Jay Winer says he knew his son Jason had found his passion in 1987, after a weekend of watching the teenager play Puck in a Friends School of Baltimore production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In attendance for each of four performances, Winer and his wife, Sharyn, noticed that their son's speech and movements became slower with each staging of the play.
The slowdown reached the point where after the final night's curtain, Winer asked his son if he was OK.
"And you know what he said?" Winer recalled. "He said, 'I didn't want it to end, Dad. I slowed it down because I just didn't want it to end.' I knew then this was the business for him."
Twenty-two years later, at age 36, Jason Winer has made it very close to the top of that business as the director and an executive producer for one of the most successful new network TV series of the fall, ABC's "Modern Family." The Wednesday-night ensemble comedy about three generations of a decidedly postmodern family has averaged about 11.5 million viewers a week since its debut last month, and it finished first or second for the night each week in the all-important 18-to-49-year-old demographic.
Better yet, it draws more young viewers than its powerhouse lead-in series, "Dancing with the Stars." And best of all, it's a fresh, smart and savvy take on the American family that has drawn critical praise for writing, acting and Winer's innovations in sitcom directing. Time magazine and the trade paper Variety called it the funniest new comedy of the season, based on the pilot. And already such Hollywood heavyweights as Columbia native Edward Norton have signed on for guest appearances. Thursday, ABC ordered a full season of episodes.
The pilot that Winer directed, which debuted Sept. 23, was far and away the most-talked-about comedy pilot of the fall - celebrated for everything from its easy-going but enlightened take on multiculturalism, gay identity and family life, to its use of multiple cameras in achieving a new, improved and energized version of the single-camera, mock-documentary comedy look.
"I think this family is a different kind of TV family, in that the jokes don't come because this family is dysfunctional or these people are broken in one way or another, which has been the M.O. of TV development over the past five or six years," Jason Winer says. "Ultimately, the members of this family really love each other, and so there's a sweetness at the core of the show."
