JAMES DUBOSE: REALITY - CHECK: Producer re-writing the reality TV rules

      *James DuBose may not be a familiar name, but it is one that rolls on the credits of some of BET’s very popular reality series including 2006-08’s “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is” and its spin-off “Frankie & Neffe,” and it is the name on the door of the founder and CEO of DuBose Entertainment.

       “All the stuff that I’ve been blessed to do is never about me,” he recently told EUR’s Lee Bailey. “I’ve been blessed to work within our creative community and with a lot of good people. No one is watching TV because James Dubose is producing the show. They’re watching TV because of the talent I’m blessed to work with. I always try to keep that in perspective. I’m just a guy who loves his work. I love what I do. I would do it for nothing. With that said, I’m not looking to be famous.”

      DuBose may not be looking to be famous, but he said the he had always been looking to work in entertainment, particularly in production. He said that while he took a football scholarship to Wake Forest University, the school’s draw for DuBose was its Communications Department. His aspirations soon brought him to Hollywood.

      “Football was short-lived,” said DuBose. “And then I met a guy named Brad Lachman who created the TV show ‘Solid Gold.’”

      DuBose worked with Lachman as a production assistant – a post the former athlete said was initially hard to swallow.

      “After playing football and having everything handed to you and then to become a production assistant – basically a 'go-fer' – getting people’s lunches and so forth; it was a difficult transition,” he said, “but Brad sat down with me and we talked about what my goals were. He said, ‘If you really want to become a great leader, it’s best to start from the bottom. So that when you are teaching people, you can teach out of experience and not just what you’ve seen. To this day, he’s still my mentor.”

      After his stint with Lachman, DuBose moved to Atlanta to work as an associate producer for the 1996 Olympics. He returned to Los Angeles two years later to work on a cutting edge dating show called “Blind Date” as co-executive producer and in 2001 he launched his own production company called DuBose Entertainment, which specialized in reality and live action shows.

      “I always wanted to have my own business. I didn’t know back in 1991 exactly what that was. I knew I wanted to have my own production company, but I really didn’t know what that entailed. I knew I had stories to tell,” he said.

      While owning his own company is quite a success, DuBose’s big break came when BET and Interscope Records approached him for a show for R&B breakout Keyshia Cole.

      “Everybody had a different take on what they thought the show would be. Once I met Keyshia and got a chance to know who she was as a person, I wanted to portray her in a different way and thank God it worked out.”

      DuBose said that the initial conversations about Cole and the direction the show should take was for it to be the female version of Bobby Brown's short-lived reality series on the Bravo network in 2005 called “Being Bobby Brown.”

      “They said that she’s this big personality that doesn’t listen,” he said, “but that wasn’t something I was really interested in. After sitting down with her my goal was to make people appreciate her as a woman, as a black woman, and appreciate her music by being able to understand what she had to deal with. I think you have to give her credit that she dealt with all those things and didn’t forget her family and didn’t forget where she came from.”

      “When I met her she was already a platinum artist,” he said speaking on how the series may have helped Cole, “but what I do take credit for is that the show has helped people understand the lady behind the music.”

      DuBose hopes that viewers will get a lot of understanding out of his latest TV shows “Frankie & Neffe,” which was a spin-off of sorts of “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is” starring Cole’s mom and sister, and “Tiny & Toya,” the real-life drama of two women (lover and former lover) of two of hip hop’s biggest stars T.I. and Lil’ Wayne.

      “You take a show like ‘Frankie & Neffe’ where people say, ‘They have some issues. Why are you showing those things?’ to a show like ‘Tiny & Toya’ and people say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think they were going to do that,’ as it shows a different side of them,” he said. “There are all sides to all of us and the truth is the truth. I’m not sensationalizing anything. I’m only trying to say, here’s their story, now let’s watch them evolve and see them get to a point where we can all be proud of them.”

      Of “Frankie & Neffe” DuBose said, “It’s a different show for me. Most people would think they’d be in better situations. I think in Frankie and Neffe’s case, they made mistakes along the way and the show that I wanted to show is that they understand each other now and understand themselves a little better and they realize how much work has to go into the individual.”

      But the young producer said that controversy and outrageousness are not his formula for a successful reality series.

      “Some people want to see that,” he said. “Some people like to see a train wreck. That has its place on TV and it has its run and it normally goes away, but I think when people can identify with the show – they see themselves or they see someone they know, it makes them continue to watch. I’m telling the truth.”

      For more on James DuBose's series, visit www.bet.com or www.duboseent.com.

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