The Truth is Stranger than Fiction "Big Love"
HBO	On March 12, 2006 HBO (Home Box Office) aired the first episode of a new TV show called "Big Love" about a polygamous family living in Salt Lake City, Utah.   Needless to say, this nontraditional subject for a TV series has created quite an uproar. Below are news articles about what affect this new show has had on the nation.  These articles are in chronological order.
Three's Company
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK TIME Magazine Originally published November 9, 2005
The makers of HBO's Big Love, about a Utah man with three wives, say their drama is about the strains and compromises of family -- times three. And sure, you want to know about that. But mainly you want to know: How does he ... you know ... ? The answer: Viagra. Lots of it. But stamina is only one problem that Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) has. He keeps his wives Barb, Margene and Nicki (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin and Chloë Sevigny) in adjacent houses, where they run the extended household jointly but harbor simmering jealousies. ("Officially," he tells Margene when she asks if he missed her, "I miss you guys all the same.") He has to keep the arrangement semisecret because polygamy is illegal in Utah and banned by the mainstream Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Oh, and one of his fathers-in-law (Harry Dean Stanton), the patriarch of a fundamentalist polygamist compound, is shaking him down for a cut of his hardware business. The Osmond family these Utahans ain't. Read more
Notice Anything Funny About the Folks Next Door?
By Timothy Egan The New York Times Originally published February 19, 2006
SO here comes Bill Henrickson, thoughtful dad and über-husband, steering the S.U.V. into his pocket of Utah exurbia after a long day overseeing home-improvement stores in one of the fastest-growing areas in America.  The Beach Boys have already cued us to the rosy domestic themes to come, singing "God only knows what I'd be without you" through the credits.   The likable lug loosens his tie, gives his best Rob Petrie "Honey, I'm home" look, and then makes his way toward one of the three women he has sex with, whose neighboring houses connect through the back doors.  The next morning he leaves his bedmate, a willowy blonde with money problems, a $100 bill on the nightstand.   Bill (Bill Paxton, doing exhaustive regular-guy duty) is a busy boy.  He has three wives, seven kids and a psycho father-in-law from a renegade Mormon compound who is after him for a percentage of his business, per God's will.     Read more
Here comes the brides
Polygamy, and Mormon ire about it, fuel HBO's latest edgy series
By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post Originally published February 23, 2006
Bill Henrickson is a hardworking husband and father, a likable guy who can afford a swimming pool in his suburban backyard.   He earns more than Dan Conner on "Roseanne," metes out parental discipline like Ward Cleaver, and surely would find Homer Simpson's family objectionable and profane.   Unlike those TV dads, Bill keeps a secret from the neighbors: He has three wives, living in three adjacent houses.  As the center of a drama about polygamy, Bill, played by Bill Paxton, is a new kind of primetime patriarch.   HBO's next big series, "Big Love," premieres March 12 (8 p.m.) following the return of "The Sopranos," another show featuring a dad with sundry family issues.   Funny, titillating and beautifully cast, "Big Love" is the sort of edgy fare viewers have come to expect from HBO, minus the raw language.   In the God-fearing Henrickson house, when a wife is really steamed she exclaims "heck" or "fudge."   For those who complain that television too often overlooks religious life in favor of outrageous, sexually permissive characterizations, "Big Love" will be a conundrum.  Lurking behind the expressions of piety, sanctity and obedience is the insistent issue of sex - polygamous sex.     Read more
Mormons Not Laughing About Polygamy Comedy 'Big Love'
Former 'Sister-Wife' Worries New HBO Series Will Minimize Problems
By Jonann Brady ABC News Originally published February 23, 2006
HBO is taking a big gamble with its new comedy series "Big Love" about the trials and tribulations of a Viagra-popping polygamist and his three wives in suburban America.   The buzzed-about series, produced by Tom Hanks, is set to debut on March 12 after the megahit series "The Sopranos."  But the risque show is already riling many Mormons, who say that it dredges up old stereotypes about the religion, which banned polygamy more than 100 years ago.   And some former polygamists worry that the comedy will minimize the real problems that polygamous families -- especially women and children -- can face.   In "Big Love," Bill Paxton plays Bill Hendrickson, a wealthy businessman from Salt Lake City who practices polygamy.  With three families and three homes that he tries to hide from virtually everyone, Hendrickson has a ridiculously complicated -- and HBO hopes, watchable -- personal life.   Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin play his wives.     Read more
Big Eeeewww!
HBO's created a hot-soccer-mom fantasy in which Jeanne Tripplehorn plays the elder wife in a polygamous marriage
By Robrt L. Pela Phoenix New Times Originally published February 23, 2006
The Bird likes nothing better than watching what Hollywood does with real-life catastrophes and miscreants.   Whether it's softly lighted and eyelinered queer cowboys (Brokeback Mountain, my feathered ass!) or desert island plane crashes peopled by a bevy of sexy supermodel survivors (this taloned scribbler isn't too proud to admit that it perches before ABC's Lost every Wednesday night), Tinseltown producers like to pretty things up.   No matter how dire the subject matter.   There are exceptions, of course, like the guys who made the movie Monster starring Charlize Theron.  And HBO.   It was HBO that made us love mean, ugly mobsters in The Sopranos and deeply flawed morticians in Six Feet Under.  And, come on, if the Western drama Deadwood got any more realistic, this foul fowl would puke up its Sunday night popcorn.  (Did you happen to catch the one where the doctor's digging around in character Al Swearengen's private part to remove a kidney stone?)   But now comes the heralded pay-cable network's latest attempt at turning gnarly real-life situations into TV drama -- Big Love (which debuts March 12).   The Bird couldn't wait to see what co-creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer would do with this subject matter!  That is, how they would wring entertainment out of a practice that most everybody in Arizona knows a whole lot about and isn't proud of.   What this feathered fiend is talking about is polygamy.  Yeah, the show's about the religious practice where a man's not only got to bring home the bacon for a passel of wives and a herd of kids, but who often has committed pedophilia in the process with his underage "spiritual" brides.     Read more
Three's a crowd, four's a marriage
HBO's "Big Love" probes the polygamists next door. It's family values of the provocative kind.
By Lynn Smith The Los Angeles Times Originally published February 26, 2006
Maybe you know a family like the Henricksons.  But probably not.   The father, Bill, is a genial home improvement chain store owner in Salt Lake City.   He lives with three wives and seven children, in three adjacent homes in the suburbs.   Needless to say, it's complicated.   Some of their problems are the usual ones — work, money, sex, children — scaled up by a factor of three.   The others are extraordinary.  As extralegal, consenting polygamists trying to blend into respectable society, they must hide their arrangement from the neighbors, the police and the mainstream Mormon community.   And then there are the fundamentalist relatives — eccentric, corrupt and possibly homicidal — who live off the grid in a rural compound but can't stay out of Bill, Barb, Nicki and Margene's life.   What glues them all together is "Big Love," the title of HBO's new version of the twisted family drama that attracted so many devotees to "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under."  Though the modern-day polygamy might shock some and repulse, tickle or titillate others, the network and the family's creators, Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, expect people will relate to the Henricksons because they epitomize, in their own way, the essence of Middle American family values.     Read more
LDS Church rejects polygamy accusations
By Ben Winslow Deseret Morning News Originally published Tuesday, February 28, 2006
An anti-polygamy group blasted HBO and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Monday, concerned about the cable channel's much-hyped upcoming drama on plural marriage.   "Big Love" debuts March 12 after HBO's mega-hit mafia drama "The Sopranos."  It stars Bill Paxton as a polygamist who juggles his three wives — played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin — and their seven children, who live in adjoining homes in Sandy. HBO has taken pains to separate the polygamist family from Latter-day Saints, including issuing a disclaimer at the beginning of the show.   "According to a joint report issued by the Utah and Arizona attorney generals' offices, July 2005, 'Approximately 20,000 to 40,000 or more people currently practice polygamy in the United States,' " Tapestry Against Polygamy said the disclaimer reads.  "The Mormon Church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890."   Tapestry Against Polygamy director Vicky Prunty takes issue with the disclaimer.   "The disclaimer is misleading," Prunty said Monday.  "The LDS Church may not practice polygamy now, but they still believe in it and their apathy towards polygamy suggests they look forward to a time when polygamy will no longer be against the law."   Prunty criticized the LDS Church, saying she thinks it turns a blind eye to abuses within polygamy.     Read more
Drama about polygamy causes stir in Utah
By Debbie Hummel The Associated Press USA Today Originally published March 9, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY - The upcoming premiere of HBO's "Big Love" is causing a big buzz in the Beehive State.   Everyone from practicing polygamists to the Mormon church - which shunned the practice more than a century ago - are anxiously anticipating the fallout from the show about a Utah polygamist and his three sometimes desperate housewives.   Some worry that the series will perpetuate stereotypes from which the state and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have long sought to distance themselves.  Others fear it will diminish the crimes, such as child abuse, reported in some of the state's secretive polygamous sects.  And polygamists say they're sure the series won't accurately portray the "boring" reality of their lives.   The program debuts 10 p.m. EST Sunday after the season premiere of "The Sopranos," which spawned bus tours of the show's locations in New Jersey and backlash from some Italian-American groups.   Public perceptions are a concern of the LDS church, which claims 12 million members worldwide.   In 1843, church founder Joseph Smith said he had a revelation from God allowing the practice of plural marriage.     Read more
God's law
HBO's lighthearted look at polygamy
By Joyce Millman The Phoenix Originally published March 10, 2006
Besides its other contributions to pop culture, The Sopranos spawned a prime-time genre that might be called the "suburban-rebel soap."  Tony Soprano and his family maintain a façade of suburban conformity.  But inside their New Jersey McMansion, the Sopranos are not like everybody else.  And isn’t that what we would all like to believe about ourselves?  The Sopranos encouraged us to identify with a mobster who yearned to break free of the daily grind.  HBO continued the suburban-rebel formula in the American Gothic soap Six Feet Under.  Showtime’s Weeds (pot-dealing suburban mom) appropriated the formula; ABC’s Desperate Housewives tarted it up.  But HBO’s latest suburban-rebel soap, Big Love (premiering this Sunday, March 12, at 10 pm), is the most devilishly subversive, addictive contribution to the genre since the adventures of Tony and company.  The rebel hero of Big Love, fortysomething, clean-cut Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), is a polygamist living a Mormon version of the American Dream in sparkling suburban Salt Lake City.  The Latter Day Saints outlawed polygamy in 1890; it’s now punishable by excommunication.  But according to estimates by law-enforcement agencies in Utah and Arizona, 40,000 people still practice it in the United States.     Read more
Hollywood version of polygamy not so entertaining
Cult News from Rick Ross cultnews.com Originally published March 11, 2006
HBO will launch its new series about polygamy called "Big Love" this Sunday.   But before the airing of the show’s first episode critics have already weighed in.   "To make polygamy...the subject of television entertainment is not only a bad idea, but it’s going to add to the pain of those victims," said a Mormon Church spokesperson told Associated Press.   However, it should be pointed out that the pain of polygamy actually began in 1843 when Joseph Smith the fanciful creator of Mormonism claimed he received a "revelation from God" that essentially allowed him to have as many women as he wanted.   This supposed and rather self-serving message from the Almighty set into place a practice that would continue amongst Mormons for decades.   And notably included not only Smith, but also the church’s second most revered "prophet" Brigham Young, who had scores of wives.   Later a very pragmatic Mormon prophet named Wilford Woodruff would come up with his own convenient "revelation" during 1890, just in time for Utah’s Mormons to meet a precondition for statehood.   However, many Mormons continued to believe in Joseph Smith’s earlier epiphany and kept observing the practice of polygamy, despite what would eventually be known as "The Woodruff Manifesto."     Read more
Series on polygamy elicits worry in Utah
By Ben Winslow Deseret Morning News Originally published Sunday, March 12, 2006
When the HBO series "Big Love" premieres tonight, "John Brown" (not his real name) will be watching — with his five wives.   In fact, many polygamist families who spoke to the Deseret Morning News said they were ordering the premium pay cable channel just so they could see how their lifestyle is portrayed.   The HBO series stars Bill Paxton as a polygamist who juggles time spent with his three wives — played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin — and their seven children in Sandy, Utah.  The Tom Hanks-produced show has already generated a lot of talk and headlines for its controversial subject matter and its portrayal of a subject Utah just can't seem to distance itself from.   "I haven't even watched any other HBO (show)," Brown said.  "What I am sure that it will do is bring polygamy into the national attention."     Read more
Utahns Weigh in on HBO's "Big Love"
John Hollenhorst Reporting KSL-TV Channel 5 Originally broadcast March 13, 2006
Tongues are wagging in Utah and across the country about the latest twist in the polygamy saga.   Last night, a show called "Big Love" premiered on H.B.O., the first television series in which the main characters are Utah polygamists.  What will it mean to the image of polygamy and Utah?   It's not exactly 'I Love Lucy'.   It's 'Bill loves Barbara, Margie and Nicki'.  'Big Love,' the trials, troubles and joys of triple husbandry.   Scenes from HBO's "Big Love": "Nicki slept with Bill in my bed yesterday."   It's Utah, HBO-style.  But is it accurate?   We asked long-time plural-wife Anne Wilde.   Anne Wilde, Plural Wife for 33 Years: "I like the idea this family had consenting adults, that there were no underage marriages, that the women freely chose to live that way."   Andra Moore-Emmett: "This is a made-for-male fantasy."   Anti-polygamy crusader Andrea Moore-Emmett, who wrote 'God's Brothel', says H.B.O. wanted entertainment so they left out most of polygamy's bad parts.     Read more
HBO creates polygamist Land of Oz
Cult News from Rick Ross rickross.com Originally published March 13, 2006
If the first installment of "Big Love" is an example of what HBO has planned for its new series, it has very little to do with the modern practice of polygamy in America and is instead something silly spun in Hollywood.   Unlike other HBO series such as Deadwood, Six Feet Under or The Sopranos, which at times take audiences on a trip to an otherwise unknown world, the world of "Big Love" is simply unknown and does not exist.   HBO’s contrived creation is inhabited by polygamists living in suburbia driving around in a shiny expensive SUV.   This fictional family lives in three modern tract homes and has a pool.  Their personal struggles include excessive shopping and viagra.   Viewers get an almost totally fictional world of polygamy that could only exist in the active imagination of a Hollywood writer.   What viewers got last night was not the often desperate existence of American polygamists living in Arizona, Utah and Montana, but something more like Desperate Housewives.   Real polygamists are frequently impoverished and subsist on welfare programs, largely subsidized by federal and state poverty programs.     Read more
'Big Love' is big fiction
Opinion The Spectrum Originally published March 19, 2006
Capturing local and national attention is the new HBO series called, "Big Love."  The show's setting is here in Utah and is about Bill Henrickson (played by actor, Bill Paxton); a polygamist with three wives, seven children and on the verge of opening his second home-improvement store in the "Wasatch Valley."   Balancing family commitments with business ownership, which includes dealing with an investor who just so happens to be the prophet of the outlaw polygamist sect the Henricksons fled from, is a plot formulated to thicken and entice the curious-minded.   But references to family home evening, church youth programs and serving a mission brought up in dialogues in the premiere that aired last Sunday, which specifically added a disclaimer at its conclusion clarifying that the Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890, convolutes credence with culture and is a far stretch from what is reality for Utah families and polygamists.     Read more
TRIPLE THREAT
Polygamy goes mainstream in HBO’s "Big Love."
By Nancy Franklin The Critics: On Television The New Yorker Originally published March 20, 2006 (Issue of March 27, 2006)
If you pity a show that débuts on HBO after an episode of "The Sopranos," because of the inevitable comparisons (though things have worked out all right for "Deadwood" in that regard), you’ve got to weep for a show that débuts after the first episode of a new season of "The Sopranos," especially when viewers have been waiting for that new season for almost two years and know that it marks the beginning of the end of the series.   That’s the situation in which "Big Love," a series about a polygamous marriage in present-day Utah, found itself a couple of Sundays ago; HBO thought either that "Big Love" was so strong that it wouldn’t suffer when juxtaposed with What May Be the Greatest Television Show Ever — or that it was so anemic that it would need "The Sopranos" to carry it.  Whatever the case, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who watched the season première of "The Sopranos," with its devastating, mind-blowing ending, was in any shape to watch anything afterward.     Read more
'Reel' doesn't match 'real'
Opinions The Arizona Republic Originally published March 20, 2006
Everybody's talking and tittering about Big Love, the new HBO drama on TV.   Yeah, that one.  The one being both hailed and vilified.   It's either a stalking horse for alternative lifestyle, the inevitable consequence of the effort to ratify gay marriage, or just an entertaining way to spend an hour on Sunday without necessarily endorsing the particulars.  Like The Sopranos, which precedes it on HBO.   It has all the elements of good TV: family drama, comedic moments, fast pacing, timing, contrasting characters, tension and a genial, regular-guy in the lead - Bill Paxton, as endearing as Jim Rockford, as harried as Tony Soprano.   But we in Arizona understand that polygamy is not a laughing matter and the characters not at all sympathetic.  Polygamy is no harmless, fanciful drama confined to comfortable suburbia.   Polygamy here has a name: Infamy, shame, abuse and slavery.   Polygamy here has a godfather, a fugitive named Warren Jeffs and his cohorts, who hide their crime, their fraud, their cruelty and dishonor.   On TV, the kids are handsome, spoiled and craving attention.   In Colorado City, in Arizona, they are pasty-faced, behind in school, sexually abused with little future.   Big Love has nothing to do with polygamy as practiced in Arizona.  Hollywood's version is a picnic.  Arizona's is a vile pathology.
New HBO drama proves unititiated should not judge polygamy by popular conceptions
By Nick Mokey Daily Orange - Syracuse, NY Originally published March 22, 2006
The star of HBO's new drama "Big Love" truly lives the American Dream.  He owns a chain of hardware stores, drives a brand new SUV, lives in an upper class suburb and when he gets home, he has a beautiful wife there waiting for him.  And another wife.  And another wife.   In anticipation of the show, all sorts of objections were raised to HBO's risqué venture outside the bounds of monogamy.   Critics of polygamy worried it would glorify the lifestyle.   Advocates worried it would misrepresent them.   Mormons wanted to distance themselves from it entirely, having officially given up the practice in 1890.   To those without a deep understanding of the practice of polygamy, it may not be clear why such strong opinions exist on both sides of the debate.  After all, the first episode of "Big Love" ended up painting a picture of polygamy that is so painfully normal, it was almost tedious to watch.  The question raised is whether polygamous relationships are inherently abusive, or if the tradition's bad reputation stems from its association with other frowned-upon religious practices.   A Gallup poll from May 2005 showed that 92 percent of Americans believe that polygamy is morally wrong.  Undoubtedly, this predisposition toward condemning polygamy comes from some very real abuses of the practice in the past.   "Polygamy is about power and control," said Vicky Prunty, the director of Tapestry Against Polygamy, a group of ex-polygamist wives that oppose the practice.  "It's a breeding ground for abuse."     Read more
Polygamist response to 'Big' mixed
By Lee Benson Deseret Morning News Originally published Wednesday, March 22, 2006
HILDALE, Washington County, AND COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — Amid the sagebrush isolation and the warehouse-sized houses that spawned the inspiration for the new polygamy series on HBO, "Big Love," the buzz is decidedly mixed.   I spent a couple of hours Monday morning in this plural-marriage enclave asking people if they had watched the latest episode of "Big Love" the night before.   In the older, more established parts of Hildale and Colorado City, where the conservative Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is firmly entrenched and the additions to the houses are bigger than the original houses, I found zero interest in the television series that premiered earlier this month and is the first ever to portray a polygamous relationship.   For that matter, I found zero interest in television, period.   At the Hildale city offices, city clerk Ruth Barlow said not many residents own TVs.  "I'd say less than 10 percent," she estimated.   And even if they did, they probably wouldn't tune into a cable TV network attempting to depict life as they know it.     Read more
Trivializing polygamy is not 'entertainment'
Opinions The Arizona Republic Originally published March 23, 2006
I am writing in response to the trivialization of the atrocities committed in the polygamist lifestyle by the HBO Big Love series, which, in my opinions has taken television to a new low.   The rapes and abuses of children and women should not be portrayed in a humorous light.  As one of the elected members of the Mohave County Board of Supervisors, I have spent a great deal of time and effort investigating and shedding light on the crimes against young people that have taken place in Colorado City.  I would also add that the crimes include the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money that have been siphoned off by these polygamous cults.   An inestimable number of criminal acts have taken place.     Read more
'Big Love': Real Polygamists Look at HBO Polygamists and Find Sex
By Felicia R. Lee The New York Times Originally published March 28, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY — Yuck, she said.  A sex scene.  And right at the beginning of the show, her friend chimed in.   "Big Love," HBO's new take on a fictional polygamous family in the suburbs of this city, was on the television.  The Viagra-popping Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) was thrashing in bed with Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin), the youngest of his three wives.  The five women watching the show — covering their eyes during the sex scenes, chiding the competitive wives, urging Bill to take control — were critics with special credentials: a current or past polygamous marriage.   And despite the show's flaws, these women called "Big Love" a cultural benchmark, one with the potential to cast a warmer light on their lives.   "It's a more realistic view of a polygamous family that lives out in society than people have known," said Anne Wilde, a widow who was part of a multiple family for 33 years.  "It can be seen as a viable alternative lifestyle between consenting adults."   "Big Love," which had its premiere on March 12, has certainly made a noisy splash.  Some television critics find it an intriguing twist on suburban family angst.  The Mormon Church contends that the show glamorizes a practice it renounced in 1890.  Vicky Prunty, the head of the leading anti-polygamy group here and herself a former polygamist, dismisses it as a Hollywood fantasy for men.     Read more
Love Elevated
By John Saltas Salt Lake City Weekly Originally published March 30, 2006
They’ve been pretty silent, but I can’t imagine that the LDS Church is all too pleased with HBO’s new show Big Love.  While the first episode displayed an official LDS Church statement disclaiming polygamy as a lifestyle, throughout Big Love are numerous references—both visual and spoken—to modern LDS culture, if not teachings.  With every romp in the sack and with every crack about missionaries or Joseph Smith, the goodwill of Utah and the LDS Church is diminished.  On the other hand, The Sopranos didn’t exactly kill the tourist trade in New Jersey, so keep your slimy mitts off of my newest financial enterprise: tours of celebrity polygamist homes.   I could start the tour at the pioneer homesteads of my own polygamist great-great-grandfather Matthew Caldwell, in American Fork, Spanish Fork and Dry Fork.  I guess he had a thing for forks.  If not for polygamy, I wouldn’t be here writing this gibberish — I’m descended from his fifth and final wife.  Frankly, I’m happy he listened to his friend Brigham Young and added to his "quiver" despite his own aversions to polygamy.  He did so because the Black Hawk Indian War left lots of widows and orphans.  That’s the claim, at least.  I’m also happy that as far as I know, polygamy is not a trait he passed on to his sons and daughters.     Read more
'Big Love' or big disaster?
Interesting topic + engaging characters = big P.R. problems for Utah
By Clayton Norlen The Daily Utah Chronicle Originally published March 31, 2006
Bill Henrickson has what every man has ever wanted: three wives and a prescription for Viagra.   What else could a guy need?   HBO's new series, "Big Love," portrays the average Utah family with three moms, seven children and one dad.  The Henricksons live in adjacent homes in the suburb of Sandy and struggle with debt and an overbearing prophet.   At least that is what anyone born outside of Utah can gather about the typical Utah family now - finally, people will see how we really live.   I thought the stereotype of all Utahns being either Mormon or Mormon polygamists was bad before "Big Love."   God help us now.   Any Utahn who has traveled knows what stereotype I'm talking about.   "You're from Utah?  So how many wives does your dad have?"  or "Utah?   So you're Mormon?"   I can't wait to find out what questions are brewing outside our borders now.   The sad thing is that the producers have made sure viewers know the Henricksons live in Utah - we can't just claim it takes place in Arizona or Wyoming.  From Bill's office window, you can see the Angel Moroni atop the Salt Lake Temple; when the family is watching the news, the weather map is of Utah; and the streets are filled with terrible drivers.  It could only be Utah at that point.     Read more
Church moves away from polygamy after series
By Lawn Griffiths East Valley Tribune Originally published April 1, 2006
It can be a veritable pastime watching how various religions confront controversy and defend themselves.  These days the Roman Catholic Church, Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are among the most constantly dogged by a miscellany of events, scandals or controversies, some from trying to maintain rigid orthodoxy in an evolving society or from self-inflicted harm.   Much of it, of course, is just defending itself from raw hostility.   On Sunday nights, the premium cable channel HBO has brought forth "Big Love," a modern-day polygamy story set in a suburb of Salt Lake City.  It features Bill Paxton as a man with three wives and some children living side by side in three handsome houses.  HBO tries to have it both ways, feigning that the show’s characters are not to be confused with good monogamous Mormons, yet putting it in Salt Lake City and setting a scene that can only remind viewers that the 12 million-member church has polygamy in its past.  The show’s patriarch, Roman, played by Harry Dean Stanton, opines about his family’s roots in a golden age of Mormonism when polygamy was part of it.     Read more
Worry About Polygamy, Not TV
By Tracy Medley New West Network - Missoula, MT Originally published April 10, 2006
While much of Utah is busy getting its panties in a wad over HBO’s new polygamy-drama, Big Love and how it’s supposedly giving Utah a bad name, the real problem of polygamy remains.  Why are so many Utahns harping about a fictional television show depicting a polygamous marriage between consenting adults while their real-life tax dollars are being used to support polygamous compounds known for rampant physical, emotional and sexual abuse?   While the idea of sharing my husband with any woman (let alone Chloë Sevigny) makes my flesh crawl, it just makes sense to me that consenting adults should be allowed to enter into any marital arrangement they wish, be it a man to another man; a woman to another woman or having multiple partners.  That said, when sex and plural marriage are forced upon underage girls by creepy, old men claiming Godly authority, I’ve got to put my foot down.   Before the first episode of Big Love even aired several of Utah’s Mormons began a letter writing campaign asking HBO to cancel the series because they felt that it misrepresented both their religion and their state.  Members of the LDS church are usually quick to point out that polygamy was officially outlawed by the church in 1890 and is no longer an acceptable practice of members of their faith.   But why are they so adamant about making this distinction?     Read more
Big Love to return for second season
By Andrew Wallenstein The Associated Press Reuters Originally published April 21, 2006
Big Love just got bigger.   HBO has ordered a second season of the dramatic series from gay creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer about a polygamist family, the network said Wednesday, just halfway into its rookie year.  "We all felt the show was really solid and only getting better," HBO president of entertainment Carolyn Strauss said.  "It's gathering momentum with subscribers and critics."   Big Love will go back into production in August in anticipation of returning to the air sometime next year.  The number of episodes has yet to be determined; the opening order was 12.   The second-season order was not exactly guaranteed, given that Big Love has not been a big ratings draw for HBO.  Airing opposite stiff competition like ABC's Grey's Anatomy, Love has averaged fewer than 4 million total viewers for its Sunday 10 p.m. premieres, hanging on to less than half of the audience from its lead-in, The Sopranos.  Still, a closer examination of Love's ratings indicates it is far from a lost cause.   An additional 3 million viewers catch Big Love in multiple repeat broadcasts throughout the week.     Read more
'Big Love' stirs a debate
HBO show delves into issues of polygamy and the teachings of Joseph Smith
By Gary Soulsman The News Journal - Delaware, Maryland Originally published May 6, 2006
Most of us will never have three wives at one time.   And judging by the way this situation is dramatized at 10 p.m. every Sunday, we're lucky souls.   It's a good bet that most of the 3.5 million HBO subscribers who watch "Big Love" go to bed relieved that they are not the fictional Bill Hendrickson, living in a Salt Lake City suburb reminiscent of "Desperate Housewives."   Hendrickson, played by Bill Paxton, is something of a desperate husband.  With Hendrickson, you watch and wonder: Who could please three wives, run three households while worrying about breaking the laws against polygamy and frantically trying to keep his parents and in-laws from driving him insane?   "Hearing about a man with three wives, you might think of him as a czar or the keeper of a harem," said Arthur Shostak, sociologist emeritus with Drexel University.  "Witnessing the inner dynamics is another matter."   The weekly show is a soap opera doing one of the things television does best -- giving viewers a look at a world they will never know.   But it's a world Vicky Prunty, 42, of Salt Lake City, knows well -- she has lived with two similar families that practiced polygamy.   "You really do feel sorry for a lot of polygamist men running around with so many expectations piled on their shoulders," Prunty says.     Read more
A good man is hard to find
By Marcianne Waters Philadelphia Daily News Originally published May 8, 2006
I CAN'T LOOK away.  I want to.  In fact, I want to walk away.  But, I can't.   A train wreck?   Open-brain surgery on the Discovery Channel?   Another "Who's Your Daddy?" brawl on Jerry Springer?   No, that's not it.  Although "it" does involve a TV and some brawling, of a sort.   It is HBO's new series "Big Love."   I guess the "big" in "Big Love" refers to the polygamous union of Bill and Barb and Nicolette and Margene.  Or maybe it describes the "love" among and between the three wives.  Or maybe, just maybe, it refers to husband Bill, who, Viagra always at the ready, seems to be in hot demand by each wife on her designated morning, noon and night.   I find the idea of polygamy distasteful, even repellant.  It's degrading, it's demeaning, it's disgusting.  Even if the roles were reversed and we women could have multiple husbands, I'd still reject it.  (I must admit that my fruitless search for the perfect mate would benefit greatly from being able to choose one from Category 1, brainy breadwinner, one from Category 2, clever carpenter and, ooh la la, one from category 3, steamy stud.)   But, I digress.   And fantasize.   The whole premise of "Big Love" makes me want to take a long, hot shower, with a Brillo pad, even as it seduces and enthralls me.  Especially the characters:     Read more
BIG LOVE ... OR BIG MESS?
But it's not like gay marriage
By Deborah Leavy Philadelphia Daily News Originally published Monday, May 8, 2006
CONSERVATIVES like syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer are shaking the bars of their cages, ranting that a TV show featuring a polygamous family proves that they were right all along - that if gay marriage gained acceptance, polygamy would be next.   "With the sweetly titled HBO series 'Big Love,' polygamy comes out of the closet," fulminates Krauthammer.   Though having one man married to three women does add a twist to this comic soap opera, the show is hardly an advertisement for this particular alternative lifestyle.   "First wife" Barb seems to be the show's most sensible character, until you consider she was crazy enough to let her husband marry two other women.   When Barb and her husband want to see each other more than the third of the time they're allowed, they have to "cheat" on the others and worry about being caught!   I wouldn't want to share my husband with anyone, but certainly not with second wife nasty Nicolette, who has secretly run up $60,000 in credit-card debt.  We have enough trouble managing a joint account with just two people.   And then there's Margene, wife No. 3, who used to be the baby sitter - a common fantasy for some men.  Now that she's married, poor Margene is stuck with the children of all three wives!   Hubby Bill works his tail off to maintain three homes, one for each wife, and pops Viagra daily to keep up with their sexual demands.  No, "Big Love" isn't likely to lead anyone into polygamy.  But what about gay marriage?     Read more
Hit show gets to dark heart of polygamy
By Jessica Heslam Boston Herald Originally published Sunday, May 14, 2006
The HBO drama "Big Love" has shed light on the dark side of polygamy by exposing the abuse and marriage of underaged girls, former polygamists and experts said.   "The attention focused on this show is riling up a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t care about the subject of polygamy," said Arizona polygamist Don Milton, who runs www.christianmarriage.com and says his hate mail has shot up since the show’s debut.   "Big Love’s" main character is Bill Henrickson, a Viagra-popping polygamist who lives in suburban Utah with his three wives and seven children.   While one expert called that story line "fantasy," another involves Roman Grant, the weasly patriach of a polygamist commune who has numerous wives, including a 14-year-old bride-to-be.   Cult expert Rick Ross said Grant and his child bride are "getting to the core of the real polygamist."  Ross said the power Grant exercises over his fictional community "is very much like the reallife communities and the so-called prophets that control them."   "Big Love," which has been renewed for a second season, exposes the "negative aspects of the more insular community," Ross said.     Read more
Untangling polygamy
Letters Philadelphia Daily News Originally published Monday, May 15, 2006
RE "BIG LOVE - or Big Mess?" (op-ed, May 8): What Deborah Leavy didn't mention in her piece on polygamy is the awkward fact that Mother Nature has made the sexes almost equal in number. There aren't even two women for every man. If men are given permission to "marry" more women, it will leave three, four or more poorer heterosexual men without partners. Sexually frustrated men, robbed of the opportunity to have a wife and family, could be very dangerous men. China recognizes this. Owing to female infanticide, there are now 119 Chinese men for every 100 Chinese women. The government says this is a destabilizing situation, and they are attempting to raise the status of girls in order to combat the infanticide. There is a lesson to be learned here. And Ms. Leavy referred to "Christian polygamists." Jesus said a man should have but one wife and so did St. Paul and and Titus. So, when people call themselves "Christian polygamists," they are guilty of blasphemy. Obviously, polygamists don't read the New Testament. Polygamy means men collecting women as concubines and placing them in harems. Are concubines and harems compatible with a first-world country like America that prides itself on the equality of its citizens? I don't think so. The ancient tribal practice of polygamy should have been kicked into the garbage can of history long ago. Jancis M. Andrews British Columbia, Canada
"Big Love" Polygamy Series Disturbs LDS Members
KIFI ABC Local News 8 - Idaho Falls Originally broadcast May 15, 2006
Polygamy has existed since ancient times. But it's only now that polygamy is the subject of a hit TV show.   'Big Love' on HBO is watched by about 4 million people every week.  And it gains more viewers every episode.   Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints fear the show will reflect poorly on the LDS.  Even though the LDS don't practice polygamy now, they did at one time.  We asked several couples to watch one episode of 'Big Love' and give us their reaction.   The show 'Big Love' is about a man, three wives, and 7 children.  They live side by side in three suburban houses, all sharing one big back yard.  The husband, Bill, is on a disciplined schedule to spend equal time in each home with each wife.  Some nights he uses the aid of Viagra.  Some pro-polygamists that have watched the show say it's a more realistic view of a polygamous lifestyle than anything portrayed before.   The LDS church is on the record as concerned about the show.  Leaders fear the public will confuse the shows family with a regular Mormon family.  We asked our couples for their reaction.   "It's very offensive to me.  Taking little things that only an LDS members would know and making them part of this show.  Makes me wonder who helped get them the information.   I just ... it's very hard to watch," says Vicki Johnson.     Read more
Top-court ruling turns up heat on polygamists
'Law-abiding' man with 5 wives worries about the impact
By Geoffrey Fattah Deseret Morning News Originally published Sunday, May 21, 2006
With Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, criminal investigations under way by authorities in Utah and Arizona, a national media feeding frenzy over all things polygamy and a TV show such as HBO's "Big Love," plural marriage is sitting under a very hot spotlight.   A recent Utah Supreme Court ruling that clears the way for prosecutors to go after polygamists under the state's bigamy statute has only served to turn up the heat.   "I have started to be a little concerned about that," said one polygamist man, who asked the Deseret Morning News not to identify him out of fear of criminal prosecution.  He lives in the Salt Lake Valley with his five wives.   The Utah Supreme Court ruling couldn't come at a worse time for those who practice plural marriage.  The state's high court already booted from the bench Hildale municipal court judge Walter Steed for having multiple wives.  Before that, the Utah Supreme Court had upheld polygamist Tom Green's conviction of bigamy, criminal non-support and child rape, for taking a 13-year-old girl as one of his wives.   As a Hildale police officer, Rodney Holm had taken an oath to uphold the laws and the Utah Constitution, which unlike other state constitutions, contains a specific ban on polygamy.  So when Holm was charged with bigamy and unlawful sex with a 16-year-old, it sent shockwaves.     Read more
'Big Love' is a big mess
HBO series ignores ugliness of polygamy and reaffirms East's ignorance of West
By Jon Talton The Arizona Republic Originally published May 28, 2006
I realized we've taken the express elevator further south from the point in the 1980s when Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase "defining deviancy down."  Still, I expected quite a backlash to HBO's series Big Love.   As you know, the show is about polygamy and came to television after several years of shocking revelations about the true nature of the practice.   Yet Big Love, which has been renewed for a second season, is not about that reality.   "Think having three wives is a dream come true?"  HBO's promotional blurb teases.  No, Bill Paxton's main character "struggles to balance the financial and emotional needs of Barb, Nicki and Margene."   The wives are all of legal age, live in separate suburban houses, drive, wear contemporary store-bought clothes, and help manage the family finances.  They're all lovely, smart and frisky.  HBO gives product placement for Viagra and sells Big Love coffee mugs and "baby doll T-shirts."  What's not to like?   Apparently not much, and the backlash I expected never much materialized.   What happened instead is more revealing than our willingness to lap up any titillation that the television masters throw into our cultural trough.   The New Yorker praised the series for a Twin Peaks-like achievement: showing "the way deep weirdness can hide in plain sight, right on our own street."     Read more
Family Biz
HBO’s Big Love and The Sopranos close for the season; Utah and New Jersey can relax.
By Bill Frost Salt Lake City Weekly Originally published June 1, 2006
Utah has weathered the greatest threat to Our Way of Life this side of flood, famine and fluoride—Super Big Gulps for everyone!   Just send the bill to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.   He’s the one who dismissed Big Love (HBO; season finale Sunday, June 4) as "pointless" after viewing a single episode, reassuring citizens that the Utah-set series about a suburban polygamist and his three wives would have no negative impact on the state’s image.  Then again, this was at the same press conference wherein he praised Utah’s new state slogan, "Life Elevated," as "awesome," so who knows what’s going on inside that perfectly square Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot head of his.   Huntsman does at least deserve some credit for actually watching an episode of the show, unlike the Morally Outraged Pinheads who launched a Cancel That Smut! e-mail campaign in April without ever having seen so much as a glimpse of Bill Paxton’s ubiquitous bare ass ... that white, magnificent beacon of purity and light ...   But I digress: The MOPs who were so worried that Big Love would perpetuate the myth that the LDS Church still preaches polygamy, even though Paxton’s Henrickson tri-family are clearly portrayed as secretive outsiders living in fear of being exposed to authorities and their church-goin’ Sandy neighbors, failed as expected.   Much as they don’t really listen to those who don’t subscribe to their beliefs, HBO doesn’t really listen to those who don’t subscribe to, well, HBO.  Season 2 comin’ at ya in 2007, MOPs — get those form e-mails ready!     Read more
‘Big Love’: Area Mormons no fans of hit show
By Stephanie Vosk The Patriot Ledger - Quincy, Massachusetts Originally published June 3, 2006
With HBO’s hit drama about a modern-day polygamist family set to end its first season Sunday night, local Mormons are weighing in on the show’s impact.   "Big Love" began its 12-episode run in March and followed the daily life of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), his three wives and seven children, and their extended family.   Lorie Burningham, public affairs director for the Hingham Stake (dioceses) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said she was disappointed with the show, from the few episodes she saw.   "It just didn't put Mormons in the best light, it kind of lumped them into a Utah Mormon stereotypical mold, and I believe most of the members of my faith are not like that," she said.   Burningham does not believe in plural marriage, something the LDS church outlawed in 1890.  But, she joked, "if I could find somebody who would do dishes and toilets it might be tempting."   However, she added, "my husband says he couldn't handle more than one of me anyway."   And her husband, Greg, also said he was not a fan.   "It was all about this guy having to take Viagra so he could satisfy all these women," Greg Burningham said.  "It wasn't a male fantasy, for me it was just disgusting."   He did say he appreciated the fact that the show’s writers made it clear that the Henricksons are not members of the LDS church, but, he said they went "out of their way to portray this polygamist family as being the normal ones surrounded by all these wacky Mormons."     Read more
Week In Review: Really hot, unrestricted polygamy
WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
By Alex Eichler and Kate Herts The College Hill Independent - Brown University Originally published Thursday, June 29, 2006
A polygamist from Utah and his three wives: primetime material?  HBO's Big Love premiered Sunday, raising concerns among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who stopped practicing polygamy in 1890 so that Utah could become a state.  The LDS church is concerned that the show will be harmful to the public perception of their faith, and make light of the crimes (mainly the abuse of women and children) that occur in polygamous communities.  Polygamists, on the other hand, doubt that the series will portray the reality of their situation, which they claim is a lot like any other contemporary family.  The premiere of Big Love, produced by Tom Hanks, ended with an epilogue that HBO says will clear up confusion: "According to a joint report issued by the Utah and Arizona attorney general’s offices, July 2005, 'approximately 20,000 to 40,000 or more people currently practice polygamy in the United States.'  The Mormon church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890."  Co-creator Mark V. Olson told the AP that they make it clear that the characters would not find a home in the Mormon Church, and that they are responsive to the concern of whitewashing the abuse issue.     Read more
Controversy? Not for HBO
By Scott D. Pierce Deseret Morning News Originally published Saturday, July 15, 2006
PASADENA, Calif. — If you were inside the state of Utah, you might have thought that there was a big controversy over the HBO series "Big Love."  Not only was the local media coverage heavy — some might say excessive — but lots of people, up to and including Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., weighed in on the show about a family of polygamists living in suburban Salt lake City.   Meanwhile, back at HBO offices in New York and Los Angeles, the controversy was, well, pretty much non-existent.   "I don't know that we've had a lot of controversy about a lot of our shows," said HBO president Chris Albrecht.  "I'm not sure when you say controversy. . . ."   True, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement reiterating its opposition to polygamy.  But Albrecht and the folks at HBO were unfazed.     Read more
The love flows for 'Big Love' at Sunstone session
By Scott D. Pierce Deseret Morning News Originally published Saturday, August 12, 2006
There was a "Big Love"-fest at the 2006 Sunstone Symposium on Friday. Members of a panel discussing the impact of the HBO series about a family of polygamist heaped love upon it. "All I can say is — I love it," said panelist Richard Dutcher, the LDS filmmaker whose credits include "God's Army," "Brigham City" and "States of Grace."  "I want to direct it.  I wish they'd give me a call."  "Big Love" centers on a Utah businessman and his three wives as they muddle through life's everyday struggles — marriage, family, children, work.  All complicated by polygamy, their need to keep it quiet and Bill's conflict with one of his fathers-in-law, who's the head of an FLDS-like sect.  The co-authors of "Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage" admitted discomfort with the sexual content of the series but in general were more than happy with its portrayal of their lifestyle.  "They do have problems, just like any other monogamous family," said Anne Wilde, who is also the managing editor of the pro-polygamy Mormon Focus magazine.  "This is the message we like to get out — we are so normal in so many ways.     Read more
The positive image of polygamy in media
Polygamy loves company – especially in the American media.
By Brielle Schaeffer The Daily Evergreen - Pullman, WA Originally published November 16, 2006
Polygamy loves company – especially in the American media.  With the recent news of fundamentalist Mormon and infamous polygamist Warren Jeffs’ arrest and two television programs, the fictional "Big Love" and the reality show "The Girls Next Door," the media does not dispute this.  Pro-polygamy propaganda is juxtaposed with legal consequences.  In "Big Love," an HBO television series, the protagonist has three wives and seven children who live in three separate houses that share the same yard in a suburb of Salt Lake City.  The show’s tag line, "Think having three wives is a dream come true?  Think again," is trying to deglamorize this macho obsession with multiple, monogamous sexual partners.  But it still shows how American culture is fascinated with female subservience.  The other part of the media’s positive polygamy images is "The Girl’s Next Door," a reality television show on E!.  This show is about Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends who live in a house next to the Playboy Mansion.  Hefner, the porn king himself, has three bunnies at his disposal and he spends the night with his favorite one.  Even though they are not married, how are their relationships any different than polygamous ones.     Read more
MY SIDE OF THE SCREEN
Big Love - polygamy loves company
By Amazingly Entertainment Opinion iAfrica.com - Cape Town, South Africa Originally published January 25, 2007
I find it quite disturbing that I have been following 'Big Love' for the last few weeks.  Morbid curiosity, that's what it is.  I hate casting stones, judging others and all that but I really just can't comprehend the concept of polygamy.  Or why women would agree to it.  Firstly I should tell those that don't know already, I am a Muslim woman.  And this is important because it is a known fact that some Muslim men practice polygamy.   It is a very controversial topic but my views are clear – I am totally against it.  That being said, I know a few women who are in polygamous marriages and I have seen first-hand the consequences thereof.  Is this why I am so drawn to watch this?  The creators of 'Big Love' have created a fictional religion for the polygamists, but it seems to be similar to those of Mormons, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  It centers around Bill Henrickson, his three wives and their children, who all live happily (or not) together as one extended family.  The wives regard each other as sisters (or not) and regard each others children as their own – or so they say.  They share chores, meals, kids and off course, a husband; each getting their fair share as per schedule.  I mean come on!     Read more
Big Love on SBS
enews eBroadcast Australia - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Originally published March 2, 2007
Fans of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under rest easy.  SBS has guaranteed an 8.30 timeslot for the HBO hit drama, Big Love.  Big Love provides an intriguing insight into the long outlawed practice and hidden world of polygamy.  Featuring a stellar movie star cast including Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny and Jeanne Tripplehorn, the 12 part series centres on Mormon patriarch Bill Henrickson (played by Paxton) with his three wives and their seven children.  Bill struggles to balance the financial and emotional needs of Barb, Nicki and Margene, who live in separate, adjacent houses and take turns sharing their husband each night.  While managing the household finances together and routinely sharing "family home nights," they try to keep simmering jealousies in check and their arrangement a secret — polygamy is illegal in Utah and banned by the mainstream Mormon Church.  Produced by Warner Bros, Big Love made up part of Nine’s output deal but they decided to on sell when approached by SBS late last year.  Director of Television and Online Content Matt Campbell said "Frankly were delighted but also a bit surprised Nine passed on this little gem.  I think they deemed it too edgy for their audience but when it comes to drama edge is what people have come to expect from SBS."     Read more
No big love for the curious here
By Jayne Clark Travel » Destinations USA TODAY Originally published April 5, 2007
HILDALE, Utah — It isn't lovely, cultural or particularly welcoming.  Nor will you find mention of this colorless town in mainstream travel guides.  But a growing number of motorists making the trek down Route 59 south of Zion National Park's red-rock bounty are pausing for a look-see, thanks to media exposure surrounding a polygamous sect headquartered here.  Hildale and its sister town of Colorado City, just over the Arizona border, are headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and home since the 1930s to a large polygamous enclave.   The sect bears more than a passing resemblance to the one portrayed in Big Love, the HBO series that chronicles a polygamous Utah family.  Add to that the legal woes of the church's leader and former FBI 10 Most Wanted poster boy Warren Jeffs, and it's enough to make an already reclusive community want to lock the door and turn out the lights.   Charged with being an accomplice to rape for performing the spiritual marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin, Jeffs is now awaiting trial, a proceeding sure to brighten the spotlight on these communities.  So is the start of the second season on June 17 of the critically acclaimed Big Love.     Read more
Warren Jeffs acquires pop culture following
By Brian Passey The Spectrum Originally published April 10, 2007
ST. GEORGE - He's been a principal, a prophet, a fugitive and an inmate.  Now Warren Jeffs is poised to become a rock star.  Jeffs, the leader of the polygamous sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is on trial here, facing charges of rape as an accomplice.  But thanks to a Chicago-based experimental music group, one of his sermons is reaching beyond the ears of his followers.  The group, KinkZoid, sampled a sermon in which Jeffs warns students at a private academy in Salt Lake City about the evils of listening to rock 'n' roll because "you are enjoying the spirit of the Negro race."  During the 1990s, Jeffs worked as principal of the FLDS-operated Alta Academy, the sect he would later lead as its prophet.  During the course of this lecture to students there, he tells the story of Little Richard teaching elements of his music to The Beatles.  Jeffs condemns the musician for being a homosexual and drug user, calling him the "worst kind of person."  He then warns his young audience to stay away from this music because it will "rot the soul," lead them to immorality and corruption and cause them to forget God.     Read more
'Big Love' Salvo: Once Is Not Enough
By Kamau High Adweek Originally published May 24, 2007
NEW YORK A new campaign for HBO's Big Love from Seattle agency Creature humorously highlights the upside of polygamy.  In two spots and four print ads, the agency shows different faux products for the polygamist market.  In "Eau de Polygamie," a chiseled young man strolls down a row of his wives who stand demurely next to a clothesline.  Each one he passes registers disappointment at his rejection by casting their eyes downwards.  Just as he about to pass another, he pauses.  What is that delightful scent, he seems to say.  They bound off into the fields together.  The other spot focuses on a Viagra-like drug for polygamists called "Polygarol."  Spots will run on HBO until the end of June, and also appear on paid placement areas of Web sites such as YouTube.  The print ads, which are scheduled to run in next Sunday's New York Times, showcase real-estate and fake travel offers, all with a polygamist twist.     Read more
Summer Heat
Standoffs, sendoffs, surf and Saints.
By Bill Frost True TV - Editorial Salt Lake City Weekly Originally published June 7, 2007
Big Love Monday, June 11 (HBO) Season Premiere: Didn’t think there was enough Mormonism in Season 1 of Big Love?  Season 2 is chock fulla doctrine!  When last we left Bill Henrickson and his domestic trifecta, Wife No. 1 Barb had been exposed as a polygamist at the governor’s mansion, "prophet" Roman Grant and the forces of Juniper Creek were preparing to bring the pain to Bill’s Sandy ’hood, Bill was counterthreatening with government action and Roman’s son Alby had been antifreeze poisoned — who says Mormons (sorry, fundamentalist Mormons) are dull?  Season 2 picks up weeks later, with Barb so shaken by the outing that she won’t leave the house but is considering leaving the family — filling Wife No. 2 Nikki with dreams of moving up the spousal ladder.  Meanwhile, Bill finds that being tagged as a polygamist apparently isn’t big damn news in Salt Lake City — even with (as it will be revealed in a later episode) "The Deseret News ... one of the best morning newspapers in the country!" on the case.  See?  Settle down, outraged Latter-day Saints — Big Love is obviously pure fiction.
Polygamists give "Big Love" mixed reviews
By Jason Szep Reuters Originally published June 8, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - As "Big Love" enters a second season on Monday, the HBO series about a fictional polygamous family is inspiring emotions from pride to fury among real polygamists where the show is set in a Salt Lake City suburb.  "There's a certain truth to it," said Anne Wilde, a 71-year-old widow who was part of a family of plural wives for 33 years.  "Here's a family of three wives that lives in the community and they just blend into the neighborhood, although they don't say too much about it.  But Wilde said she blocks her eyes when scenes get intimate and bridles at the show's trademark sexual tension, saying it's too racy for many of the estimated 37,000 fundamentalist Mormons who practice polygamy in Utah and Arizona.  "Big Love" centers on the struggles of Viagra-popping polygamist Bill Hendrickson to balance rival affections and demands of his three spouses -- first wife and leader of the pack Barbara (Jeanne Tripplehorn); wife No. 2 and compulsive shopper Nicki (Chloe Sevigny); and wife No. 3 Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin), the youngest, most pliant and most sexual.  The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church, has said the family in "Big Love" are not part of the Mormon church, which introduced polygamy before the Civil War but banned it in 1890.  Excommunicated by mainstream Mormons, polygamists see themselves as purists of the faith as it was practiced by founder Joseph Smith, whom historians say took more than two dozen wives.  Polygamy is a felony in Utah, but polygamists are seldom prosecuted unless they commit additional crimes.     Read more
'Big Love's' wedded blitz
It takes polygamy to marry this many concepts.
By Mary McNamara Los Angeles Times Originally published June 9, 2007
At first it seemed so fringe as to be lunatic. An hourlong drama about a Mormonish polygamous family living in Utah.  Yeah, that has a big built-in demographic.  One season later, devoted fans can barely wait for the return of HBO's "Big Love" on Monday night.  Far from fringe, "Big Love" has become an ur drama, with dark comedy lapping at the edges.  In following the byzantine machinations of the Henrickson clan as it straddles suburban America and the religious-cult compound of Juniper Creek, "Big Love" manages to blend virtually every TV genre available — marriage dramedy, female-bonding comedy, mobster drama — into something completely new.  Season 2 promises to be even better; the folks at HBO needn't worry about the death of "The Sopranos."  The Henricksons have got their backs.  Season 1 opened predictably — perhaps cynically? — with the sex hook.  Meet Bill Henrickson, a normal, home-store-chain-owning guy who happens to have three beautiful wives, all of whom want sex every night.  (Or every third night, as they have a democratic system of husband-sharing.)  Enter Viagra and all subsequent smirky scenarios.  With his ability to emote benign intensity, Bill Paxton takes the character far above the leering cartoon it might have been.  Bill (Henrickson) has an unfortunate tendency toward self-satisfaction and sanctimony (especially given the patriarchal setup of the family), but Paxton makes it clear that, at bottom, this is a man struggling to do right by his family and his faith.     Read more
The truth about 'Love'
By Don Lattin San Francisco Chronicle Originally published Sunday, June 10, 2007
Colorado City, Ariz. -- Loyal members of Warren Jeffs' polygamist sect aren't supposed to watch any television -- let alone the racy programming beamed down from that HBO satellite orbiting somewhere up there in the celestial kingdom.  Nevertheless, some of the brethren in this embattled flock have hidden satellite dishes in obscure corners of their enclave on the Utah/Arizona border, or smuggled in DVDs of the one HBO show that really hits home in this part of the country.  "Big Love," the HBO series, is a big hit among some dissident members of Jeffs' sect, the largest of several polygamist factions that refuse to accept the mainstream Mormon Church's long-standing decision to renounce the practice of plural marriage.  They, like many nonpolygamous fans of the popular show, have come to know Salt Lake City native Bill Henrickson, the "Big Love" patriarch, and his three wives -- Barb, Nicki and Margene.  Henrickson, the lead character played by Bill Paxton, is an independent businessman who defected from the cultish Juniper Creek compound in rural Utah when he was a teenager but continues to secretly live "the principle" as an independent polygamist in his upscale suburban neighborhood.  Like HBO's outgoing hit series "The Sopranos," which puts a friendly face on a mob family from New Jersey, "Big Love" paints a sympathetic portrait of one polygamist clan that seems about as dangerous as Ozzie and Harriet.   So what do real-life polygamists think of "Big Love"?  Charlotte Chatwin, one of two surviving wives in a three-wife polygamist family in Colorado City, didn't like the beginning of the first season.     Read more
Gay monogamous couple are brains behind polygamy show
By Don Lattin San Francisco Chronicle Originally published Sunday, June 10, 2007
Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, the screenwriting team that created "Big Love," don't have a personal interest in Mormonism or polygamy, but they do know something about family lifestyles outside the American mainstream. That's because, offscreen, they're a gay couple celebrating the 16th year of their own monogamous relationship. In an interview in May, they talked about the ideas behind "Big Love" and some of the changes they've made in the second season. Q: Who came up with the idea for "Big Love"? Mark V. Olsen: I did. We were driving back to New York from family vacation in Nebraska. Mormon polygamy has always been on my radar. I grew up in Oregon and have good friends at the University of Utah. Q: What was your partner's reaction? Will Scheffer: My initial reaction was "Yuck! That's not an idea that's going to create a mass audience for television!" We actually had a big fight about it in the car ride back to New York City. Mark said, "I'm going to prove to you that this is a good idea!" Olsen: There was always this idea of a suburban take on polygamy. After a bit of research, we found out that there are multiple ways of living polygamy. We came to know more about this than a lot of mainstream Mormons know. We took a certain degree of flak in the beginning for creating a kind of family that does not exist, but they do exist. Read more
Love may heal a Tony-less HBO
By Diane Werts Newsday Originally published June 10, 2007
What would Abraham Lincoln do?  This and other contemporary questions are asked -- and if not answered, probingly explored -- in HBO's "Big Love," the suddenly Tony-less network's nearest thing to a "Sopranos" successor.  Starting Monday, the second season of this juicy "plural marriage" saga seems to be stepping up to the plate as HBO's next signature series.  "Big Love" does more this year than you might expect, and more richly, more provocatively, more dramatically and amusingly, too.  Last season's cliffhanger "outing" of suburban businessman Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his three wives -- none of them ex -- detonates tensions inside their immediate family, in the extended clan back at the earthy Utah compound they've fled, and around the Salt Lake City community that isn't certain what those Henricksons are doing in their three adjoining subdivision houses but suspects it's not something in which Lincoln would have engaged.  Abe is actually Bill's role model as this unusual "American dream"-seeker wrestles with tonight's big crisis -- one of his wives leaving him.  That throws not only him into a tizzy but her "sister wives," too, whose places in the pecking order start to shuffle.     Read more
Polygamy hooked viewers, but won't go the distance
By Tim Goodman Review San Francisco Chronicle Originally published Monday, June 11, 2007
Big Love: Drama. 9 p.m. Mondays, HBO. "Big Love," HBO's sprawling polygamist drama that received raves but generally failed to spark much discussion at the proverbial watercooler, is an exceptionally well-crafted drama that seems destined to fall short of greatness and, worse, fail to be embraced as a go-to show in the HBO stable. It's a shame, really, because the writing, pacing and acting in "Big Love" are stellar. There's something fulfilling in a TV drama that retains a high-quality continuum, but it's also completely understandable if "Big Love" fails to capture the imagination of the available audience. Part of the reason is that the central idea of the series -- one man, three wives, seven kids, three houses (side by side) in suburban Utah -- initially enthralled with its uniqueness. There was nothing else like it on television. Even by the midway point of last season, the idea of polygamy as the main conceit still intrigued. How does Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton in a performance that anchors the series) juggle three wives in an illegal plural marriage while also being a successful businessman (he owns a string of Home Depot-like stores) and yet living just under the radar of a watchful society?     Read more
'Big Love' is back
By Scott D. Pierce Deseret Morning News Originally published Monday, June 11, 2007
You're reading "one of the best morning papers in the country."  It must be true.  I heard it on an upcoming episode of HBO's "Big Love," which returns tonight at 10 on the pay-cable channel.  Yes, the series about a family of Utah polygamists is back ... but with less local media frenzy, one would hope.  During and after the 12-episode first season of "Big Love," the sky didn't fall.  Tourists didn't stop coming to Utah.  Mitt Romney still gets to run for president.  The Jazz actually got better.  Most of the 4 million (at most) people who saw each episode last season seem to have been able to determine that "Big Love" is fiction.  Fact-based fiction, but fiction nonetheless.  The second season picks up right where the first left off, in terms of both plot and quality.  "Big Love" remains a compelling show about compelling characters.  Tonight, the Henricksons are in turmoil about being "outed" as polygamists.  First-wife Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) withdraws from everyone after she was disqualified from a Utah mother-of-the-year contest just before the ceremony began at the governor's mansion; Bill (Bill Paxton) is determined to find out who did the outing; second wife Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and third wife Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) are struggling to hold the family together.  Bill fears for the future of his business, and he's still got his cult-leader father-in-law, Roman (Harry Dean Stanton) to deal with.  That and the fact that he helped cover up his brother's wife's attempt to murder his wife's brother.  It gets a little complicated.     Read more
Compound Interest
On "Big Love," Nicki and Bill visit Juniper Creek with different agendas; back at home, Barb and Margene get into it over Ben
By Shirley Halperin TV Watch Entertainment Weekly Originally published June 26, 2007
From the get-go, this was the episode of unlikely pairings: Ben and Margene, Bill and Roman, Barb and Rhonda, Alby and... who knows.  But man, was it action-packed!  And filled with plenty of great zingers (mostly courtesy of Adeleen) and even some answers.  Where do we start?  Let's kick off this TV Watch with the most potentially disastrous development: Rhonda running away from the compound.  The sneaky little devil hid in the back of Bill's SUV, and God only knows what she overheard on the ride home.  What's up with Rhonda, anyway?  One minute she's telling Roman she's ready to be his wife (gotta love that snide "he's marrying down" remark from Nicki's sister); the next she needs to be nudged to go sit near him.  And then this little disappearing act?  Well, at least we learned what the alternative to marrying the prophet would be: "selling pine nuts by the side of the road in Mexico."  And why Mexico?  Today there remains a faction of FLDS families living south of the border, and construction is well under way for a temple and refuge in Eldorado, Texas, some 150 miles away from the state line.  There, as in some other fundamentalist communities, girls become marriage material at a frighteningly young age, which makes Rhonda's situation indeed based in reality.     Read more
TV show upsets Aussie Mormons
The Daily Telegraph - Surry Hills, New South Wales Originally published July 6, 2007
THE Australian branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has distanced itself from the television series Big Love and the practice of polygamy.  Big Love, which screens on SBS, is about a modern-day polygamist who lives in suburban Salt Lake City in the United States with his three wives and seven children.  The church has released an open letter stating that the family in the series should not be referred to as Mormons.  "Unfortunately placing the series in Salt Lake City, the international headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is enough to blur the line between the modern Church and the program's subject matter and reinforce old, outdated stereotypes," church spokesman Steve R Coy said.  "This distinction is often lost on members of the public and even on some senior journalists."     Read more
No love lost
By Matthew Benson, Amanda J. Crawford and Mary Jo Pitzl The Arizona Republic Originally published July 22, 2007
For more than a year, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has resisted the temptation to watch the HBO sitcom Big Love, the polygamy spoof in which a man and his three wives try to make their unusual relationship work in suburbia.  It's not been easy.  While Goddard doesn't have HBO at home, a staff member has dutifully taped every episode and placed it on his desk.  Still, Goddard has resisted on principle: "Anything that is trying to make what I consider to be a tragic situation for most of the families I've had to interact with in Colorado City and turn it into a sitcom, I find offensive," he says.  But while channel surfing at a hotel in Flagstaff recently, Goddard's clicker lingered a moment on HBO before he realized what he was watching.  He caught about 10 minutes of the show, including the previews for the next episode.  Did the snippet win him over?  Not a chance.     Read more
Readers Show 'Big Love' For Utah Polygamy Beat
By Joe Strupp Editor & Publisher - New York City Originally published August 16, 2007
NEW YORK Brooke Adams' beat at the Salt Lake Tribune is not exactly like covering city hall, unless the mayor has three or four wives and more than a dozen children.  That's because Adams, an eight-year veteran reporter at the Utah daily, covers polygamy -- and appears to be the only full-time reporter covering that subject at a U.S. newspaper.  "It is really intriguing," says Adams, 49, who had covered the lifestyle with other "family" issues until early 2006 when she went full time on the unusual assignment.  The biggest surprise about her beat, she says, "is how committed people are to their beliefs and how complex it is.  There is abuse that goes on, but there are also very happy families."  Web traffic data places the Tribune's "Polygamy" page near the top of the site's most popular offerings.  "It is greater than the politics or education sections, the most popular page outside of sports and news," says Online Editor Manny Mellor.  From July 2006 to June 2007, the page received nearly one million views.     Read more
The Experts Corner: How real is 'Big Love' season 2?
By Pop Watch Television, The Experts Corner Entertainment Weekly Originally published August 20, 2007
With the second season of Big Love (pictured, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, left; and Chloe Sevigny) coming to an end, we thought it was a good time to check in with one of the country's foremost polygamy experts: Salt Lake Tribune reporter Brooke Adams. The plural life is Adams' beat: She's the one covering the trial of Warren Jeffs, interviewing Big Love-like families all over Utah and the border states and constantly updating the paper's polygamy blog. Not surprisingly, she sees a lot of correlations between the plots on Big Love and real-life news stories, so we chatted about some of those last week via IM. — Shirley Halperin ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are there any perks, for lack of a better word, to being first wife? It seems like a lot of this season has been focused on Barb's inner struggle with the life she's chosen while at the same time trying to assert herself and her position in this three-wife system. From the women you've interviewed, have you noticed this sort of first-wife issue? BROOKE ADAMS: First of all, the plural wives I've spoken with say there is no such thing as a "first wife." They say that for any wife to hold more power than the others makes the whole thing unworkable. The best explanation I've heard is that the wives have to view themselves as equals who are interested in the good of the group and want the same thing for the other wives that they want for themselves. That, at least, is the ideal.     Read more
Romney gets a little 'Big Love'
By Christina Bellantoni The Washington Times Originally published August 27, 2007
Political junkies and HBO fans have been wondering if "Big Love" would ever include a Mitt Romney story line.  Finally that question was answered last night, and the Mormon presidential hopeful got a mention during the season finale of the popular HBO drama about a Mormon family engaged in polygamy.  You had to listen really close to catch the Romney line, it was that subtle.  At the beginning of a scene halfway through the episode, the show's polygamist patriarch Roman Grant, aka "The Prophet," is watching television.  The TV screen isn't in the shot, but you can hear a female's voice weighing in on a recent Romney scandal.  "He saved the Olympics.  Who cares if he lets his dog ride on the roof of his car," the woman says, referring to a Boston Globe profile detailing a family trip where the Romney dog, Seamus, traveled 12 hours in a pet carrier on the roof of the station wagon.  "People are just out to get him for any little thing," the pundit continues.  She starts a new sentence with "Critics ..." but her voice is drowned out when the show's main character Bill Henrickson enters the room.  The pundit does not mention Romney by name, but it is obvious she is referring to the Republican, who managed the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City .     Read more
Mitt takes hit on 'Big Love'
By By Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa Boston Herald Originally published Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Ex-Gov. Mitt Romney, whose Mormon religion has become an issue in his quest for the White House, got a cameo mention in the season finale of HBO’s polygamy drama "Big Love."  The set-in-Utah series, which follows the adventures of a Mormon fundamentalist and his three wives, wrapped up this week with a cliffhanger focused on the arrest of polygamy cult leader Roman Grant, aka Harry Dean Stanton.  Before Grant is taken away in handcuffs, there’s a scene where Stanton is in bed watching TV.  Although the picture cannot be seen, a woman is heard saying: "He saved the Olympics.  Who cares if he lets his dog ride on the roof of his car?  People are just out to get him for any little thing."  As you well know, Romney is credited with saving the scandal-plagued 2002 Olympics in - where else? - Salt Lake City.  And he was recently slammed by animal-rights types for strapping his Irish setter, Seamus, to the roof of a station wagon for a family trip to Canada oh so many years ago.  "I suppose it could have been worse," said Romney’s spokesguy Eric Fehrnstrom.  "He could have gotten a mention on ‘John from Cincinnati.’"     Read more
HBO explains: Romney "part of that world"
By Christina Bellantoni The Washington Times Originally published August 29, 2007
The creators of HBO's 'Big Love' have answered my questions about why Mormon presidential candidate Mitt Romney was included in the show's season finale Sunday.  HBO spokeswoman Tonya Owens said she spoke to Will Scheffer and Mark V. Olsen about the brief Romney line of dialog in the show about a polygamist family.  Owens said the background clip - a TV news pundit mentioning Romney's critics and noting: "People are just out to get him for any little thing ..." - was manufactured specially for 'Big Love' and not taken from a real news segment.  "Mitt Romney is not part of our storyline yet," Owens said on behalf of the creators.  "This season is over.  If he does succeed, we will be looking for a way to sketch something in.  We mentioned him because it is so part of that world and everyone in that world is talking about him."  Romney, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts, is leading early polls in Iowa and New Hampshire but trails his rivals nationally. Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter, The Washington Times
HBO’s 'Big Love' Parallels Polygamist's Plight
Broadcast Newsroom Originally published September 30, 2007
(Broadcasting & Cable) - You can bet Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer were paying attention last week when polygamist leader Warren Jeffs http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3656629&page=1 was convicted as an accomplice to rape for performing a marriage between a 19-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl. Olsen and Sheffer, the creators of HBO's polygamist drama, Big Love http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6462605.html , have monitored the Jeffs story all along, given how eerily it has played out alongside the series' first two seasons. When Jeffs became an FBI fugitive in spring 2006, just as Big Love was closing out its first season, Olsen and Sheffer decided to write in an off-camera story line for season two involving the FBI pursuit, arrest and trial of Orlean Abbot -- an even creepier fundamentalist leader than the show's Roman Grant (played by Harry Dean Stanton). "We were worried that the [Jeffs] situation might have led to a Waco-kind of shootout, and so we wanted to somehow protect ourselves in case that came to pass," Olsen told B&C. "If we're all like cotton-candy-and-caramel-corn in the suburbs and then this horrific incident happens, even if it's a totally different scale, it's kind of like the problems that Sex and the City faced after 9/11." Although Jeffs has been convicted, his story will continue to reverberate in the show's third season, which begins production in November. "We're going to start out our season with Orlean Abbot having been convicted pretty much of the Warren Jeffs crimes," Olsen said. Read more
Golden day for Canada as awards season heats up
By Gayle MacDonad The Associated Press Globe and Mail Update - Toronto, Ontario Originally published December 14, 2007
Canadian-made films, TV shows, actors and filmmakers scored an impressive number of nominations yesterday when the names were unveiled for the 65th-annual Golden Globe Awards to take place in Hollywood in the new year.  Topping the Canadian pack was Toronto director David Cronenberg, whose Russian-mafia thriller, Eastern Promises garnered three Golden Globe nods, including best picture (drama), best actor (Viggo Mortensen) and best score (by Toronto-born composer Howard Shore).  It's up against stiff competition including American Gangster, Atonement, The Great Debaters, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.  British actress Julie Christie - who stars in Toronto-based Sarah Polley's feature-film directorial debut, the Alzheimer drama Away from Her - received a nomination for best dramatic actress.  Canadians Ellen Page and Ryan Gosling also racked up Golden Globe acting nods for their performances in Jason Reitman's (born in Montreal but a long-time resident of L.A.) comedy Juno and Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl.  Halifax-born Page, 20, was nominated for best actress in a comedy or musical for her work in the critical favourite, Juno, about a pregnant teen (the picture also received a nomination as did writer Diablo Cody).  Recently the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave Page its award for the year's best breakthrough performance.  She has also been nominated for best actress at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.     Read more

Official LDS Church letter about "Big Love"

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"Religion" is no excuse for commi