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McDermott and Marcie Smolin in Culver City (Actors Circle). I also
took private lessons with Michelle Juskowitz (Casting director,
writer), took improv classes at Actorsite, and practiced auditioning at
ReelPros2. After 1 1/2 years, I booked the role on American Dreams.
Feature Editors:
Waverly Coleman,17
Natasha Labbe, 17
Massachusetts
Thirteen-year-old Sarah Ramos has already
won awards for her role as Patty Pryor on
NBC's American Dreams. In 2003 she won
the WIN (Women's Image Network) Award for
Best Actress in a drama and she was
nominated for Best Ensemble in a TV Series
for the 24th Annual Young Artists Awards.
Sarah plays the bratty younger sister in a
family dealing with the major issues of the
1960s—racism, youth culture, and the
Vietnam War—but she assured Teen Voices
that she is nothing like her character. Off the
set she's a down-to-earth teen who enjoys
soccer, horseback riding, and singing and
doesn't like waking up early. Read on to see
how Sarah's American dream is coming true
for her.
Teen Voices: How were you inspired to be an
actress?
Sarah Ramos: I was inspired to be an
actress by other great actresses. I want to be
like them, and have a lot of fun acting so that
makes me want to do it more.
TV: Who are some of your favorites?
Sarah: I like Amanda Bynes, Cameron Diaz,
and Reese Witherspoon.
TV: How did you get started on your acting
career?
Sarah: We heard this advertisement on the
radio and we went there but it turned out it
was a scam, and they wanted a lot of money.
My mom took me to get pictures done and
then we sent them out to agencies. And the
ones who liked the pictures called us and
then I auditioned for them.
TV: What is it like playing Patty on American
Dreams?
Sarah: It's a lot of fun because she's so
different from me. She's so bratty and I get to
be bratty and stuff. Everybody on American
Dreams is really nice and really funny, so it's
just a lot of fun going there every day.
TV: How would you describe your character?
Sarah: She's really smart and she's really
bratty to her sisters and she corrects her
family. She always has to be right. She thinks
her younger brother is stupid. But she can be
really nice sometimes; she's a really nice
person on the inside.
TV: How has the role changed your life?
Sarah: It's changed my life because I don't
get to go to school anymore, everyday, just
sometimes. I have a whole different lifestyle
now. I actually go to the set most days to film,
which is a lot of fun. It's changed my life in a
good way.
TV: American Dreams is set in the 60s. What
do you think you've learned from the show
about this time period in American history?
Sarah: I learned a lot about the music and TV
and about how they did stuff, and how it was
that people were discriminatory against
others. It was not just that they didn't like the
people, they did really mean things to them.
People didn't have as many rights as we do
now.
TV: What are some important themes
covered in some episodes?
Sarah: In the first episode, they showed
when President Kennedy died and how
everybody felt about that. And they also
showed the Philadelphia riots.
TV: What do you feel teens get out of
American Dreams? Do teen fans write to you
to express their feelings about the show?
Sarah: I think they get to learn about what
was happening when their parents were
growing up, which is great because their
parents probably like that and they can relate
to the characters, but they can also learn how
people acted in the 60s. I think they like to
hear from Brittany and Vanessa, who play
Meg and Roxanne, more because they're
older and more people look up to them.
TV: Based on your experience playing Patty,
what do you think are some similarities and
differences between being a teen girl now
and in the 1960s?
Sarah: I think that it's a lot the same because
you still have to go through peer pressure
and stuff, and boys, and people being mean
and it's a lot the same. It's a lot different
because we didn't have all this technology
then to help us be mean and do other teen
stuff. Instead of going online, she would read
a book.
TV: What do you like best and least about the
acting business?
Sarah: What I like least is probably that you
have to wake up really, really early
sometimes. What I like best is that it's a lot of
fun and the people that I work with right now
are really nice.
TV: We read that you have also done some
theater work. What are some similarities and
differences between acting in theater and
acting on TV?
Sarah: I've only done theater work for my
school, so it's a lot different because it's not
professional and there's not all the people.
We had one director who did a bunch of other
stuff, too, so it's a lot different doing
professional television work.
TV: What was it like winning a Best TV
Actress Award through the Women's Image
Network for your performance in American
Dreams?
Sarah: That was a lot of fun because it was
the first award I'd ever won by myself and I
got to go and I got to wear a pretty dress and
stuff. A bunch of the cast came with me, and I
just had a lot if fun.
TV: How does your family feel about your
career? Do they support you?
Sarah: They support me a lot and as long as
I'm happy, they're happy.
TV: What is your cultural background?
Sarah: I'm Hispanic and Jewish and my
grandma was Polish.
TV: We read that you have written some
situation-comedy pilots. Do you aspire to
become a writer in the future?
Sarah: When I was bored, I would just write
stuff. It was just fun to do. I think when I'm
older I might want to be a director and an
actor. I just don't know yet.
TV: What advice would you give to a teen
woman who aspires to be an actress?
Sarah: Make sure it's what you really want to
do because it takes a lot of time and it's a lot
of hard work. It's harder than it seems and
you have to miss a lot of school and you have
to go on a lot of auditions and you just have
to really want to do it.
http://www.teenvoices.
com/issue_current/tvarts_interview.html
California area and I have one brother.
American Dreams, is Friends. I still
watch it on DVDs and in reruns.
was not working, I attend the high
school at public school.
Meredith Wechter at ICM
(International Creative Management).
my friends, playing soccer and
dancing.
TV plot lines
By GLENN GARVIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
3/16/2005
When devious teenager Patty Pryor won a big
college scholarship in an essay contest in
Wednesday's episode of NBC 1960s family
drama "American Dreams," viewers could be
forgiven a certain amount of confusion.
Pryor and the nun schoolteacher who
furiously orders her to the confessional box
for cheating are fictional characters. But the
essay contest was real - it was won last
week by a San Francisco teenager who
plans to go to Stanford or Harvard - and,
most important, so was its sponsor,
Campbell's Soup, which spent millions of
dollars to work its tomato soup into the plot of
"American Dreams."
"We absolutely believe we got our money's
worth," said Campbell's spokesman John
Faulkner. "We got 40,000 entries to our
contest, and we got the attention of a teenage
audience that it's hard to make contact with.
Our overall condensed-soup business is up
for the first half of the fiscal year, and we
certainly attribute a big part of it to the
promotion we did with "American Dreams.'"
Product placement - slipping a name-brand
product into the background of a scene - has
been common in movies since the first coin
was plunked at a nickelodeon more than a
century ago. (Check out the Lever Bros. soap
that appears in several 1890s features by the
pioneering Lumiere brothers.)
But now advertisers, driven by
commercial-free, video-on-demand services
and digital recording devices such as TiVo
that make it easier for viewers to zip by ads,
are moving their goods into television shows.
And products such as Campbell's Soup are
no longer mere props on the kitchen table,
but major plot elements:
"American Dreams" built nine episodes
around the Campbell's Soup essay contest
and one more around a Ford Mustang, a
father's present to a young Marine returning
from a harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam.
"Nip/Tuck," the FX cable network's drama of
two plastic surgeons in the midst of
middle-aged meltdown, did its own
commercial-free episode sponsored by XM
Satellite Radio. One surgeon briefly leaves
his blind girlfriend in a car equipped with the
radio, which she turns up so loud that she
can't hear thieves stealing the wheels.
On "The Apprentice," the NBC show where
Donald Trump puts contestants through a
business boot camp, participants are
assigned projects like devising a new flavor
of Crest toothpaste or a new Mattel toy.
Product placement has become so common
on television that Nielsen Media Research
has launched a new service to keep track of
it. Just watching the broadcast networks and
not cable, Nielsen's professional couch
potatoes already spotted nearly 37,000
placements this TV season, on a pace to
easily surpass the 54,000 of last season.
"What advertisers are looking for is to break
through the clutter," said Marianne Gambelli,
executive vice president of sales and
marketing at NBC Universal, the network's
parent company. "It's not just TiVo and other
new technology, but a reaction to the whole
television environment of 800 channels or
whatever."
Not everybody is a fan of the trend.
"Embedded advertising is totally deceptive,"
said Gary Ruskin, executive director of
Commercial Alert, a Ralph Nader-backed
group that is trying to wipe out the practice.
"TV is increasingly becoming an infomercial
medium."
Ruskin's group has petitioned both the
Federal Trade Commission and the Federal
Communications Commission to put legal
curbs on product placement. But network
officials, TV producers and advertising
executives all say that's impossible.
"TiVo is the ultimate monkey wrench in
advertising," said Jonathan Prince, the
executive producer of "American Dreams." "I
don't know if TiVo or video-on-demand is
going to make over the universe. But we have
to believe the future of television is going to
include some models without 30-second
advertising spots."
The belief that using real products serves a
creative purpose as well as an economic
one is popular in Hollywood, says Gary
Mezzatesta, president and chief executive
officer of UPP En- tertainment Marketing; it
specializes in product placement.
"That part of it's been going on a long time,"
Mezzatesta said. "There was product
placement on "Seinfeld' - remember the
episode where Kramer dropped a Junior Mint
into a surgical patient? - and even way back
in (the early '90s drama) "thirtysomething.'
The more realistic the stories are, and the
deeper the characters, usually the more they
use real products. The whole goal is to
connect with the viewer."
Which, he adds, is what advertisers want to
do, too.
"Television advertising has never been a
perfect medium," Mezzatesta argued. "In
general, the greater your intelligence level,
the less you focus on commercials. That's
been a reality forever. But since TiVo came
out, advertisers have been confronted with
the false premise they've based everything
on."
"All the millions of dollars poured into
30-second spots are now really being
questioned."
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/200503
16/1063569.asp
Nostalgia
By KATE AURTHUR
Published: March 9, 2005
NY Times
Jonathan Prince, the creator of "American
Dreams," the family drama that takes place
during the 1960's, recently recounted how he
pitched the show to NBC: "I said, 'This is
about 10 years in our country's history, from
Camelot to Watergate.' "
The pitch continued, "What did we lose and
what did we learn in those 10 years?"
That was in the summer of 2001. Now, after
a five-week hiatus, the show resumes its
third season but in a new time period: tonight
at 8 , Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central
time. Mr. Prince, in a telephone interview
from Los Angeles, said he had always
imagined that "American Dreams" would be
a topical show. Its plots would dramatize the
whiplash-inducing changes of the
1960's before a nostalgic backdrop of the
music of "American Bandstand," on which
two teenage characters are dancers. He
planned to end the pilot episode with
the main characters - a Philadelphia family -
hearing the news that President John F.
Kennedy had been assassinated.
After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Prince said, he
realized that the show would no longer be
rooted in nostalgia: that in the series's fall
2002 debut, the mourning in the aftermath of
Kennedy's death would remind viewers
of the days following the terrorist attacks the
previous year. "After 9/11, suddenly there
were people saying, 'I know what it's like to
have that sense of loss in our country,' " he
said. With this new idea of making "American
Dreams" reflect today's political landscape,
Mr. Prince went forward. " 'A nation
grieves' became the first parallel," he said.
But not the last. In its two and a half years on
television, "American Dreams" has illustrated
the struggles of the 1960's - over roiling
issues like civil rights, women in the
workplace and abortion - through their effect
on the show's characters. Throughout, the
central character, Meg Pryor (Brittany
Snow), has continued to dance on "American
Bandstand," which, on the series, stands
apart from the political turbulence she's
witnessing.
Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC
Entertainment, said
that narrative touchstone had allowed
"American Dreams" to achieve a tonal
balance between comfort and
cultural disarray. "It started in a relatively
benign place and has had to evolve with the
chronology of history," he said in a recent
telephone interview. "It's true to the tumult of
the era, but it still leaves you with a warm
feeling."
The show was moved from the Sunday slot it
had occupied since its debut because after
two years of decent ratings, it lost a chunk of
its audience last fall to ABC's "Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition."
Mr. Reilly said he was committed to giving
"American Dreams" a chance, having paired
it with another topical drama, "The West
Wing." "Anytime you have a show of quality
that is also advertising-friendly - and there
are several significant advertisers that
have really backed the show - that's a
business we can live with even if it's not a
major hit by the numbers," he said.
In the last year, the show has focused on the
Vietnam War, both overseas and on the
home front, as the conflict expanded in 1965
and 1966. Meg's brother, J. J. (Will Estes),
became a marine and viewers watched
his experience in Vietnam. In turn, worried
about his enlistment, the high school student
Meg was swept up in the burgeoning antiwar
movement.
In telling this 40-year-old story, Mr. Prince
said, the series "became the most
contemporary show on the network." He
listed the analogous threads between then
and now, as he has written them into the
show: "This nasty little war we're fighting in
'63 and '64, like the war in Iraq, starts to feel
like this isn't going to be a quickie. You have
a country that's divided. And if you don't agree
with the Texas president, you're
un-American."
To chronicle a realistic story about a soldier's
experience in Vietnam, as well as how that
reflected on Iraq, Mr. Prince said, he had to
send J. J. away for a length of time that made
him uncomfortable as a producer. But when
it became clear that the United States military
was not leaving Iraq anytime soon, he
decided it was safe to put J. J. in combat for a
year to show "the grunt's-eye view," he said.
In episodes that began last January, J. J.
was in Saigon and the Cambodian jungle,
held captive, wounded and eventually sent
home.
Sgt. Maj. James Dever, the show's military
consultant and a retired marine who served
in Vietnam, said in a telephone interview
from California that he brought in as extras
marines who had served in Iraq, to make the
action scenes realistic. "Nobody has really
shown the earlier version of Vietnam,"
Sergeant Major Dever said of "American
Dreams." A lot of the Vietnam veterans
I've talked to love that it shows how things
were changing at home."
Through the series's family prism, what was
changing at home was Meg's political
awareness. In the finale of the second
season, she was arrested at a protest.
Last fall, she directed a school play, "Henry
V," and turned it into an antiwar parable. Mr.
Prince chose Meg as the activist character
because "when Meg is screaming about the
war, it comes from her body and her heart
because of her brother," he said.
"It's not an intellectual treatise about Abbie
Hoffman and the boys at Brandeis," he
added. "We've seen that a million times."
Mr. Prince described his political bent without
hedging: "I'm a staunch left-leaning liberal
Democrat." But he said the show wasn't
meant to
reflect those views. "The red states think that
this is their show, because it's about family
values," he said. "And the blue states think
it's their show because it's about a sister
protesting an unjust war that her brother's
fighting in. I'm content to live on both sides of
the aisle."
He will need viewers of all party affiliations to
watch "American Dreams" for the rest of the
season if it is to be renewed. He said he was
hopeful. "I've produced a lot of shows, and
I've had a lot of failures," he said. "And I know
how and when to give up. With this one, I
can't give up."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/arts/televi
sion/09drea.html