Evergreen family's TV debut a triumph

by Stephen Knapp

The O'Brien Family Band, Evergreen's premier source of authentic Western music, can add one more star to their crowded wall of fame, and this one's a doozy: network television.

Monday night audiences got a chance to meet the O'Briens up-close and personal on Fox Network's hit show "Trading Spouses," a reality program that contrives to insert Mom A into the home of Mom B and vice verse for a week.

Specifically, Jeanette O'Brien traded places with Michelle Shackleford of Virginia. While Jeanette played mommy to Craig Shackleford and his three daughters in their palatial tidewater manse, Michelle spent the week on the road with Dan, Kyle and Maura O'Brien as they sailed the Kansas prairie in a 40-foot privacy-free motor home.

To commemorate their small-screen debut, the O'Briens threw an intimate and relaxed opening-night gala, inviting dozens of friends to join them in the cozy dining room of Bloomin' Idiots restaurant on Meadow Drive. Dinner was served at 6 p.m., an hour before the broadcast. As the guests tucked into their suppers, there was an electric undercurrent of anticipation in the room, and the barest trace of anxiety.

The O'Briens had seen no part of the finished product and had no idea what to expect. Whether portrayed as saints or simpletons, they would find out in a very public way.

Trading Spouses has a national audience of about 9 million, and thousands of families have applied to be on the show. So how did the O'Briens make the cut? By accident, really.

Last October, the Trading Spouses' producers, always on the lookout for something new or novel, decided it would be interesting to have a family band on the show. Somebody sat down at their computer, typed in "family band" and voila! The O'Brien's web site popped right up. They called the family and strongly suggested they register without delay, advice the O'Briens acted on with dispatch.

In November, the program's production company, called Rocket Science, flew the family to Los Angeles for a meet-and-greet and to attend to the voluminous paperwork required. Met at the airport by a limousine, the O'Briens were installed in a five-star hotel and, for three exciting days, given the legendary Hollywood "star treatment." The entire family was subjected to numerous interviews to determine their individual suitability for the program, and extensive background checks were performed.

"I can't imagine an FBI background check being more extensive," Dan said. The O'Briens were given about 10-days' notice before filming started.

With Michelle Shackleford tightly stowed in the motor home, the weirdness could begin. A crew of about 70 was assigned to follow them for the week, Kyle said, although they had constant, daily contact with only 10 to 15. Several cameras were deployed, each filming for more than 18 hours each day and between them producing hundreds of hours of raw footage.

The crew, an Aloha-shirt, jeans-clad bunch, was a delight, Kyle said. "They were all young, upbeat, LA-style people, and totally professional." Technically, the family was not supposed to interact with their watchers but, in such close quarters, familiarity was inevitable. "We got to know them better than we should have." To keep them straight, Kyle and Maura gave each a nickname, such as French Fry, Big Mon and Button.

The whole family was surprised and amused by the producer's habit of religiously "Greeking" everything in sight. This refers to the practice of routinely tearing through the cupboards and altering or obliterating the logos on all commercial products lest they inadvertently appear on camera. Less amusing, each person was fitted with a microphone at the throat and a power pack worn at the waist. "The pack got very hot," Kyle said, "so you had to move it around a lot."

After living cheek-by-jowl with the O'Briens for a solid week, the young, LA hipsters quickly and unceremoniously high-tailed it back to the coast. "I actually felt lonely," Kyle said. "No one cares if you take out the trash, anymore."

At 7 o'clock Monday evening, when Trading Spouses started, the crowd at Bloomin' Idiots fell silent. Throughout the first segment, every eye was glued to the television as everyone in the room tried to get a sense of how the O'Briens would fare in the heavily-edited broadcast. The first commercial brought wild applause and the rest of the hour was punctuated by screams of laughter and enthusiastic ovations. It was a triumph.

If anyone doubts that Hollywood trades in illusion, they should talk to the O'Brien family. On Monday night's screening of Trading Spouses, much that seemed obvious was, in fact, just not so.

For starters, though it appeared that Michelle Shackleford had trouble adjusting to life in the motor home with Dan, Kyle and Maura, the three O'Briens tell a different story. "She was great," Maura says. "We got along so well. There was never any tension at all." Dan couldn't agree more. "She was a really good sport," he says. "She was up for anything." According to Kyle, the terrible jitters Michelle experienced before performing with the O'Briens in Winfield, Kan., were a bit overblown. "She was actually really into it."

For her part, Jeanette's stretch with the Shacklefords was equally genial. The initial portrayal of the Shackleford daughters as holy terrors was a misrepresentation, Jeanette says. "They were really the most beautiful, most wonderful girls. I wanted to pick them up and take them home with me." As to father Craig Shackleford, during the broadcast viewers likely got the impression that he and Jeanette were locked in perpetual conflict. "We actually got along really well," Jeanette says. "There were never any problems between us."

By way of explanation, Dan points out that the producers are able to cull more than 500 hours of tape to create whatever impressions they choose. "They made everything a little more dramatic than it really was."

For the O'Briens, the night was the capstone on a very interesting, exciting and rewarding affair. "It was," Dan said, "a completely positive, wonderful experience."

To learn more about the O'Brien Family Band, visit www.obrienfamilyband.com.

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