Was it ALL a LIE?! Body Language Analyst REACTS to Dan Schneider's "Quiet on Set" Apology

watching over the past two nights was very difficult me facing my past behaviors um some of which are embarrassing and that I regret and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology what's going on everyone welcome to the behavioral Arts my name is Spidey and I used my degree in sociology and psychology my certifications in criminal interrogation and Body Language analysis and over 10 years experience as an award-winning Mentalist to teach people behavioral analysis and practical psychology on stages and television shows all over the world in a recent docu series titled quiet on set the Dark Side of kids TV several Child Actors and adult employees spoke up against the atrocities taking place behind the scenes on some of the most popular kids TV shows of the90s the accusations ranged from hostile work environments to inappropriate onset Behavior to acts of child sa for which numerous employees were arrested and charged one of the main topics of the docu series were the inappropriate behaviors of Dan Schneider who is a Creator writer and showrunner of some of the big biggest hits in kids TV history and as a response to the documentary Dan Schneider did an interview where he talked about some of these accusations but what do his body language facial expressions and most importantly word choice reveal and what is the one thing that really caught my attention in the way that Dan Schneider communicates let's Dive Right In now before we look at these clips I quickly want to talk about what the accusations against Dan Schneider were specifically for those who haven't seen the documentary so the accusations can be divided into three categories the the first is creating a hostile work environment so a lot of people said that on set he was very impatient very short-tempered he often made threats to employees who didn't comply and just generally very unpleasant to work with he'll call people idiots buffoons stupid dumb sloppy careless and spineless for the crew if you messed up even if it was a minor mistake Dan would be someone who would be willing to humiliate you or fire you on the spot the situation got so stressful on the set of Sam and Cat Nickelodeon launched an internal investigation the second category is inap appropriate behaviors on set specifically towards female employees so there are a lot of stories of how he would take women away from what they were doing that were really busy to massage him on set or how he would have them yell out inappropriate words even if they were uncomfortable with it cuz he thought it was funny and there's even an instance where a writer named Christy Straton was ing a story drawing on her own experience in the writer's room and Dan made her tell the story in a way that's extremely compromising and embarrassing and Dan was just said you know what would be funny if you leaned over the table and acted like you were beinged and told that story about high school she said No at first and then he was kind of like oh come on come on it'll be so funny just do it it'll be so funny do you remember Dan asking you to um act out being I'd rather not I'd rather not I and finally the third category is that for several shows he wrote and directed content where kids were put in very inappropriate and suggestive situations now I guess the best way to tell you what that content is is to show it to you but when I saw it in the doc series it made me feel uncomfortable and I was like w that shouldn't have a platform that shouldn't have aired so I don't want to play those on my platform and I'm specifically thinking of stuff he filmed with Ariana Grande where she was in her bedroom and there were these scenes where she was like milking a potato or uh pouring water on herself and it was just done in a very suggestive and inappropriate way and that's just one example okay so that said let's dive into the interview so here it is Dan how are you I'm okay I'm okay um I really appreciate you reaching out and giving me the opportunity to talk to you about uh what we saw over the last two nights I'm really glad you're here because I believe this is important for sure uh we've got a lot of things to unpack um but before I dive into my list of topics that I'd like to discuss is there anything you'd like to start off with absolutely watching over the past two nights was very difficult me facing my past behaviors um some of which are embarrassing and that I regret and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology let's talk about the massages okay watching the content yesterday it was disturbing it was wrong it was wrong that I ever put anybody in that position it was a wrong thing to do I'd never do it today I'm embarrassed that I did it then I apologize to anybody that I ever put in that situation let's look at Dan's non-verbal communication to try to get a baseline for his General mood at the top of this conversation so a couple of things first you'll notice how he's not comfortably sitting back in the chair he's kind of leaning forward now the chair itself might have something to do with that I feel like in that chair if you were to sit back it would look way too casual and unprofessional so they do kind of have to sit forward but that's not the only thing you'll also notice that he's kind of hunched forward a little his feet are kind of crossed one over the other so things are kind of kept together and his hands are in a downward steeple position so the steeple is this and usually it's a display of confidence we often see CEOs or people in positions of power talk with their hands like this but his is different than that it's down here tucked between his legs in the pelvic area which is an area that we get very protective of subconsciously when we're feeling defensive and he's not deviating from that much every now and then his hand will come up and gesture something and it'll go right back down there he doesn't have these big animated gestures but to compensate for that he is quite animated with his eyebrows you'll notice very often they're up here very often you emphasize with them they're dancing a lot and eyebrows are something I look for a lot especially in people where they don't move much but his Baseline is those eyebrows are constantly moving with stuff in the beginning when he's asked how he's doing we see his eyes scanning down here a little as he goes um I really appreciate you reaching out and I believe what's going on here is he's kind of going to this script that he has and he's going to do this several times throughout the interview where he kind of grows this thing that we sense it was important for him to say this this way I mean after all he's a writer so it makes sense that there are certain things that he said okay you got to say this this way I think this is one of them I appreciate you reaching out so I think he wants right off the top the viewer to know that Boogie came to him like Boogie decided to talk to him he's not the one who came to Boogie and said hey man listen help me out here I really need you to help me present a different narrative and he's kind of sending this signal to say see I still have people who are on my side and want to hear from me so I think that's why he wanted to start off with I appreciate you reaching out notice how when he says I'm embarrassed I did it back then we see a scrunching of the face so the nose crinkles like this the mouth scrunches and the eyes kind of squint down like this this is the universal expression of disgust anywhere in the world people recognize this as a feeling of disgust we're trying to close everything cuz we don't want to experience this disgusting thing more I'm embarrassed that I did it then now there's no way for me to look at that one isolated moment and tell you if this is real disgust that he's feeling or if this is someone who's very animated with the face using this as an illustrator to illustrate how disgusted he feels like we might see a Storyteller do it's hard to tell the difference in a scenario like this so let's zoom out and look at context right the question I'm asking myself is about the timing of this so if you were really embarrassed if you thought about this and how unacceptable it was and how apologetic you are why did you have to wait for this documentary to come out to express that I haven't seen any testimony or stories online of any employees of his who were contacted at any point before this documentary with then saying listen I've been thinking about the way I behaved on set it was completely unacceptable and I'm truly sorry about that so is he genuinely disgusted by his behaviors well let's move forward with one important question in mind are we going to get specific accountability at any point and move away from these broader ambiguous apologies so we're going to look at more Clips with that in mind but before we do do me a huge favor hit that subscribe button turn those notifications on for more behavioral analysis and practical psychology content Dan talk to me about the writer's room from what I saw not cool no no and I I don't mean to cut you off but if I can cut right to the chase let me just say no writer should ever feel uncomfortable in any writer's room ever period the end no excuses um most TV writers comedy writers have been in writer rooms and they are aware that a lot of times there are inappropriate jokes made and inappropriate topics come up uh but the fact that I participated in that especially when I was leading the room room um It embarrasses me I shouldn't have done it um in the writer room there's no doubt that sometimes those jokes went beyond the pale and I said things that went too far or made practical jokes that went too far and um that was wrong and that that was because you know I was an inexperienced producer I was immature wouldn't happen today but um I'm just really sorry it happened okay right in the beginning with that question we have one of the best examples we've seen of the universal facial expression of contempt so the research has shown that pretty much everywhere in the world people recognize this expression as a feeling of contempt moral superiority or looking down on someone so it's a scrunching on one side of the face and sometimes it looks like this and sometimes it looks like that exactly the way Boogie did it what's really interesting about this one is we also have what we call looking a scance this is where we kind of turn our head a little and look at someone with the side of our eye and it's very consistent with contempt we even see just a little bit of that judgmental squint so all these things together is a perfect example of feeling contempt and at the same time he's saying not cool so there is Judgment there there is a moral superiority there is looking down on these behaviors now this is where we see Dan the writer come out a little bit cuz he says no no and I'm going to cut you off and we see at the same time a stop gesture the hand comes up like this and hand orientation is not Universal we see different orientations and communication in different parts of the world but bringing the hand up like this almost almost anywhere in the world is a sign of negation trying to stop someone or trying to get someone's attention which are pretty much the same thing and this is Dan going no no this is important I'm going to cut you off because I really want to say no writer should ever feel uncomfortable this is important for me to jump in at this point but what's interesting about this is he's not cutting him off at all Boogie was done with his question he said then talk to me about the writer's room because based on what I saw not cool I mean what more was he going to say there he said talk to me about this at most he could have added like so what are your thoughts on that but that's it it was pretty much done the question Dan talked to me about the writer's room from what I saw not cool no no and I I don't mean to cut you off but if I can cut right to the chase let me just say furthermore there were moments within that question where he could have actually cut him off right when Boogie said then talk to me about the writer's room before he went on to the next part that would have been a good opportunity for then to cut him off and go let me cut you off right there what I did in that writer's room was unacceptable he pretty much waited for him to finish his question and said you know I'm going to cut you off right there and this is Dan writing a script to communicate urgency how important it is for me to jump right in here and tell you barnun this is unacceptable but it wasn't real it was a fabricated sense of urgency and then following that I'm going to have a couple of problems that me and Dan are going to have to sort out so some of the language he uses and and again this is a writer so language is important so he's saying inappropriate jokes inappropriate topics and practical jokes these are the words he's using to to qualify his behaviors on set but again let's think about what he was actually accused of maybe some of the things were practical jokes or inappropriate topics but we have a woman who's talking about how you made her present something in a very explicit and compromising way that's embarrassing that's enormously inappropriate nothing about that is a joke so this language is really minimizing some of the stuff that he did if I was Christy Stratton and I heard him say this reducing my experience to an inappropriate joke I think it would make matters so much worse and this him attempting to minimize what he did and reduce it to that I think is insulting for anyone who was actually hurt by his gestures another issue I have is with the word participated he says he participated in these activities now although technically it might be the right word participate usually means jumping in on something right something's happening and I participate in the thing that's already happening in most of these cases he innovated it nothing was happening he's the one who started it so again participation is minimizing language like it was happening and I took part I participated no no no it wasn't happening you caused it at the end he says that all this happened because he was an inexperienced producer so Dan I have a question personally for you at which point in a producer's journey experience do you learn that it's unex acceptable to make a woman present to a room full of people while pretending to Beed is that something that comes in at the three-year experience Mark the fouryear you're saying you're an inexperienced producer that's why these things happened but inexperience as a producer doesn't justify any of these behaviors I would like to speak to those people because I hate that anybody worked for me and didn't have a good time you know me you've been on my sets um look I've had some employees that have worked for me for 10 years some more than 20 years who would work with me again but um not everybody there's still a significant number that didn't have a great time working for me so my batting average isn't nearly high enough in that area um and the way they wouldn't get the best of me is that I would let the pressure of doing 40 or even more episodes per year I would let that pressure get to me which a good boss should never ever do was there specific things that you were doing sure I would um snap at people sometimes I would be snarky when I could have given them a nicer answer um I would not give people the time that they needed I would be in too big a hurry to get on to the next thing I had to do okay in terms of body language once again with Boogie we see an asymmetric lip movement there when Dan says you know me you've worked with me and it cuts him and just has this kind of thing it's not the same look as earlier when we had that kind of side eye with a bit of a squint and that judgmental you know the mouth going really upwards and causing that line on one side of the face it's just a very slight movement so can this be a little bit of quick contempt it could but I think it's more than likely just a little a little smirk you know he he said we've worked together he's just kind of acknowledging with a bit of a smirk then we have something that is very common in the handbook of manipulators I have a video on the channel where I talk about the techniques that manipulators use to manipulate and how to counter them I'll leave a link in the description but one of the things I talk about is something I call ambiguous social proof so we know instinctively that if a lot of people feel a certain way it has more Merit than if it's just my opinion right so manipulators will often say something like oh everyone's been talking about how you've been on edge lately and and you're you're obviously stressed about something as a way to kind of make it seem more valid that it's not just coming from me it's coming from all these people and Dan did that here he goes you know there's there's a whole bunch of people have worked with me for 10 20 years and would gladly work with me again but there's two problems with that first of all we don't know who these people are like let those people come out and talk in your favor you saying this to us it it there's no weight to that we don't know who they are and the second issue with that is called the ad populum logical fallacy which is basically the idea that saying that a whole bunch of people feel a certain way doesn't necessarily make that true so for example saying that millions of people eat at McDonald's every year doesn't mean McDonald's is necessarily good food in the same vein him saying that he's had employees who worked for him for 10 20 years and would work for him again is not a valid metric that's like somebody on trial who murdered someone telling us about all the people he didn't murder all the people you didn't murder don't matter the one that you did matters it's the same thing here all these other people that you happen to not be inappropriate with don't matter the ones that matter are the ones you were inappropriate with then he talks about how the pressure got to him and how he snapped at people he was snarky uh he was in too big of a hurry and again this is minimizing through a mission because if that was really the only thing if you were Snappy you know if in too much of a hurry you were a little snarky towards people there wouldn't be a documentary about your behaviors we've all worked in environments where we had co-workers who were little Snappy snarky you know little too much of a hurry didn't give people time nobody's making documentaries about these individuals so by not saying what the actual issue was and and just kind of saying yeah this is you know this is what it was I was Snappy and snarky it really minimizes people's experience all these jokes that you're speaking of um that the show covered over the past two nights every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny and only funny okay um now we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens and they're looking at them and they're saying oh you know I don't think that's appropriate for for a kid show and I have no problem with that if if that's how anyone feels let's cut those jokes out of the show just like I would have done 20 years ago or 25 years ago I cut it I want my shows to be popular I want everyone to like the more people who like the shows the happier I am so if there's anything in a show that needs to be cut because it's upsetting somebody let's cut it so I think it's big for you to say with your work if it's viewed is that today you don't have a problem cut it cut it okay a couple of quick things about that segment first we see that at some point there was a hand to face gesture and this is something that's hardwired into behavioral analysts training to where whenever that hand comes up to touch the face we're paying attention for a lot of reasons one there's research that shows that when we're stressed or deceptive the blood flow of the face actually shifts and this could cause an itch in the face so very often in a cluster of behaviors we look for this sudden touching of the face another reason for this is ever since we're little when we say something that we're not supposed to say whether it's a secret or a bad word we have this reflex for a h to come up and try to take those words back and we block the mouth now as kids we make this kind of thing very obvious but as adults we become quite a bit better at it so we might kind of have the hand around here like this around here or come up to the face like this and we've seen some amazing examples on the channel of someone who said something they weren't supposed to say and we saw those hands as a reflex shoot up but sometimes a face scratch is just a face scratch and in that moment as he's talking we see it happen once and that's it it's it's not like his hand comes up and spends a bunch of time here it's not like it starts happening a bunch of times it's just one face scratch could it be due to stress it can but I usually tend to not pay too much attention to these isolated one-off gestures when he says that you know if any of this material is inappropriate just cut it we see an expression of surprise with Boogie as his head drops and his eyebrows go up like this now typically the mouth would also open with that like this but he's definitely displaying surprise on his upper face and this might be because he knows Dan's reputation to where like he he he runs a very tight ship and and he wouldn't cut anything if other people said so so there might be surprise Associated to that but notice what he says after that he goes it's big for you to say that you know that if if there's inappropriate stuff that we could cut it now this comment and other comments like it have gone Boogie quite a bit of criticism online because he's kind of on Dan's side you're saying oh that that's really great of you to do that and there are several moments in the interview where does this where he kind of is on Dan's side a little bit and is not constantly on the attack now let's make something very straight in terms of interrogation or interview technique that is 100% the right approach if you want someone to open up and spill the beans if you come in confrontationally just constantly attacking what you did is disgusting you need to apologize for that who are you going to apologize to the person will close up if they feel attacked but when you connect with them human to human it opens somebody up infinitely more now I'm not suggesting that this is the reason that Boogie did it that he knows that if he's on his side a little and he goes it's big of you to say that and kind of be on his side it'll get Dan to open up more I'm not saying that's why he did it but I just think people are on the attack like oh you should have been so much more aggressive need to chill out for a sec because this approach for whatever reason is what will get Dan to express himself and we'll find out more of how he feels towards this as opposed to closing up but I personally think that the reason Boogie is a little bit more on Dan's side is because Boogie is actually a little bit more on Dan's side listen this interview is on Dan's YouTube channel right he could have commented on the docu series but he didn't he was very selective over who gets to interview him it's someone he's worked with before who had Pleasant experiences with him and maybe before they even agreed to do this there was some sort of conversation where it was agreed upon that Boogie wouldn't be on the attack throughout this that it would be presented more in a friendly way I don't know the details of what happened but I just think it's a happy coincidence that Boogie's not on the offensive throughout this whole thing okay back to Dan when he says that every single one of those jokes was written for a kid audience we see first of all he has this strong eye contact looking straight at Boogie his hand comes forward as he gestures very abrupt like this and he spits that word kid audience so he's making this very clear this was written for a kid audience there's a few moments in this interview where he really almost spits something out this is one of them it's very clear to him that that's what this was it was written for kids because it's funny for the kids and he's saying that now adults are complaining about it the point being that that was in for kids with comedy kids comedy in mind and adults are like looking for inappropriate things in there the part that the kids find funny in his sketches and he's right there are elements to this that are funny to a kid that's not the part anyone has an issue with right for example if Arana a grande were to spill water on her head a kid would laugh oh my God I'm hot spill water on her head like this on top of her head bottle of water like this a kid would laugh oh my God so silly she poured water all over her head she doesn't have to be lying down in a suggestive manner with the camera zoomed in expressing it in a certain way gesturing in a certain way so it's not the thing that the kids find funny that's a problem it's the way it's packaged but this topic for me opened up a whole bunch of thoughts and reflections about where's that line right because a lot of children's movies and shows have jokes intended for the adults but where do you draw that line so for example my mind goes to a whole bunch of animated movies like for example prime example inoui when the main character Linguini is telling Colette that he has a rat in his hat that that that tells him how to cook he says I have a ra rash and she goes you have a rash and he goes no no I have a tiny little and she kind of looks down really quick like this that's clearly a joke for the adults but I laugh and I don't find that inappropriate I have a rra you have a rush no no no I have this this tiny uh little little on the other hand a lot of the scenes that I saw in this Nickelodeon stuff I found extremely inappropriate and believe it should not be there but what's that line and I think it comes down to two things I think the first is one is spoken it's these things that are said and it's so subtle that a kid wouldn't get it at all and it's a conversation that's appropriate for two adults to have right it's there's nothing inappropriate about it it's just not a joke a kid would understand there's certainly no one being put in a compromising physical situation doing something that just looks wrong and uncomfortable and then the second distinction for me is intention that joke and more jokes like it are clearly intended to be a joke for an adult a little wink to the adult with this other stuff that was happening with Dan Schneider's content what the heck is the intention were you intending for that to have very adult implications if so that's horrible if not why does it look like that it could have just as easily not look like that so I think that muddy intention is a big distinction but let me know in the comments cuz I'm curious to know what people think where do you think that line is is some of this acceptable is none of it acceptable and what makes the difference between what's okay and you go oh that's really funny as an adult and we you go oh whoa whoa no no that shouldn't be there what's what's that line the notion that I had the power to Just Produce whatever I wanted and have it a is completely false okay there were many many levels of scrutiny okay we had Executives in La we had Executives in New York so two coasts two coasts of of of approval yes and not and by the way approval at every stage really and I'm talking about wardrobe I'm talking about makeup sound sets dialogue jokes everything now when you say approval these obviously that's a hierarchy not your colleagues or people in the room okay no no not my col no these are my bosses bosses and then their bosses and then their bosses and they're approving all of this stuff okay and we're also shooting it in front of all sorts of adults and caregivers and the set teacher and and the families everybody's watching it and if anybody had said anything hey we don't like that that's not appropriate you then it would have been cut out now I'm going to I'm going to push back a little bit because the series painted you in this way that you were just the guy that was doing what he wanted and people were afraid to confront you about things so say just humor me say that that was the case what would have been the ultimate way to okay if nobody on the set if all of the dozens and dozens of adults that were on the set if they didn't say anything if my bosses said if they insisted you got to make a change here you got to cut that I had to do it I had had no choice okay so there's a part of that segment that jumped out at me big time as someone who studied interrogation and has conducted interviews professionally so in interrogation and interview rooms when we ask a question and an answer is provided we ask ourselves did that answer my question and it answer my entire question so notice how here he's saying that he had bosses above him who could have said something and they would have cut it but there was even people on set you know other adults staff members parents and they could have said something and he says we would have cut it so then Boogie pushes back and he says okay but hold on on the series there are people who said that you were unapproachable that you know they they wouldn't give you criticism and look at what happens he just goes back and answers the first question again so he says once again that my bosses could have said something and we would have cut it so he kind of takes back this whole element that somebody on set could have said something he doesn't answer Boogie's question about well a lot of people said you know humor me a lot of people said that they couldn't approach you about this he doesn't address that he also knows cuz he admitted it elsewhere that he wasn't approachable he was testy he was snarky he knows that so he knows that he was running a tight ship he also knows that at the time he was producing stuff that were very successful so nobody dared give him criticism so I kind of like that Boogie called him out on that and said now hold on a minute you're saying people could have approached you but that's not necessarily true and this is where more so than my experience as an interviewer my experience as an Entertainer coner on television kicked in quite a bit because I've spent a lot of time on television sets as a consultant as a performer and I've seen how a lot of these things work so part of what he's saying is Right whenever something is being produced something is being written it has to go to the network to Nickelodeon and some people there have to look at it and go okay so this is how they're going to shoot this is the set this is what they're going to wear this what they're saying is what it's about okay great he's making it sound like he has to send that script in with every detail how it's going to be filmed the shot and someone's sitting there and reading it page for page in my experience that's not often the case but let's assume it is let's assume somebody's reading word for word what he wrote the issue with this content is not what's written it's not the script I keep going back to the Ariana Grande example right if a network executive even if they look at the specific script which again I don't think they do but let's say they do and it says Ariana now spills water on her head no problem you keep moving that's not the issue the issue is the way it was filmed framed zoomed in the way she delivered those lines that was directed by someone and even if you didn't direct that when you start do it that way something should go off in your head where you go uh Ariana can we actually get you just sit straight up and pour it on your head and maybe giggle a little bit more just direct it a little differently cuz you see what we're all seeing my second issue with this position is that sharing blame is not a denial right if in an interrogation room someone is asked did you murder this victim and they go yeah no I did but there was other people in there and they could have all stopped me but they they were all there they were all just kind of watching that doesn't make you any less guilty it's the same thing here as an adult you saw this scene you saw the way it was going to play out you're trying to play it off like there was approval coming from above but those Network Executives didn't see it in the way that you were shooting it so you're kind of passing this off as though was a shared decision that everyone was on board with this but even if that's the case fine yeah let's hear who they are let's have a chat with them too whoever was involved in making that scene publicly available should answer us to why the heck it was done that way now we also saw the series highlight two former writers viewers two women who spoke about a wage discrepancy I know that you don't divy out salaries talk to me about that part well you're correct I have nothing to do with paying writers I never have I've never made a writer's deal and of all the writers I've been in a writer's room with I never even knew how much most of them were getting paid yeah but we saw these two women who were writers for you sharing one salary how does that happen it's very simple there's a common practice in television when hiring writers if you have a spot for a new writer sometimes you'll go to two writers and say hey if you two new writers for your first job are willing to share a salary you can both have the job they have the opportunity to say yes that sounds good or no no thank you in this case it was two women writers I've done another show where that teaming was done with two male writers and they split a salary I did another show where it was a male and a female writer and they split a salary so and these are all firsttime writers all first-time writers looking for their first gig if you look at his answer here there's a very different vibe to his demeanor if you compare to almost any other part of this interview his tone everywhere else was much higher he was up here and here he's calmer he's slower he's explaining this with a lot more confidence but in the first part he does something that interrogators pay a lot of attention to and it's called a non-specific denial he's being asked about two specific women who alleged that he was very well aware of the salary that they were getting and he says I've never made a writer's deal and of all the writers I've been in the writer room with I never knew how much most of them are getting paid so he's talking about this broad scenario like in most cases I didn't know what they were getting paid now nothing is an absolute but typically with a more confident denial you would have someone say listen I had no idea what either of those two women were being paid he's being asked about a very specific scenario but he's giving a very non-specific denial I think it's likely that he's saying all this to kind of distance himself from that decision and saying in most cases I don't know what they're making that's not part of my job but because we don't have that specific denial and he's kind of dancing around and saying you know I didn't make the deal and I don't know what most are getting paid I think he knew very well how much they were getting paid but at the very least that their pay was split and he kind of confirms that cuz he goes on to say that this is common practice and I've worked on shows where it was two men and another show where it was a man and a woman so all of a sudden this guy who never makes the deals and doesn't know how much people get paid all of a sudden he's like a savant when it comes to all these other cases where this kind of thing happened so it's kind of like in the first part it's convenient for him to distance himself from knowledge of who gets paid and I don't know how much get paid and all of a sudden it's like oh it's totally common practice it's happening in this scenario it's happening this other scenario so there's a discrepancy in his amount of knowledge of how writers get paid Brian peek was not hired by you no I did not hire Brian P this was a Tolen Robbins production yeah and when Drake and I talked and he told me what had happened I was more devastated by that than anything that ever happened to me in my career thus far and I told him I'm here for you what do you need which Drake mentioned in the show that we watched last night and next I heard that he went to court when this guy was being tried Peck and when Drake walked in he saw 50 people sitting on the side of the courtroom supporting peek a lot of them pretty famous of course Drake was devastated that that happened I don't know if people know this but Drake's mom a lovely woman who I stay in contact with this day she came to me at the time and she said Dan I'm not good with words like you are and would you help me with my speech for the judge and I said of course and I did and he ended up going to prison and serving his time and yeah that was probably the darkest part of my career and here's the kicker that I really don't get after he got out of prison and was to my knowledge a registered sex offender he was hired on a Disney Channel show I'm going to make a guess about people who watched both the documentary and this interview so in the documentary we saw a point where this topic was being discussed and Drake Bell but mostly his father broke down into tears and my guess is that anybody who watched that documentary and this interview was way more affected and moved when Drake and his father specifically broke out into tears than Dan in this moment and I'll tell you why that is there are emotions that genetically we are programmed to display so for example anger is a really good one right with anger the eyes open up nostrils flare we have this stare eyebrows come down and we clench the jaw and the reason that this is a display emotion is because of that clenching we believe sociologists believe that the reason we clench our jaw is cuz back in the day when we were in a situation where a confrontation was coming we would show our teeth like I will use these things to bite you so that part went away but that clench is still part of anger so we display anger as a way to send a message back off but sadness is not an emotion that we genetically display sadness is a weakness and in most cases when it hits we have the reflex most of the time to do these things to hold it back so if you look at Drake and his father Joe in the documentary when that sadness hits we see a lot of common things that happen where they're trying to hold back the tears they both it's so funny how they both have this thing where they look up and to the right like this just kind of for a second try to disconnect from the emotion they both go to that same place but we also see some eye blocking where we close the eyes to just take a moment we see that chin boss which is very common it brings that lower lip up like this and that's us just trying to just trying to hold it in for a second so a lot of these behaviors where you know they need a minute to kind of not let that sadness kick in the other thing we see with them that's very common with sadness is a slow in and a slow out out so we slowly see those tears coming in the voice starts to crack they have these moments and then you see the emotion hit and then they slowly just kind of recuperate from that to go back to normal that's usually the way an emotion like that works you don't dive into it and dive out of it so look I'm not someone who's going to invalidate someone's emotions especially when we are seeing a little second there where it kind of does look pretty genuine the way that voice cracks and it comes out for a second all all I'm going to say is I've rarely seen it come in that quick and go away that quick without those attempts to kind of just not let it hit him in the first place so I think it was short-lived but I think for him it was kind of a little embraced like oh I'll get points for this if I just kind of give into this for a second but then it wasn't that long so I kind of came out of it a little more effortlessly so I'm not saying it's the fakest thing I've ever seen but I think it was this moment that was kind of played up for a quick second and then he was out the line that really got my curiosity is when he said that when he found out about what happened to Drake Bell it was more devastating to him than anything that's happened in his career yeah that's a fact what happened to Drake Bell is infinitely more devastating than anything that's happened to your career it's almost like he's using that to try to get a little bit of sympathy but like dude nothing that bad has happened to you what happened to Drake B of course it's more devastating what do you want a cookie of course it's more devast devastating than anything that's happened to you in your career listen for those who haven't seen the documentary the stories that Drake Bell tells about what he experienced with this character I don't even want to say his name is awful it's it's absolutely disgusting to a certain extent I I don't know how to phrase this the right way but to a certain extent I wish they had separated that story much more effectively from the uh Dan Schneider stuff because once you get to that part and you hear what he went through it almost casts a cloud over everything else and you go that that's just disgusting and here and dad knows that because what he's doing here is he's kind of embracing the fact that in the documentary there was quote unquote a a worse villain than him there was this guy who did unspeakable things to a child so in highlighting how bad that is and how Drake's mom came to him for help he's kind of making himself look like the hero of that situation which is just freaking awful and in so doing it further kind of attempts to minimize the things that he did so yeah look most of us are going to watch that docu series and and and hear about that monster and two other monsters like him and think to ourselves these people belong in the the worst depths of hell but but that doesn't speak to the accusations against Dan Schneider this isn't a contest it's it's not a competition right so that's awful fact what happened with Dan and his employees should be talked about without being weighed against this other horrifying thing is there anything that we haven't discussed anything that if you could go back and navigate to the the journey differently what would that look like um yeah there's definitely things that I would do differently um one that I think would be really really important is when you're hiring young actors miners to work in television I would suggest that we have a licensed therapist there to oversee that process for the specific reason of making sure that those kids really wanted to do this job that they really wanted to be on television maybe they should even be informed about what that means what's it going to mean if you're famous what's that going to mean on social media what's it going to mean within your family let them find out and then that way if a kid doesn't want to on a TV show they can opt out all right so this was a confusing experience for me cuz at first when he said that all sets that have kids should have licensed therapists I was like yes yes they absolutely should and then he said why he thinks that should happen I was like no that's not why I think there should be therapists the reason sets should have therapists is that if a kid is being given a line or or he's in a scene or she's in in a costume that makes her uncomfortable makes her feel a certain way if there's a staff member who's behaving with them a certain way there should be someone that they trust that they could talk to that's why there should be a therapist on set he's saying that there should be a therapist that before the kid shoots the project they can go talk to this therapist and understand what Fame is like and what you know a famous life is like to opt out if that doesn't sound like something they want to do this guy made a life writing kids TV shows and he seems to know nothing about children does he actually think that there's a scenario where they hold an audition thousands of kids show up who are dying to be TV stars one gets picked celebrates this is what they've been waiting years to get shows up on set sits down with a therapist comes out of a session and goes yeah you know what now that it was explained to me that way I I don't want to be famous anymore I don't want to be a star that would have happened in 0% of cases furthermore my other question is you're being asked what you would do different right how was that something that would have solved any of the things you're being accused of if there was a therapist on set who would talk to children to figure out if they actually want to be Stars would that help you be less rude to your staff would it help you do less inappropriate and suggestive things in staff meetings would it help you write much less extremely inappropriate content what part of the things that we're discussing would this solve so this to me kind of sounds like he once heard someone say that sets should have a therapist and he was like oh yeah I'll get points if I bring that up but he's completely missing the point as to why there should be a therapist on setx there should be a therapist so after the kids are in a compromising situation or feeling some way about something they could go talk about it so anyways listen I know there was a lot of statement analysis on this one mostly because his body language was pretty stable there was a couple little things here and there but there was so much more value in the words he was choosing and again as a writer words are important to this man and there was things that were being presented a certain way I think a lot of the language is blame sharing I think a lot of what he's doing here is minimizing by using Choice words and ways to represent things that minimize how bad it was and I think there were also a lot of red herrings like oh my boss has approved it so or I wasn't an experienced producer yeah but that doesn't explain anything so a lot of minimizing I think a part of him does understand how bad these things were because we're getting clues of that here and there and maybe maybe maybe if he were to work again he'd be very careful with those behaviors but I don't think it's because he wouldn't have the urge it's because of how hard he was slapped and how now people have spoken up against it that's the feeling that I get I also get the feeling that behind closed doors his attitude is a lot more okay what happened happened so what let's all just get over it and doesn't quite grasp the repercussions of the way that he behaved I think he sees that it was bad and appropriate but he doesn't see it as that big a deal I think the biggest thing that stuck for me in my mind is why is your timing this why did you have to wait for this to come out out for you to start feeling so bad about it and like finding all this so unacceptable why didn't you make moves on making amends before this documentary came out so a big part of me is going yeah it's easy to feel bad about stuff once you've been called out in front of the entire world but anyways let me know what you think I know there's going to be a lot of opinions on this and I always love the respectful conversations we have in the comments do you think that he gets how bad this was and do you think he actually feels sorry about it and what would you need what would you need to see to go okay I believe that he actually feels bad about this stuff let me know in the comments and I will see you on the next one

Channel: The Behavioral Arts

Views: 210,946

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Id: lWAfurEAyRw

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024