After a truly awful day yesterday I woke up this morning to this smiling face in my inbox! It came courtesy of the fellow pictured, My So-Called Life Producer Alan Poul, completely out of the blue and more than 2 years since last we corresponded. (The image he sent actually includes the whole cast but I always feel weird about posting photos online sent to me for the book. Posting this bit of it seemed a good compromise. Here he's being hugged by Lisa Wilhoit [Danielle]!)
Currently the executive producer of HBO's Tokyo Vice, Alan has worked on everything from Six Feet Under to Tales of the City. (He actually met Wilson Cruz in Central Park during New York's Pride parade while on a mini-protest against the latter series' cancelation!)
Aside from being a wonderful guy, some have described him to me as being an oasis of calm on the MSCL set, particularly with the way he dealt with the younger members of the cast. When I put this to him he replied:
"I’m very flattered and happy to be described that way. You might call it an oasis of calm but it was also a cauldron of emotion because it was a lot of young people who were incredibly talented but also most of them relatively inexperienced, playing these emotionally naked characters. I [gave a lot] of emotional support. So to that extent I was able to bring some calm into the emotionally taxing nature of the work for the young cast."
As it turns out, he is still giving emotional support nearly 30 years later, this time to the chronicler of that heady time.
So Beautiful it Hurts: The Making of My So-Called Life’ is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with ABC, The Bedford Falls Co., nor anyone involved with the making or distribution of “My So-Called Life.”