Eli Allen:
CLASS OF 2011
Summit High SchoolClass of 2011
Forest hills, NY
Eli's Story
Eli's schools include Summit High School.
One of Eli's favorite quotes is:"" 'Nickelodeon is incredibly excited to be working with Polly and her family on this uniquely different comedy series and are very proud to be able to showcase the talents and original music of the Wolff brothers. The Naked Brothers Band series is a show that will make you laugh, but is intimate and genuine in its approach to dealing with everyday kid issues through the larger-than-life story of kid rock stardom.' "
~ Marjorie Cohn, executive vice president of development and original programming, Nickelodeon
"Hi, I'm Polly Draper and I'm the writer and [executive] producer—and the director—and the mother to The Naked Brothers Band. When Nat and Alex were really little they got out of the bathtub and said, 'We're the naked brothers band!'"
~ Polly Draper, Creator, Executive Producer (Showrunner & Head Writer), Periodic Writer and Director of The Naked Brothers Band (TV series)
"Nat and Alex Wolff are really brothers. Polly Draper is the creator and their mother. Michael Wolff—he's really their father."
~ Albie Hecht, Uncredited Developer, and Executive Producer of The Naked Brothers Band TV series
"I wrote a lot of the whole show around Nat's songs."
~ Polly Draper
"It's inspired by the kids really, because they had this awesome band with their friends. And they were so talented and so great, I thought 'You know what, it would be really fun to do a mock documentary of them as if they were huge like The Beatles' and then of course it was a for-filling prophecy—well not the name of The Beatles, but they are pretty huge."
~ Polly Draper
"What originally happened was that Nat and Alex had a band, and the idea evolved based on that. Spinal Tap meets The Little Rascals was my concept... I wanted it to be very Beatle-ish, have that Help! or A Hard Day's Night kind of feeling."
~ Polly Draper
"This is our version of The Monkees. Nat Wolff wrote all the music, which I think distinguishes the show. Sometimes I think you get a sense from bands that they are [faking it] like Milli Vanilli. This really is by kids and for kids."
~ Tom Asheim, Executive Vice President and General Manger of Nickelodeon
"They're just real: real brothers, real friends; it's all the stuff kids do when they're hanging out on the playground. The idea that you're watching a documentary is so much fun. Then you put them into that fantasy of being a world-famous rock band, and that's the sauce that makes it work."
~ Albie Hecht
"I always hope that parents will enjoy the show as much as the children. I’m also very inspired by my son’s songs, so a lot of the feelings and thoughts in the episodes revolve around those. We treat this show like an adult comedy, not like a typical kids show. If a joke goes by unnoticed, that’s all right with us. With the third or fourth viewing, kids will pick it up, as opposed to most children’s fare, where most jokes are signaled and cued."
~ Polly Draper
"Having our life turned into a mockumentary wasn’t as big a deal as some would think. We took all the friendships, Alex’s one liners, and my music and put it into a storyline; it was a heightened reality. We are excited to be on tour and get our fans to hear our music and see us in a live setting. The show created a great audience for us, but playing live is more intimate."
~ Nat Wolff, music written and performed by, and star of The Naked Brothers Band TV series
"... I started the band and started writing; and [our mom, Polly Draper] wrote this mockumentary, kind of Spinal Tap-esque film about us."
~ Nat Wolff
"The Naked Brothers Band is an American musical comedy series created by Polly Draper. The show depicts the daily lives of Draper's sons, who lead a fictional world-renowned rock band from New York City. As a mockumentary, the storyline is a hyperbole of their real lives, and the fictional presence of a camera is often acknowledged. Lead vocals and instrumentation are provided by the siblings; they wrote the lyrics themselves. The show stars Nat Wolff and Alex Wolff, who encounter conflicts with each other that are later omitted. Nat's fictional female admirer and real life preschool friends—including the guitarist who had no prior acquaintance with the family—feature as the band members, with the siblings' genuine father and Draper's husband Michael Wolff as their accordion-performing dad and Draper's niece Jesse as the group's babysitter."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"The series is a spin-off of Draper's film of the same name....Draper, star of Thirtysomething and her writing The Tic Code, is the executive producer of the series, and often writer and director. Albie Hecht, affiliated with Nickelodeon and founder of Spike TV, is the executive producer, under his Worldwide Biggies tag. The adult Wolff, of The Arsenio Hall Show fame, serves as the music supervisor and co-executive producer with Draper's brother Tim as the consulting producer."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"According to writer Felicia R. Lee, of The New York Times, the siblings act 'chatty, guileless, fun-loving', much as they do in their genuine lives. She also notes that, of the show's characters, 'no one over 18 has much sense.' As head writer, Draper wrote her boys' fictional birth mother as deceased; her name is never revealed. However, in the show, the boys' father is infatuated with an estranged lady named Betty (Catherine Curtin)..."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"...and the boys' jazz pianist father Michael Wolff plays their inept accordion-performing dad Mr. Wolff, the latter of whom Draper notes she wrote similar to that of a child."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"...For example, when the cast was filming an episode that featured the band recording a video, Nat, who did not want to make out in the scene due to his crush Rosalina watching, mistakenly smooches her. He then confesses to his mother that he was puzzled as to what the instructions were. The scene being filmed was that of the first season's ninth episode "First Kiss (On the Lips, That is)" which was directed by Melanie Mayron, who acted alongside Draper in Thirtysomething."
~ Eli Allen and other person, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"The pilot episode was originally an independent film depicting Nat and Alex Wolff when they were nine and six years old respectively and premiered as a TV movie special on January 27, 2007. They film a documentary about their world-renowned band, The Silver Boulders, as they fracture due to Nat's song about a girl named Rosalina. At the end, the band reunites as The Naked Brothers Band."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
(Cont'd 'The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie'):
"Famous celebrities either acknowledge that they are huge fans of the band or have appeared with other supporting roles; in real life, they have either worked with or are friends of the Draper-Wolff clan. These special guests were the ensemble cast on the ABC prime-time television drama Thirtysomething (including the boys' mother who wrote and directed the movie in real life), Cyndi Lauper, Arsenio Hall, Tony Shalhoub, Ricki Lake, Ann Curry, Uma Thurman, Julianne Moore, jazz singer Nancy Wilson, Cindy Blackman, David Thornton, Gretchen Egolf, James Badge Dale, Barbara eda-Young, and Brent Popolizio."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"During a 'Battle of The Bands', The Naked Brothers Band are scheduled to perform at a charity concert against The L.A. Surfers. The lead singer is Bobby Love (Price) who pretends to write his own songs and acts as though he is a kind guy with a British accent. Nat and Alex discover the truth while "spying on him" in the bathroom. Rosalina does not believe Nat when he tells her this and they encounter a conflicting relationship. During rehearsal, Nat and the bandmates jokingly change the lyrics of his new song by ridiculing Bobby and calling him a 'big fat phony lier.' Rosalina was not surprised that the other bandmates acted this way but 'expected a lot more from...Nat.' She subsequently quits the band. Rosalina finds Bobby and explains to him what happened. She suddenly becomes suspicious of Bobby and he said to "move on" and threw out her rehearsal script. A puzzled Rosalina leaves. Then, when no one is present, he pilfers Rosalina's script. In the end, Bobby's true identity is revealed and The Naked Brothers Band wins the Battle of The Bands."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"Polar Bears is a TV movie special about Alex's mission to save the polar bears because they are dying as a result of global warming. The band meets their father in New Orleans where they reunite with their old childhood friends—Big Ella (Saorise Scott) and Little Grace (Grace Cartwright) as well as the girls' mother Onita (Donna Lynn Leavy). Nonetheless, because of Hurricane Katrina, their house was destroyed and the family currently resides in a trailer park. Several miscommunications between the bandmates and Little Grace causes much friction to their friendships including Nat and Rosalina's. Afterwards Alex and Big Ella resolve the issue between Nat and Rosalina by showing Nat the documentary cameras. In the end, Nat and Rosalina become a couple and Big Ella resolves gossip 'made by nasty news-reporters who just wanted a story.' The reporters falsely claimed that Alex said the band is 'bigger than Santa Clause' when he was really referring to the picture on the wall during an interview. This saved their state dinner—which they perform at—and the band's reputation. They end up donating money from their state dinner to a local charity that helps global warming."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"[Melanie] Mayron played the voice over as an estranged fan who claimed to be from Mars. This was the last episode Mayron directed ...Expand for more
for the series; she starred alongside The Naked Brothers Band creator and showrunner, Draper, who is also the stars real life mother, on the ABC television drama Thirtysomething."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"[Natasha] Bedingfield sang alongside Nat and Leon Thomas III for Nat's new composition "Yes We Can". Prior to the episode's broadcast, Bedingfield appeared in a music video of the same name with Nat."
~ Eli Allen, Registered User/Contributor/Editor, Wikipedia
"A songwriter at 5 years old, a TV star at 9: Acting between megastars, Nat Wolff talks to THR about the lessons he's learned...It's a long way from his last role in the public eye -- Wolff spent the early years of his adolescence starring alongside his younger brother Alex in The Naked Brothers Band. A 2005 mockumentary cast the pair as members of a rock band of Beatles-level popularity and caught the eyes of Nickelodeon, which turned the concept into a sitcom for three seasons. It was far from pure fiction; the Wolff brothers wrote the music for the film and subsequent series run by their mother, the actress Polly Draper." ~ Jordan Zakarin, The Hollywood Reporter (THR)
" 'I had parents in the business and they made sure that the art was the biggest concern. Because they’ve both been famous and then not famous and then famous, and they say that stuff goes in and out and you have no control over it ... If you’re going for [fame], you’re going to get lost. And I think a lot what happens to teen stars, and what happens to people, and they get just lost.' " ~ Nat Wolff, The Hollywood Reporter (THR)
"Stardom can be equally as exhausting, and alters the course of entire lives when it gets intertwined with the pains of growing up. The Naked Brothers ended, he says, after [Nat's] family and Nickelodeon disagreed on the future of the series. 'It was a confusing thing, it wasn’t really canceled. They wanted us to do a couple movies for them, but we didn’t really want to do that,' Wolff explains. 'Or, they wanted us to do 60 episodes during the school year, but my parents wanted us to go to school, so we couldn’t do that. They didn't want to keep doing what we were doing.
Nickelodeon, when reached for comment, would only say that the show was not renewed after three seasons.
'I was super bummed when I found out, but in retrospect I’m really glad that happened, because I was on the edge of getting burned out,' [Nat] admits, finally old enough to take a step back and better understand the madness around him. 'The first two seasons, we were all really, it was my best friends in the world, and we were just hanging out. And by the third season, I was really taking it seriously." ~ Jordan Zakarin, The Hollywood Reporter (THR)
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"...At a young age, I was diagnosed as severely autistic. I actually had a tested IQ of below 30. And what I would do is, I would spend my days spinning plates, rocking back-and-fourth, flapping my hands, and other repetitive/exclusive type behaviors like that. I was really in every way in my world. You know, I had no language, no communication whatsoever. And my parents were told, 'Look we're really sorry he has severe autism. That's how is and that's really how he's gonna be for the rest of his life.' [So] they took me home and they developed their own home-based, child-centered program, where they worked with me for a little over three years....I really recovered completely from my autism, you know without any trace of my former condition and went onto live a typical life. And go to school, have friends, and have girl friends and go on dates and do the whole thing. And then ultimately went onto graduate from Brown University [an Ivy League School] with a degree in biomedical ethics."
~ Raun Kaufman, Director of Global Education at the Option Institute's Autism Treatment Center of America (a.k.a. The Son-Rise Program.)
"Some people think what we did was imitate Raun. We didn't imitate Raun. We actually valued Raun as our teacher and literally joined him in his world. And little-by-little that little boy slowly let us in."
~ Barry Neil Kaufman, Co-Founder/CEO of The Option Institute and the Autism Treatment Center of America
"This child went from having absolutely no connection with anybody to a very outgoing, very talkative, very vigorous, considered to have a near-genius IQ. Their is no signs of Raun where you would have any idea about his past."
~ Samahria Lyte Kaufman, Co-Founder/President of The Option Institute and the Autism Treatment Center of America
"...We soon came to realize that our son had autism. Once we accepted this, we focused on how we could help Kyle. We learned about The Son-Rise Program. It provided us with an environment where Kyle felt safe; where we could connect with him in his world. And after three years of hard work, an incredible thing happened. Kyle came out of his autism..."
~ Jennifer Westphal (Son-Rise mom, who helped her son recover from mild-to-moderate autism.)
"...What we do you is we move into the child's world and then we gently pull them back into our world..."
~ Jennifer Westphal
"[Barry Neil] Kaufman's work affirms the unlimited potential of the human spirit and offers hope to those who have been challenged by adversity."
~ Coretta Scott King (daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.), Founder, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
"Some of the programs were just play. Some of the other programs were just diet. Some of the other programs were just curriculum. Jonathan [Alderson] had encompassed everything. It was the diet, [the play,] the curriculum, it was our attitude. It was the attitude of everyone involved in Liam's program."
~ An IMTI (Intensive Multi-Treatment Intervention) mother.
"You have to realize that a lot of the children actually don't sleep because they have so much pain...they're not eating properly, and you know ABA [Applied Behavior Analysis] is very intensive; it's 20-40 hours a week of intervention. And these are 2 to -3-year-old children. It is impossible to do that kind of work with them if they are actually not feeling well. So [once] you treat the medical issues and then you sort of modify some of the sensory input for the kids [first], they learn fast [when integrating biomedical intervention with ABA.]"
~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, Founder/CEO, the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD); Founder/president of Autism and Care Today! (ACT Today!)
"In 1978, I met a young boy named Corey. He had autism and he changed my life. His gentle nature, his exceptional memory and his desire to interact even though he couldn’t do so verbally, touched my heart. But what motivated me further was the positive impact of the therapy he received. The notion that major successes and even recovery are possible inspired me to start the Center for Autism & Related Disorders, Inc. (CARD) in 1990."
~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh
"On August 2nd, my dear friend [Dr.] Ivar Lovaas passed away. His contributions to the field of psychology in general and to the treatment of Autism are insurmountable. I’m sure many of my colleagues will give tribute to his professional accomplishments, which are many. For me, I’d rather write a few words about this man who taught me so much, and about our friendship. Ivar was my teacher, mentor, and friend from the time I was 15 years old. As an undergraduate at UCLA, I listened to each of his lectures alongside 400 or so other undergraduates. I was amazed at his humor and I learned to see life through his witty stories. He had a huge role in determining who I am today, both professionally and personally. In fact, had I not met Ivar, I would not be treating children with Autism today."
~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh
"I remember working under [Dr. Loovas'] direction on his seminal 1987 study, which proved for the first time, that recovery from Autism is possible. I remember going to work the morning after the study came out only to find a note on my office door from the psychology department at UCLA, telling me that our clinic’s overflow calls were being forwarded to them. Our lives and the lives of thousands of children and families changed after that day. The calls for help never stopped and the families and children who benefit from Ivar’s work continue to grow today."
~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh
"[Dr. Ivar] Lovaas was developing a controversial technique [based on the psychological science of]...ABA or Applied Behavior Analysis." ~ Narrator, Fox News, "Real American Stories - In The News"
"Behavior Modification is what we used to call it in the old days. It's changing someone's behavior based on how you reinforce something or don't reinforce it." ~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, "Real American Stories - In The News"
"In those days, the classification of autism was almost the same as saying the child is mentally retarded. And you know I work with these kids and immediately you could tell, these kids aren't mentally retarted. They're amazing." ~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, "Real American Stories - In The News"
"When I tell people I work with autistic kids, the first thing they say is, 'Wow, that must be a really hard job.' And honestly, I am in heaven. And they are amazing. They keep teaching me now." ~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, "Real American Stories - In The News"
“Many people don’t believe it is possible to recover from Autism. Our intention in providing proof of Recovery and in identifying a course of action toward that goal is only to bring hope and determination to those families who feel it is in the best interest of their child to learn new skills in order to better access the rewards of life."
~ Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh
"We feel every child has the right to be healthy, to be taught the skills they need to interact appropriately with their peers and to be allowed to demonstrate their strengths, instead of fight their weaknesses. We feel confident we have found the path to make this a reality."
~ Dr. Doreen Granp
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