December 6, 2024

Rodman Made North Korean Trip After Jordan Said No, H.B.O. Show Says

At a preview screening of the finale, the creators said they would have preferred to have recruited another former N.B.A. star, Michael Jordan, whose autograph adorns a basketball presented to Kim Jong-il, the father of North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong-un, by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright during her visit to North Korea in 2000 — when relations were comparatively warmer than they are now.

“Jordan wasn’t interested,” said Shane Smith, the founder and chief executive of the Vice Media Group, the HBO partner that conceived the North Korea trip and helped persuade the authorities there to permit it.

However, Mr. Smith said, Mr. Rodman’s ready acceptance of the idea turned out to be a blessing. “It fit right into our wheelhouse, because it’s absurd,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Rodman, who played with Mr. Jordan on the Chicago Bulls but is perhaps known more for his lip jewelry and dyed hair, became the first American to meet with Kim Jong-un, who took over after his father died in 2011. Mr. Rodman’s visit in late February and early March became a bit of an international sensation and a new source of talk-show jokes. The “Vice” finale will be broadcast on June 14.

The Kim family, which has ruled North Korea for more than six decades and considers the United States its No. 1 enemy, has a well-known love of American basketball, in particular an obsession with Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Rodman’s agent, Darren Prince, said in an e-mail that Vice and HBO had asked Mr. Rodman to participate because the younger Mr. Kim had been photographed wearing a Rodman jersey years ago when he was a student in Switzerland, and “it showed them what a big fan he was.”

The absurdity theme is integrated into the finale, which follows Mr. Rodman and three members of the Harlem Globetrotters, Alexander Weekes, Anthony Blakes and William Bullard, as they meet with North Korean officials, students and children, sometimes wowing them with basketball tricks.

Their visit came as North Korea was celebrating the successful test explosion of a nuclear device under Mr. Kim, who threatened to make nuclear war on the United States even as he was embracing Mr. Rodman as a friend.

Mr. Kim attended an exhibition basketball game with Mr. Rodman and feted all of the American visitors to an alcohol-infused banquet, where an all-girl North Korean band played the theme to “Rocky” and Mr. Rodman crooned an impromptu “My Way.”

The visitors also toured a supermarket, stocked with Coca-Cola and fresh fruit, where they were the only patrons, and observed college students at computers that showed the Google home page, though no one was using its search function.

“I felt like we were walking through a real-live ‘Truman Show,’ ” said Ryan Duffy, the Vice correspondent who narrates the finale.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/rodman-made-north-korean-trip-after-jordan-said-no-hbo-show-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: How Rodman Wound Up in North Korea, and AMC Lurches Ahead in Ratings

Vice, a print magazine that is producing a TV newsmagazine that will debut on HBO in April, made international news by arranging a basketball game featuring flamboyant former N.B.A. player Dennis Rodman and three Harlem Globetrotters players before Kim Jong-un, in North Korea, Brian Stelter writes. Mr. Rodman and Vice’s film crew are the first Americans to meet the North Korean ruler since he inherited power from his father in 2011. Pundits debated on television and online over who gained more from the interaction, Vice or the North Korean government, and reporters at the State Department wanted to know why Mr. Rodman, who has returned to the United States, was not debriefed about his visit with Mr. Kim, whom he called a “friend.” Vice had no assurance that Mr. Kim would watch the game, but were familiar with his love of basketball, especially the Chicago Bulls.

AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has devoured the ratings, to the consternation of major networks, David Carr reports. The show was the highest-rated program among viewers aged 18-49 last fall, the most coveted demographic for advertisers, and three weeks ago the undead owned Sunday night, attracting 7.7 million viewers in that age range. Even “The Talking Dead,” a spinoff chat show, drew 2.8 million viewers, more than NBC enjoyed in all of February. The show’s popularity presents a different, cable-based model for television success that depends on a steady accrual of fans, edgier programming and the presence of past seasons on streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.

Journalists covering crime and other stories in Oakland, Calif., have become the victims of brazen robberies in recent months, Carol Pogash reports. Every major television news station in the Bay Area has become a victim. In the most flagrant episode a group of men punched a KPIX-TV cameraman while he was still filming and then took off with his camera —viewers saw the reporter sign off and then an inexplicably wobbly image. The stolen cameras, both video and still, can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $50,000 and do not seem to be turning up locally.

Venerable British newspaper The Guardian has started a new advertising campaign to promote its brand and Web site to American audiences, Tanzina Vega reports. The commercials, a series of graphics created by Noma Bar that can be flipped upside-down, are designed to appear next to one another on billboards and show two sides of a hot-button issue. An ad on internet privacy, for example, shows a person sitting at a laptop above the headline “Keep Out of my Stuff”—when flipped it shows a masked face with the headline “Keep Out the Terrorists.” The ads are intended to help The Guardian catch up to The Daily Mail, a newspaper that draws a large American audience with extensive coverage of celebrity gossip.

Disney is taking a great gamble on “Oz the Great and Powerful,” Brooks Barnes reports. The film cost about $325 million to make and market, and stars James Franco, who has never anchored a mainstream production. There are few film properties as beloved as the original “The Wizard of Oz,” so Disney risks alienating audiences every step of the way. The company is under pressure to deliver a hit after flops like “John Carter” and ho-hum releases like “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.” Disney hopes “Oz” won’t fizzle like Warner Brothers’ “Jack the Giant Slayer,” which brought in just $28 million on its opening weekend.

PBS is close to deciding whether to air a weekend edition of “PBS NewsHour” for the first time since the program began in 1975, Elizabeth Jensen writes. The plan, which calls for a half-hour program on Saturdays and Sundays to be produced in New York, would give PBS a weekend news presence that it has been criticized for lacking.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/the-breakfast-meeting-how-rodman-wound-up-in-north-korea-and-amc-lurches-ahead-in-ratings/?partner=rss&emc=rss