Brad Bell (producer)

Brad Bell
Bell speaking at The Paley Center for Media, premiering season two of Husbands
Born	Bradley C. Bell (1985-10-04) October 4, 1985 Dallas, Texas, United States
Other names	Cheeks
Occupation	Producer, screenwriter, actor, musician, comic book author
Years active	2006–present

Bradley C. "Brad" Bell (born October 4, 1985) is an American television producer and writer, actor, musician, and comic book author. He is best known as co-creator and showrunner of the acclaimed sitcom Husbands, in which he also stars.^[1] Bell has also worked as Consulting Producer for VH1’s Pop-Up Video,^[2] released three electronic EPs on iTunes, and penned the six-issue digital comic book series Husbands: The Comic for Dark Horse Comics.^[3][4]

Early life

Brad Bell was born in Dallas, Texas. Early on, Bell identified as an artist, spending his childhood convinced that the road to success would start in Los Angeles.^[5] Upon moving to Hollywood, Bell studied film at Los Angeles City College and later became a graduate of The Second City Training Center.^[6] He is openly gay.^[5]

Career

With an entrepreneurial spirit, Bell was led to challenge the established avenues of Hollywood. In an interview with Back Stage, he explained, "I couldn't help but wonder, is there a way to circumvent the conventional path?" In 2008, he started his own YouTube channel, on behalf of which Bell created the "sugar coated satirical persona" named 'Cheeks'.^[7] As Cheeks, Bell wrote and performed critical commentary on celebrities, pop culture and politics. A fanbase was rapidly growing and Bell's reputation began to take form.^[5] As a satirist, Bell follows a philosophy described by organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize, "first make people laugh, and then make them think".^[8][9] One journalist writes of Bell's persona, "under all the glitter and glitz, Cheeks is an incisive, intelligent talent who couches his social criticism in showbiz flair, because he knows what works".^[10] Though Cheeks' signature style of exuberance led some to deride the persona as a stereotype, Bell counters, "[If] you’re not going to watch me long enough to figure out that there’s more to me than my fabulousness, you’re of the exact same mentality as the people you’re worried are going to judge you based on my behavior".^[11]

Husbands

Bell caught the attention of television writer Jane Espenson when she discovered his pointed dissection of Carrie Prejean’s public response to a question of marriage equality, during the 2009 Miss USA pageant.^[12] Speaking to Out in August 2012, Espenson said, "I was curious -- who was this person who had at his age accumulated writing skills that had taken me 20 years?"^[13] The two developed a friendship that eventually resulted in creating the newlywed sitcom Husbands.^[14] The first season of Husbands was shot in August 2011, and premiered to critical praise,^[15] including The New Yorker's first ever review of an online series, in which Bell was hailed as "the standout, a confident flibbertigibbet who regards himself as a modern Blanche DuBois".^[16]

The "crackling cultural commentary" of Bell's early YouTube work echoed in Husbands,^[13] lauded by Time magazine as a "much more complex and interesting story about changing mores and the conflict between individuals and social causes than, say, the pilot of NBC’s The New Normal".^[17]

Espenson–a frequent collaborator of Joss Whedon–noted, "Brad has the showrunner gene", and that Bell's work as an Executive Producer on Husbands reminded her of the famed Avengers director,^[18] adding, "If there is a Joss Whedon among us, it's Brad Bell".^[19] Whedon himself has been a "fan of [Brad]", since Bell's performance in The Golden Guys, an adaptation of The Golden Girls with young men in the leads, hosted at Whedon's residence during a private party.^[20]

Bell wrote an article in The Huffington Post about unoriginal aspects of storytelling, saying "Maybe instead of avoiding the cliché, we can somehow reinvent the wheel", to which he concludes, "Husbands, both as a sitcom and as a comic book, embraces clichés, stereotypes and tropes to make a point: Most old ideas are only as meaningless or as negative as their context. Few of these notions are intrinsically detrimental, as the judgements we attach to them exist only in our minds".^[21]

He also spoke about the series' place in the entertainment milieu.

Husbands lives in the newest medium for entertainment because, along with proving that American audiences are more progressive than broadcast networks might think, the show also demonstrates that viewers are happy to consume entertainment in a new medium, which is actually an old medium reinvented, which is actually the entire conceptual frame of Husbands as a sitcom. So it’s all quite poetic really.^[22]

Television paradigm

Bell originated the concept that the word "television" is better suited for the Internet than traditional broadcast media, and was invited to speak at Google on August 17, 2012, to elaborate on his observation. "Television is a hybrid word, Greek and Latin. 'Tele' meaning far and then 'vision' meaning, well obviously, vision...So, when you think of NBC, the 'far vision' is L.A. to New York...On the other hand, you upload something to YouTube and within minutes... Tokyo". In addition to this linguistic examination, Bell pointed out that television is defined as a telecommunication medium. Injecting some humor to his point, he goes on to say, "As anyone who's ever been in a relationship knows, communication is a two-way street". Because communication requires both parties to interact with each other, Bell reasons that the Internet better fulfills the criteria for television than a broadcast platform. He sums this idea up by concluding, "the Internet is more television than television".^[23][24]

Multimedia artist

Bell's work in music started in 2008, co-writing and performing the title track for horror short film Side Effect.^[25] This success was followed by the release of three EPs; The Boy From Venus (2008),^[26][27] Glambition (2009)^[28][29] and T.C.M.C. (2010),^[30][31] along with a collection of ringtones, 2009’s Put a Ringtone On It.^[32]

Production credits

Accolades

References

External links

• Brad Bell at the Internet Movie Database