Tomorrow (Friday) night at 8:00 PM (ET), NBC will air the two-hour TV-movie A Walk in My Shoes, the third Family Movie Night sponsored by a collaboration of Walmart and Procter & Gamble.

The first two, Secrets of the Mountain and The Jensen Project, aired in the same Friday-night time slot  earlier this year (in April and July, respectively) to solid ratings. (Mountain, particularly, dominated the ratings during its debut.)

A Walk in My Shoes, which executive producer Brian Wells describes as a sort of It’s a Wonderful Life meets Quantum Leap, takes the old Native American adage about walking in another’s moccasins before criticizing and, so to speak, runs with it.

Shoes tells the story of stressed-out high school teacher Trish Fahey (Nancy Travis) who, following a car accident, mysteriously finds herself in the body Cindy Kremer, the mother of an underperforming student in her class. She soon learns that there’s more to the story of  the woman who she had judged to be a bad parent than she realized.

Guiding her strange journey is Molly (Yara Martinez), the enigmatic stranger who helps change her perspective not just on Cindy but on her own life as well.

I spoke with Brian Wells, the film’s executive producer, about the movie and what he hopes it accomplishes.

How did you choose this material to be the third in the Family Movie Night franchise?

Well, we have writers around the country that we work with
developing stories. We want great entertaining,
engaging ideas that both teenagers will really respond to and be engaged by and
also their moms  and dads will be fully
engaged as well.

So, we start developing the story ideas very early, probably
about a year and a half process  or
so.  We develop these ideas and
find the ones that both teens and parents are both –in research — telling us ‘I
want to watch that movie for myself.‘

We know that if we’ve got something that’s scoring off the charts
(with everyone) this is something that the whole family can engage in
together and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to kind of  bring back this Family Movie Night concept
— that is a movie that the whole family will enjoy together.  There won’t be a compromise for anyone
sitting there. They’re all going to enjoy it for themselves.

It’s funny. But you seem to find more family entertainment at the movies these days than on television.

Yeah. There does seem to
be a bit more happening theatrically than there is on television.  But we know the track record of television.
Television can be something that brings people together as well and that’s what
we’re hoping to do with this.

Why do you think there are so many family-centered movies out there in the the theaters but not on television?

I’m not an expert on that. I’m not sure. I guess if I had to
venture a guess I would say that movies are still treated a little bit more as
an event, something that you plan for 
and then go an do. (With television) there are so many
choices now, so many channels out there. It’s really become fragmented.  And television can
seem to be like something that’s ‘always on’ 
as opposed to really kind of event television.

You still see events. You still see the Super Bowl as
something that the whole family enjoys together. You still see ‘American Idol’ as
somthing that the whole family can enjoy together.

This is your third Family Movie Night. Are Secrets of the Mountain, The Jensen Project and now A Walk in My Shoes actually backdoor pilots?

That is the model that we’re working on here.  We make movies that are great two-hour
experiences and then, if the
audience responds well to them, they have potential to become episodic series.

Are you getting support from the network?

We are. You know the response has been very, very
encouraging.  Obviously, the numbers came
out on who watches ‘Secrets of the Mountain.’ 
I think ‘Secrets of the Mountain’ was the most-watched show on television
of that evening and then I think it was NBC’s most-watched show of the entire
week.  And ‘Jensen’ did pretty well as
well.

The audience has been responding which has been great –
in terms of ‘Vote with Your Remote.’  You
know, if you really want ot see more of this kind of content, you know, show up
and watch it . That makes a great statement.

The audiences are watching and the network and advertisers
are watrching the audiences. And they’re seeing them respond to this kind of
thing and they’re coming to us and they’re saying ‘Can you make more  of this?’ So, year, it’s been encouraging. 

And I have to say NBC has been wonderful to work with on the
first projects.

Rating of Secrets of the Mountain, particularly, were very strong. Why didn’t they make a series out of that?

It’s ‘show’ and its ‘business,’ you know. There’s a lot of other
pieces that determines if something goes to series. I don’t  dispel the chance that any of these could go
to series at any point. There’s just a lot other complicating things in the
schedules. When would it be scheduled? What time period of the week? Other
things that they have in the pipeline. Getting a movie on is
wonderful  and getting a series on takes
a little more upfront scheduling (and) planning (but) we have great hopes for that.

Are you hopeful that the new leadership at NBC will be as supportive?

We are. There’s been 
changes at NBC but all the indications have, so far from folks that are
there, is that this is something that they very much want to see Walmart and
Procter & Gamble and us continue to bring forward. So, we have great hopes
that this will be even expanding more next year.

Do you have specific projects on the agenda?

We do. They’re not, I don’t think, being announced publicly
yet but you can expect a lot more Family Movie Nights in 2011.

On NBC?

On NBC. And you can look for them on at least one other
network as well.

A broadcast network?

Yes.

So, you’re getting interest from other networks then?

That’s right. That’s been very encouraging.

Why are Walmart and P&G backing these projects? What’s in it for them?

It’s interesting. A key part of their customers are families
– and particularly moms making the decisions about what’s being purchased in
the families. They have recognized
that  mom has a significant  unmet need in the area of enterainment and
that is content that is both great from an entertainment value standpoint –
whether it’s a drama, a comedy an action-adventure, whatever – but also
entertainment that achieves that greatness not by preying on what’s worst in
the human condition but achievs that greatness in a way that calls out the best
in us. And so there’s been, particularly
over the last ten years, an absence of that kind of content on television.

So, Walmart and Procter are saying ‘Hey, we just want to
serve moms and one of the ways we’ll serve moms is we’ll use our advertising
dollars to help get more entertainment content on the air that (serves) mom
and families well.  

They like doing the right thing. They like getting entertainment
out there that’s healthy.  Also, it’s a
really smart business decision for them.

Why has TV changed so much (becoming less family friendly) over the past ten years?

I’m not exactly sure. I guess if I had to venture a guess it
would be that the proliferation of the number of channels and other
options. You know, when I was growing up there were basically three broadcast
networks and maybe something interesting going on on PBS.  We basically had four
choices. Today the average house has probably over 100 choices.

What’s happened
in that kind of environment is there’s just been greater competition for
eyeballs. Some people, in the interest of that competition, have chosen to
pursue things that are a little bit edgier in the name of trying to get some
attention for their shows.

So movies like A Walk in My Shoes might actually stand out in this environment. 

Yeah.  That’s interesting. It does. There are not a lot of
other things like this on the air and, by putting this on the air, it actually
stands out and I think that’s why we’re having the number of people come watch
this that we do.

Do you have kids of your own and do you enjoy doing this kind of material for them?

I do. And you know that’s part of it for me. I’m a dad. I
have a 15-year-old son and a 12- year-old daughter.  And it’s a tough deal to find something
that not only my 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter will both enjoy  but also that won’t be sort of a sheer
sacrifice on my wife and I’s part to sort of sit there and view just so we get two hours
together.  So, yeah, it’s part of a
labor of passion for me to create the kind of things that myself and my kids
and my wife will want to sit down and watch together.

How do you balance the desire to put out positive ideas with avoiding heavy-handed moralizing?

That’s a great question. Because we are talking about creating great content that is also
good.

In other words, great wonderful entertainment that is also calls out the
best in us. 

(But) we can’t fall into the trap of thinking we’re creating fat-free
ice cream. It’s not about creating fat-free ice cream.  It’s about creating great awesome-tasting ice
cream that happens to be fat free. 

In
other words, you can’t go into this saying ‘We’re going to go and create some
sort of After School Special  and kind of
teach some lesson or something. You are dead meat creatively if you do
that.  You gotta go into it saying “It’s got
to be absolutely killer entertainment 
and then let’s find some heart in this that really serves the interest of
moms and families.’

So, the way we do
that is we’re just really careful. We research these things  as we move along. We’re really careful that
we’re creating stories  that have a
great kind of heart and core to it.  If I’m working on a movie that’s an
action-adventure, I will say ‘We know we have to have an awesome, fun, exciting
story here for everybody and especially for the teens.  We shouldn’t chintz on the special effects or
on the action nature of this.  At the same time 
we’re not gonna move forward on this story unless we get the heart of
this story right.’

So, (our aim is to) strip out all the action-adventure nature of
this and (find) something (at its) core that’s a
moving through line that people want to watch  and get it moved to the phase where we now build the action-adventure on
top of that. It’s a constant choice to say ‘Are we engaging a 12-year-old girl?
Are we engaging a 15-year-old boy. Are we engaging the 35-year-old mom? Are we
engaging a 40 -year-old man?’ We constantly are look at that in every minute
of the script.

I think Donald Bellisario, the creator of Quantum Leap, has talked about finding the “heart story”  that really makes an otherwise-standard action plot resonate with viewers. Is that what you’re doing?

We do.  We spent a lot
of time looking for what is engaging exciting entertainment of this story.  And then also we spend a lot of time looking
at what is going to be the core heart of this story?  At the end of the day, what is going to be
the thing in the story that families afterwards are gonna say ‘Wow! You know,
that really stuck with me.’ 

You know, so
for instance, for ‘Secrets of the Mountain,’
which aired in April, there’s this exciting nature to it where this family
gets sucked into this adventure underground — you know with this Aztec treasure
— but the heart of that story was the nugget that everybody goes through
tough times but families are supposed to run to each other not
away from each other.

So, in ‘A Walk in My Shoes,’ airing Friday Night on NBC, the
kind of exciting sizzle of the story is you’ve got this 16-year-old going
through these nomal kinds of things and high school and then you’ve got this
teacher who has this mysterioius body switch (and) we’re trying to figure out
how that happened. (But) the core of this story is the fact that we need to not judge
others by their appearances.

I would assume if this goes to series, the Nancy Travis character wouldn’t be involved.

Yeah.  Well, first of all, Nancy Travis did a killer job on
the movie.  We’d love to have her back in
a heartbeat.  She did a wonderful
job. 

But if this moved to series Philip
Winchester (Thunderbirds, Crusoe), who plays Jake the veteran in this story who changes this family’s
life, and Yara Martinez, who played Molly the supernatural character, would the main two
characters that would come back for a series.

What’s next for you?

I enjoy creating  (content) that
the whole family can watch together. That’s what I’m committed to. It may look
like action-adventure in the future. It may look like comedy. It may look like
drama.  All those things are  part of the menu that you want to create for
families to be choosing from.  I’m really
committed to that.

Anything else you’d like to say.

Vote with Your Remote! If people wasn’t to see more of this
kind of content , (they should) make sure they not only show up this Friday night but tell
their friend about it and, secondly, if they enjoy what they watch just pop off
an email to Walmart, to Procter & Gamble, to NBC. Let them know ‘Hey I enjoyed
this and I’d like to see more things like this.’

Your could take Secrets of the Mountain, The Jensen Project and A Walk in My Shoes and make a powerful NBC Friday-night lineup. 

There you go! That’s right!

Note: A Walk in My Shoes airs Tomorrow (Friday) night on NBC at 8:00 PM (ET). I’ll review the film tomorrow morning.