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Greenlit: Chained to My Ex, MSNBC
Chained to My Ex - Highlighting a growing trend, this series follows men and women who find themselves miserable but stuck for many reasons including emotional ties, children and financial limitations. Being married and living together can be tough. Being divorced and still living together… pure hell.
The first episode follows ex-couple CeCe and Christian as they go through the day-to-day of living together in a torturous limbo. Cece says she is ready to move on but can’t bring herself to leave her unemployed ex-husband who has no means of supporting himself. Meanwhile, Christian is hoping that holding onto CeCe will convince her to reconsider their relationship. As a step to resolution, CeCe and Christian meet with a mediator – the no-nonsense Judge Michele Lowrance, author of “The Good Karma Divorce” and a former divorce attorney with more than 15 years of experience with troubled couples, to set boundaries and make plans to help them move on with their lives.
Channel: MSNBC
Producer: MSNBC / MadJack Entertainment
TX: 23rd December 2012
Source:
I have worked in the media - radio & TV, production and post-production - for more than fifteen years. I have extensive experience as a TV development producer, and have originated, developed, written and pitched proposals for award-winning documentaries, docu-dramas and interactive TV events for a range of UK and US channels, including BBC, Discovery, TLC, Travel Channel and Science Channel. I'm the founder of TVMole.com, a website that provides industry intelligence to help TV professionals and aspiring filmmakers get their programme ideas commissioned. I've written two books for Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury: Give Me the Money and I'll Shoot! Finance Your Factual TV/Film Project (2012) Greenlit: Developing Factual / Reality TV Ideas From Concept to Pitch (2010) I've produced industry panels for Televisual's Intelligent Factual Festival (2010) and am a regular speaker at universities and film festivals (e.g. Sheffield Doc/Fest, Open City Docs Fest, Northern Nights Film Festival, Televisual Intelligent Factual Festival, Broadcast Video Expo). I've served on several film festival juries, including: FD4W International Film Festival, WFTV Awards, Northern Nights Film Festival and TV Collective Film Night at Portobello Film Festival.
Tags: MSNBC Discussion
5 comments for “Greenlit: Chained to My Ex, MSNBC”
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Okay, here’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, straight from the horses mouth: (Christian)
While the Producers did a great job-at least from what I can see from the trailers, and I consider them well-meaning friends, nevertheless, their limited knowledge of the back-story, behind the scenes facts and other factors, made for a slightly skewed version of this particular spiritual gestalt. Here’s a more accurate, insider/participants account of the situation:
They wrote:
“The first episode follows ex-couple CeCe and Christian as they go through the day-to-day of living together in a torturous limbo. Cece says she is ready to move on but can’t bring herself to leave her unemployed ex-husband who has no means of supporting himself. Meanwhile, Christian is hoping that holding onto CeCe will convince her to reconsider their relationship. As a step to resolution, CeCe and Christian meet with a mediator – the no-nonsense Judge Michele Lowrance, author of “The Good Karma Divorce” and a former divorce attorney with more than 15 years of experience with troubled couples, to set boundaries and make plans to help them move on with their lives.
Here is my response:
“The first episode follows ex-couple CeCe and Christian as they go through the day-to-day of living together in a torturous limbo. ”
—It’s possible that Ce Ce saw it as torturous but many others did not see it that way-all of our neighbors and my self and many friends saw us as a mature adult Christian couple making every effort to salvage whatever was vital and valuable in our friendship and/or marriage, to do everything possible to make it healthy, give it a second chance and live in harmony while we allowed time to heal and reveal what God’s plan was and is, for our lives. During this “torturous” time, Ce Ce had a live in gourmet chef, chauffeur , personal asst, mechanic and social media guru in me when I wasnt looking for work, I devoted every waking second to addressing her various needs. We co-own a film project and website as well and were in talks to leverage this show as a way of developing our own ideas. During this time, she worked on a studio lot- a job that I (Christian) found her and insisted, to her protests, that she go on the interview . During this time, she and I ate gourmet dinners w wine and sometimes candlelight and once in a while even watched movies like The Hunger Games and Friends with Benefits together. The night before she moved, on Sep 28, we shared just a such a beautiful warm evening, had an amazing dinner with wine and she admitted in near tears how much she was going to miss me and the gorgeous apt we had shared for two years…hardly what most people would call “torturous.” During this time,
Ce Ce and I, Christian, hiked together almost every day and on one hike,
Ce Ce saved Christian (me) from walking on a rattlesnake that the park ranger called “extremely venomous” and that, with my medical conditions, could have easily been fatal. yes, it was a form of “limbo” but I think a better choice of words would have been “as they go through the day to day struggles of going to work, looking for work and praying for some kind of healing to occur.”
Regardless of what Ce Ce spoke on camera, in private, she has always told me that she was and is open to a relationship re-created, after some pretty major psycho-spiritual transformative. healings have occurred (which are happening even now) leading possibly to a second marriage-a marriage of two very different people who’ve learned through the fires of divorce and separation, how to truly value, cherish, love and take care of another person-things we were completely incapable of first time around (as obviously 98% of Hollywood marriages also are)
“Cece says she is ready to move on but can’t bring herself to leave her unemployed ex-husband who has no means of supporting himself.”
–This makes it sound like I am and/or was, crippled. I in fact, have multiple means of supporting myself. THis year, I earned $35 for a Nestle Resource Water promotion, several thousand dollars for a hip Silverlake bath remodel job that I designed, among a few “odd jobs.” however, five out of five of the jobs and/or projects I was offered in August, for example, fell through or were cancelled. In the famous words of James Carville, “its’ the economy, stupid.” Harvard grads are applying at Blockbuster, times are tough. Like millions of others, I’m not incapable of taking care of myself-I just need a break!
“Meanwhile, Christian is hoping that holding onto CeCe will convince her to reconsider their relationship. ”
Yes, I was and still am “holding on” but am doing so not solely of my own volition-I am being coached by several men that share my devout Christian faith, one of whom is a best selling Author living in Tel Aviv, Israel. His book, “Hold on Loosely” has been something of a manual for me through this time. In the book, he teaches from real life examples from his career as a top women’s tennis coach. He teaches how to find the “sweet spot” where anything is possible-the place where we are not resigned to defeat but neither are we clinging in desperation to our perceived losses or threats…I was also advised by leadership at Reality L.A.(a Hollywood Evangelical Church) – and a close woman friend whom I met at a divorce support group, not to give up so quickly on the relationship since there was no adultery, cheating, physical abuse, substance abuse or other issues that would make reconciliation unlikely or impossible.
I was advised to move ahead one day at a time in the faith and hope that healing is always the better option than becoming just another divorce statistic.
correction, “I earned $35/hour for the Nestle Resource Water promotion”
Good luck Christian.
Show looks good from the promo’s I’ve seen.
And what did you expect, it’s a show that was more about making the guys look like wimps, losers, or the bad apple. It’s kind of the norm.
Hey Christian,
Do you still have some of your art listed? I liked some of them, just curious. Ty.. tyco-9@tds.net
Christian, it is obvious you need serious therapy. It seems fairly obvious to the rest of the world that you are fighting your own homosexual tendencies, which is perfectly normal. Your speech and hair reveal that you are a boy living in a man’s body, a peter pan complex very common in in the closet repressed gay men. You are clinging onto Cece because she represents to the world the image you think you should be.
Sadly, you are a parasite. In your own words you saw how vulnerable and easy to manipulate Cece was so you used that to your advantage and pimped her for money. Stop crying like a bitch and get a job.