September 09, 2009
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Spike Jones Jr. "Moves It Along" for Creative Arts

Producer helms his fifteenth Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, with award-winner Kathy Griffin hosting the gala.




Spike Jones, Jr.

When it comes to planning elements of the 2009 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony, which on September 12 will bestow eighty-two technical, craft and guest performer awards, producer Spike Jones, Jr. asks himself one question:



“Would the people rather see this, or be eating?”



“We do everything we can to move it along,” explains Jones, who returns for a remarkable fifteenth time as ceremony producer; having done his first show in 1993, he has produced every Primetime Creative Arts event since 1996. “This is a selective audience. They’re there for their awards. It’s very challenging – [as the show proceeds], there are more people who didn’t win.”



This year, one aspect of the Creative Arts awards is certain to keep things moving and the audience entertained: the host. Taking the stage of the NOKIA Theatre at L.A. LIVE is Kathy Griffin, a 2007 and 2008 Primetime Emmy Award winner for her Bravo series My Life on the D-List in the Outstanding Reality Program Non-Competition category, and a nominee again for 2009; her Bravo special, She’ll Cut a Bitch, is also nominated, as Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special.



“Kathy Griffin as host is the big story,” says Jones, who comes by his own variety-music-comedy affinity naturally; his father was popular musician-bandleader Spike Jones, famed for his sound-effects-laden song parodies and 1954-1961 variety television show.



“There is a sense of danger to it,” he adds, surely thinking of Griffin’s freewheeling, headline-making acceptance speeches. “I say ‘dangerous’ in a creative, comical way – we have three-and-a-half hours for the ceremony, and anything can happen.”



If something “dangerous” does occur, Jones will likely take it in stride; in addition to his Creative Arts credits, he has served as producer and/or director on numerous other high-profile programs, among them the American Cinematheque Awards, ABC Worldwide Millennium live musical segments, the red carpet arrivals for the Independent Spirit Awards and TV Land Awards and, just this week, live musical remotes from the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. He also recently co-created and executive produced a reality show pilot, Camping with the In-Laws, which he sold to Lifetime.



In another “first” for the Creative Arts ceremony, this year’s Governors Award recipient, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins, will be serenaded with a song parody, performed by three-time Emmy winner Elaine Stritch. It’s one more indication of the ceremony’s evolution under Jones’s guidance, his first event was “traditional awards stuff, long walks to the stage. There was no form to it, no show,” he recalls. “Now, we’re able to do a lot of bits, comedy. People are listening. We can do all kinds of tracks, and lighting. We have the look and feel of a live awards show.” (An edited version of the ceremony will be shown on E! Networks Friday, September 18.)



Jones, whose colleagues this year include Creative Arts co-chairs/ceremony executive producers Lee Miller and Steve Venezia, co-producer Tony De Sena and coordinating producer Carole Propp, is pleased that for several years, primetime stars have come forward as presenters because they want to honor the technical people on their series. “Jennifer Garner, during the first season of Alias in 2002, was the first to call,” he says. “She said, ‘I want to support my makeup and hair people.’”



And besides such industry backing, foreign press members vie with domestic journalists for red carpet and press tent credentials. “We have become,” Jones says happily, “an international event.”

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