers singing and dancing. And not only is there a thousand strangers singing and dancing, but is being recorded and for a television special. So, it goes beyond your wildest dreams.
And the idea, the emotion of it is, you don’t know how somebody’s going to react. You don’t even know -- you’re saying it’s uplifting... we don’t know that for sure. We don’t know whether, even if it’s a proposal, that somebody’s going to say yes. In fact, by choosing the, I’m using the wrong term, but by choosing the victim, we chose somebody that wasn’t cut and dry. We chose, whether it’s a proposal, we wanted somebody with somewhat of a rocky relationship, because we want to see how far we can push it and that’s me.
I’m always one that wants to push the envelope. I want it to be a little edgy. I want it to be on the edge. I don’t want to just see, if it’s a proposal, I don’t want to see two people who have been together forever and for sure she’s just going to say yes and this is going to be her dream. I want it to be a little rocky. Maybe this will throw them. Maybe this will not work out the way we would hope. That gives me the nail-biting aspect of the show. It’s not clear-cut how it’s going to end and where it’s going to go to.
By the same token, even if it is a yes on a proposal, then I want to push it even farther and say, “Well, if you say yes are you willing, in a giant musical, to get married right now?” Is somebody that ready to take that plunge? These are all very “dangerous” choices. But, we wanted some danger. We wanted some funny, and before it’s even asked and before we embark on the actual mob, there’s a hidden camera element where we put people through kind of an obstacle course of emotions before we even embark on the mob.
So, it was quite an undertaking, quite scary. But, if I feel comfortable then it usually doesn’t entertain me. If I feel like I’m on the edge and it’s somewhat awkward and somewhat uncomfortable, to me, that’s almost good entertainment.
Q - Can you talk about preparing for the event and some of the things you weren’t expecting to experience?
H. Mandel - Well, in preparing for a flash mob, number one, I don’t nor does even the top choreographers in town, know a thousand dancers that are willing to show up. So, the first order of business was how do we accumulate this many people? We want it to look bigger than anything you’ve seen on the Internet, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen on television.
So, how do we get these people? So we did things like, Napoleon and Tabitha who are renowned choreographers, made a YouTube video of the choreography and posted it. We were surprised to find that they have this huge international following. We only had 48 hours to put it together. People flew in from Canada just to dance with them, just to be choreographed by Napoleon and Tabitha.
We had no idea what would show up and how many people, how big a crowd. Depending on that, that was very loose. It’s not like-- these are not paid performers. These are just people that will show up and be part of it, part of the public. So, that was one.
Number two was: Will the person that this is all meant to give a message to, will that person show up? Anything can happen in that two days, since we decide to do it. They don’t have to show up. And then if they do show up, how will they react?
And will they just turn and run away or will they react badly or will this whole thing go south? The last lady was asking me about this very uplifting, well even something that can seem uplifting, like a proposal, can turn very dark. Somebody can be rejected. We can end up with a dance number to no one. You don’t know. And, then how will they react if they do stay? Will you get emotion? Will they become emotional? Will it be given away before? That’s also scary. There’s so many loose ends in this whole production that therein lies our fear. I didn’t sleep for almost a week just trying to put this together.
Q - I was wondering what makes a good contestant? What about the story pitch made you say we have to do that?
H. Mandel - The two things that we looked for is relatability, number one. First of all, to the people that we are going to send the message to, we want them to be somebody that hopefully the audience is vested in and wants to watch and wants to see how they turn out. If you don’t care about the people, number one, then you’re not going to care about the show.
Number two, I wanted their story to be as much as usual and relatable, I wanted it to be unusual. I wanted it to be not just from A to B. I wanted to be able to take some turns, so if you were going to propose, I wanted it to not be, I think I mentioned this before, as smooth a relationship-- I wanted it to be a little rocky. I wanted to play with that rockiness. We do, in the proposal. In this particular couple, there are some trust issues that they’ve been grappling with, so why don’t we just take those trust issues and magnify them and have fun with that. We look for some layers, and we want it to be a little bit complicated and at the same time incredibly relatable and likeable and relatable people.
Q - Hi, Howie, thank you for taking our call. I’m curious. Is there a story in particular that touched your heart while working on the show?
H. Mandel - Yes, and it would be the one that you’re going to see on Thursday night, and I don’t want to give too much away because the whole crux of the show, you know that we’re delivering a message and you know if you’ve been watching the ads at all that it’s a proposal, but I don’t want to give away what was touching and what was emotional and some of the things we did because the surprise element of the show is what makes the audience and you stay tuned to the show. There are moments when I was touched and worried that it was going wrong and going south. Will it even happen? How will she react and can we go forward? Can we go all the way?
I was always, as a producer, I was always concerned with if it goes the wrong way, and there is no wrong way, can we create a train wreck? Can we make good television out of a train wreck? And the answer is yes. So, you don’t know if you’re going to watch something incredibly uplifting or you’re going to watch a phenomenally entertaining train wreck. Nobody really knows what it is, and I don’t want to give too much away.
Q - How much research did you put into the flash mob phenomenon prior to the show?
H. Mandel - Well I’m nuts about sitting on the Internet constantly, and I’ve been a fan. The first time I think I saw flash mobs was maybe five years ago, and I’ve been informed since that networks have pitched it numerous times. In fact, they’ve even shot pilots. I don’t know that FOX has, but other networks have shot pilots and it hasn’t really worked out, and I was wondering why 2 billion people are downloading these things or watching these things, or 20 billion people worldwide, we did some research, yet, they can’t make a television show out of it. And I think the missing ingredient was a story. What is the story behind the flash mob? Is there a reason for the flash mob? How do you build the flash mob? And how are people reacting?
It’s not just about-- it’s very passive when you see it online. A bunch of people are dancing in a mall and people just walk by and go, “Oh look, people are dancing,” and they snap a picture. But, what if we got into people’s lives and it was more emotional and there was a reason for it and you watch the people behind the scenes, how much it was at stake even for us as producers to try to build this and put this on. Therein lies about three or four different levels or stories. And that’s what television is. Television is a medium where we can tell a story and that’s what we’ve done using the element of the flash mob.
Q - Of course. And finally, was there ever a time while filming that you were saying to yourself, there’s no way we are going to pull this off?
H. Mandel - Yes, in fact, in the midst of it you’ll see me say that. In the midst of the production, yes. And I didn’t sleep for a week. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done, the most emotional thing I’ve ever done, and many times throughout it I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life.
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About Marc Eastman
Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.
