As most readers know, Linwood Boomer is the creator and main writer on Malcolm in the Middle (if you didn’t, even more reason to read on). Not only that but its partly autobiographical especially in the earlier seasons. However details on this are not widely known, so when I stumbled across John Murphy’s post it was a nice read. John went to school with Linwood in the early 1970s and references a 2006 interview with Linwood. Surprisingly Linwood’s experiences where grimmer than Malcolm’s.
At Serra, Linwood was a gifted-but-troubled kid who was on the periphery (read: outcast.) A San Mateo Times story recalled how classmates (or was it a teacher?) dubbed him “Mary” due to his shaggy hair….Linwood hung out in high school with other guys on the fringe. Their hair was a little longer and their clothes a little out of the norm. They were cynical; Linwood described himself as “anti-social” in high school. – John Murphy
Boomer says Malcolm is based on him, but the character is much more well-adjusted than he was in high school.
“I was more self-centered and antagonistic, so basically I took a belligerent jackass and turned him (Malcolm) into a charming eccentric,” Boomer says. “I was a troubled kid with very few social skills and did not connect to the people around me. I was not a sociopath, but I wasn’t social. I was always telling the principal he was stupid and arguing with my teachers. I would be horrified if my children ever did that.”
Last month on our Happy Birthday Erik post, I brought up the fact that the most recent photo of Erik we had was from 2 years ago! Good news, the above photo is from June 7th when Erik graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy (high school), posing with one of his class mates. Its not the best picture, but its the best we have, I’m sure there where many people taking pictures, but this is the only one to surface, thanks to PEA Reunions for taking it and raymanasdf for bringing it to our attention.
Ok, so maybe the second half of the title doesn’t make much sense, but with so little Erik news, I felt this was worth posting. For those who don’t know Erik’s parents run a Mexican restaurant in Erik’s home town of Milford, Massachusetts called The Alamo. FOX 25 visited Milford as part of their ‘Zip Trip’ and interviewed Erik’s dad Fred mainly about the restaurant but also Erik and his graduation, hair and that at the time of filming he was in Barcelona (also a glimpse of another photo from his graduation, but its low quality). Did you know there is a MITM cookbook?
We reported nearly 2 years ago about the Fright Site project that Bryan had started. Since then the project has progressed and all but the final stages of the ‘writing’ have been completed. The project is with NetStudio.TV and is a pretty cool concept. Budding writers have had the chance to submit the ‘Pitch’, ‘Plot’, ‘Characters’ and ‘Dialogue’ with somebody winning each stage. The above video promo came out last month.
From what the website says Bryan is currently choosing the winner of the final stage ‘Writer’s Block’. I understand that if a successful script is completed the film short/series will be professionally produced and will star Bryan. However in the recent live chat with Bryan I got in the question, asking about its progress. He said he hasn’t been in contact with the guy who runs the project for a while and believes that due to the current ‘Credit Crunch’ the project has been put on hold and that its a ‘wait and see’ situation. This jars somewhat with the recent release of the above video (although it was shot sometime ago). We hope it does pick up again and we’ll keep you updated.
There was very little notice for the Live Q&A with Bryan Cranston last week, and not everybody could make the time. But I was able to record Bryan and the chat room. It was a very successful chat, Bryan was really up for it and stayed for 40 minutes. Its focus was obviously on Bryan’s latests role on Breaking Bad but he chatted about Malcolm and some of his other projects. Many thanks to Tom O’Neil from the LATimes for organising the chat, he was planing to be on camera to ask Bryan some questions but he had technical issues, so Bryan ran the show himself!
Ignore the left video box, I don’t suddenly appear on video, that’s just how Tinychat.com works.
Here’s your invite to dish personally with last year’s Emmy champ for best drama actor: Byran Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) at 4 p.m. PST/ 7 p.m. EST.
Our chat will be a combination of webcam and typed live chat — that is, Bryan and I will appear on the top of your computer screen via webcam while you communicate with us via typing questions and comments that we’ll read and respond to – Tom O’Neil from the LATimes
For those in the UK that’s 12PM (Midnight) tonight. If you have a question for Bryan and can’t make the chat, post a reply to this and I’ll see if I can get it answered. The chat is not being done by the VC but by Tom O’Neil from the LATimes, so I’m not exactly sure how many people will be asking questions or the exact format. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get a text transcript from it, and I’ll try to capture the video.
We all hope you have a great day Erik. In the UK (where I’m writing this) he could be getting legally drunk but I’m sure Erik won’t be doing anything like that till he’s 21…
For those who don’t know Erik has been keeping totally out of the media for the last 2 years. His priority being school, however he’ll be done with that now and be heading to college soon (I wonder where?). We wish him all the best with this next stage in life.
I totally understand and respect Erik’s right to privacy and its not like we have paparazzi on hand to track him down but I can’t help but wonder what he looks like these days. I’m not alone with this, most recently and notably one of the UK’s most popular gossip/entertainment magazines Heat did a child star ‘Where are they now?’ feature and included Erik.
Interesting to see they didn’t choose one of the Season 1 pictures but instead one of him looking older in Season 4. However more notable, this magazine which only came out this week is using a ‘Now’ picture from 2.5 years ago (when Erik was 15!), it was taken at the première of Arthur And The Invisibles January 7, 2007.
But we can’t really blame them, the newest picture I know of is Erik and parents from August 30, 2007. So really we don’t know what he is looking like these days, if anyone has newer (avoid this Google indexing mistake) we’d love to see it, but please no stalking!
Back on June 8th it was announced that Nickelodeon had bought the cable rights to all the Malcolm in the Middle episodes. They are now airing it on their Nick at Nite prime time programming block on Nickelodeon (in the US) which is aimed at an older and family audience. It starts today with an all night marathon from 8pm (Eastern Time) till 1am (then repeated till 6am).
We have conducted a great deal of research with kids and families, and two things that we hear continuously are that they want to spend more time together and that watching television is one of their favorite ways of making that happen…By starting Nick at Nite at 8pm, and adding another terrific comedy series like Malcolm in the Middle, we will serve them further and build upon the great success we’ve had with contemporary family comedies – Cyma Zarghami (President of Nickelodeon)
We don’t often report on when a TV station is showing Malcolm in the Middle mainly because we have an international audience. However this acquisition is great news for MITM, it shows how it continues to be valuable. In 2007 it was also acquired by the US cable channel FX. However this is bigger, Nick at Nite ranks as the number-two US cable network with Adults 18-49 (behind only USA Network) with 1.5 million viewers. Also Nickelodeon has been heavily advertising (something MITM has lacked in the past) on their channels. A quick search on Twitter and you will see many people excited and quoting the TV adverts.
Nickelodeon is a channel in many countries but from what is known this is a US based deal only. Don’t expect to see Malcolm on Nickelodeon elsewhere. Nickelodeon also streams some shows on their website Turbo Nick, however as far as we know this was a cable TV deal only, so we won’t see it online.
Nick have launched a companion website for the show which includes video clips (US only), Message Boards, Character/Actor Bios (brief and not completely accurate) and a basic About page. Nothing exciting, but a good design and nice to see they made the effort.
Its now airing: Sunday 8pm-9, 12am-1 and 2am-3. Monday – Thursday 8pm-9 and 12am-1. Friday at 12am-1 and 4am-5 and Saturday at 12am-1 and 2am-3. (Eastern Times)
The marathon is just season 1 episodes in the following order: 1×01 Pilot, 1×06 Sleepover, 1×02 Red Dress, 1×13 Rollerskates, 1×05 Malcolm Babysits, 1×03 Home Alone 4, 1×09 Lois vs. Evil, 1×07 Francis Escapes, 1×12 Cheerleader and 1×04 Shame.
In the US its been on local broadcast syndication since 2004, sitcomsonline.com believe its local channels syndication will end this year, however I’m not so sure.
To celebrate the release of the new Star Trek movie, I thought I’d cut together the Trek-tastic episode 7×14 Hal Grieves. Abe tries to help out Hal with the loss of his father by tracking down some “Classic Trek” stars. It guest starred George Takei who played Sulu in the original series.
Malcolm in the Middle VC war schon immer eine internationale Seite, und wir möchten für Fans von überall her da sein, auch wenn Englisch nicht ihre Muttersprache ist. Daher haben wir kürzlich einen deutschsprachigen Bereich in unserem Forum eingerichtet. Schaut einfach vorbei, werdet Teil der Community und helft uns, diese Seite zum Besten Ort für deutsche Malcolm Mittendrin – Fans zu machen. (Dabney – Deutscher Moderator)
Malcolm in the Middle VC has always been an international site and we like to support fans from all over, even if English isn’t their first language. Because of this we have recently launched a German language section of our forum. Join us in the forum, and help us make this the best place for German Malcolm in the Middle fans.
Malcolm-Mittendrin.com for many years was the number one place for German MITM fans, however a couple of years ago it died and since then German fans have had nothing. We hope to grow our Malcolm Mittendrin forum to carry on Malcolm-Mittendrin.com’s legacy. I’ve been struggling to contact the Malcolm-Mittendrin.com’s admin or staff, we would love to if possible recover/restore anything from the site. If you can help me get in contact with them please send me a message.
The forum has its own domain MalcolmMittendrin.TV. Many thanks to Dabney who is our German forum Moderator and doing a great job.
Malcolm in the Middle Voting Community is the leading unofficial site for FOX's
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Releases and what the Cast are up to now.
As most readers know, Linwood Boomer is the creator and main writer on Malcolm in the Middle (if you didn’t, even more reason to read on). Not only that but its partly autobiographical especially in the earlier seasons. However details on this are not widely known, so when I stumbled across John Murphy’s post it was a nice read. John went to school with Linwood in the early 1970s and references a 2006 interview with Linwood. Surprisingly Linwood’s experiences where grimmer than Malcolm’s. 
Back on June 8th it was announced that 
![Buy Malcolm in the Middle - Soundtrack [CD]](http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/images/mitmcd.gif "Buy Malcolm in the Middle - Soundtrack [CD]")
![Buy Malcolm in the Middle - Season 1 [DVD]](http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/images/mitmdvd.gif "Buy Malcolm in the Middle - Season 1 [DVD]")
