Product Description
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The new real-life A&E family series GENE SIMMONS FAMILY JEWELS
steps into the home of the legendary, tongue-wagging rocker demon
of KISS and Shannon Tweed, former Playmate of the Year, actress,
model and mom. Gene and Shannon have been happily UNmarried for
23 years and have no plans to get married anytime soon. And their
kids, Nick and Sophie, are surprisingly charming, well-behaved
teenagers dealing with the trials and tribulations of
adolescence, even though Mom and Dad are like no one else s
parents on earth. Yes, Gene is a world-famous rock star and
multi-media magnate, but he s also the kind of dad who brings
Gatorade to his daughter s soccer games and stands in the front
row of his son s rock band when the play gigs.
GENE SIMMONS FAMILY JEWELS: THE COMPLETE SEASON 1 reveals a side
of Gene that he has kept hidden from the world at large until
now, and shows how the most non-traditional family in America
manages to make normal life work under the oddest of
circumstances.
DVD Features: Rough Cut of Pilot Episode; Unseen Couch
Interviews; Inside the Demon s Lair; Gene s History of Rock and
Roll; The Lost Songs; Bloopers; Behind The Makeup Featurettes;
Gene Simmons 24/7; Simmons Family Text Biographies; Interactive
Menu; Scene Selection
.com
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"It's good to be me," says Gene Simmons, and the Kiss
bassist-frontman could hardly find a better vehicle for himself
than Family Jewels, the first season of which (13 episodes, plus
extras) is presented here on two discs. There has rarely been
anyone as shamelessly and gleefully skilled at self-promotion as
Simmons, who makes P.T. Barnum look like a shrinking violet and
pro football player Terrell Owens seem modest. Whether he is
glorifying or parodying his Rock God image (the show features
both in roughly equal measure), he knows that either way, it's
all about him--and it was ever thus for a guy whose success has
always depended at least as much, if not more, on image and
marketing as on music.
Fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek, and just naughty enough, the
22-minute episodes keep it short and simple, focusing on Simmons'
principal preoccupations: his disdain for matrimony (although he
and former Playboy playmate Shannon Tweed have been together for
decades, they've never married), and, of course, his legendary
reputation as a sex machine (the current estimate is 4,600
conquests). Thus we find Gene going to a Hooters opening in Las
Ve; conducting auditions for his latest scam, a video series
called "Sexercise"; weekending at a spa with Tweed, who
refuses to with him unless he drops a few pounds; and
appearing on a Playboy Channel show with porn stars like Jenna
Jameson
while Tweed and/or their two kids (teens Nick and
Sophie), who love to goof on Dad, are at home setting fire to his
rock star pants or some such shenanigans. The existence of a
blooper reel among the bonus material hardly supports the notion
that the show is unscripted and spontaneous; Simmons' day with an
almost frighteningly obsessive Kiss fan, during which he confides
to Tweed that at times the adulation "just becomes too much,"
provides one of the few "real" moments. Little matter. Despite
his bluster, or more likely because of it, Simmons is
good-natured, smart, and genuinely likeable; so are his kids, who
are kinda snarky (but then, what teenager isn't?) but seem
well-adjusted and a lot brighter than Ozzy Osbourne's sullen
brood. If there's one obvious omission, it's that so little of
Family Jewels has anything to do with music (a ten-minute bonus
feature called "Lost Songs" is about it). Then again, those
uninterested in rock 'n' rolling all night and partying every day
may consider that a major selling point. --Sam Graham