JB-  On that series the audience voted and that's now been changed.

EM-  Yes, I heard they now vote within themselves which I think kind of sucks because the one aspect the audience had was the ability to play God so that would make them tune in and watch and see who is who and what's what.  But now you take that away from them and they're just flies on the wall.  I don't know.  CBS seems to know what they're doing so whatever.  But yeah, I hear that it's more Survivor-ish.

JB-  Do you think you just appealed to the public?

EM-  I think there was a couple of aspects.  I was the youngest.  I was 21.  So I was a kid at the time.  And I think that helped.  But I want to say there was an aspect of me, or my character on the show at least, where I told somebody to go f*** themselves and that was that.  You know, I didn't care.  I knew the audience had to like me, not necessarily the people in the house.  And I'm sure there's a sympathy vote in there too.  I mean whatever it was, it was but I ended up winning.

JB-  Did you have the public voting in mind when you were going through that?

EM- Yeah.  You see, I was a broadcasting major in school and I knew CBS's demographics were generally older.  So my strategy going into the house, before I even met anybody, was I was going to gravitate to the two oldest - the oldest male and the oldest female in the house.  Almost like a mother or father figure.  And as a wild card I was going to gravitate to the nuttiest one there.

JB- Do you think… and I mean no disrespect with this...

EM-  No, no, don't worry…

JB-  Do you think people felt sorry for you because of your disability?

EM-  I'm sure some people did, yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt in my mind.  That's all right.  If that's what they think and that's why they called, then whatever.  That's that.  I can't change their minds.

JB-  After the show your life has changed significantly.  Your original plan, you were in broadcasting.

EM-  I originally wanted to go into radio and then when I came out (of the Big Brother house) a few production companies looked me up and tracked me down and contacted my school.  They said, "Yeah, he's a broadcasting major and a theatre minor."  "Can he act?"  There was this one production company in Toronto that got in touch with my old college professor and he's like, "The kid's all right.  He's studying acting for TV right now and he's going to do for theatre next semester."  And so I got a couple of scripts here in New York when I got out for specific parts written for me.  I gravitated to this one picture called "Drop Dead Roses" with a Toronto-based production company and we shot that in June of 2001.  So right then and there I fell in love with film, I became a set junkie.  And I just wanted to go to each and any set I could get on.  Next thing I know I've got about seven films to my name now and a music video and I have a production company called Tripod Pictures.

JB- Which was my next question!  Would you mind telling me about Tripod Pictures?

EM-  (laughing)  No, not all.  Tripod Pictures is a production company I founded here in Long Island last year and basically our mission and our goal is to bring works of any genre to a worldwide audience.  Artists regardless of age or gender or race or ability or disability - if you're an artist and my team feels that you have talent we'd love to hear what you have to say.  So that's basically what we're about.  We're in pre-production on three projects right now that we're very, very excited about and things are looking really, really good, man.  I don't think I've ever been happier.  I'm very, very excited about this summer and this upcoming year.

JB-  Where did the idea come from to do this?

EM-  I don't know.  It's me originally wanting to go into broadcasting… I mean I wanted to be an actor when I was a little kid, when I was about six or seven.  I realized I wanted to be an actor and then I lost my leg at 11(-years-old) and I said, "Oh shit, this is not very possible," because I can't name a disabled actor and still to this day you can't really name a mainstream disabled actor off the top of your head.  They don't really exist.  So with that in mind, after I came out of Big Brother and I did Drop Dead Roses and that worked out well and I got another job and that went out well.  I said, "You know, maybe, maybe, maybe there's a niche for me somewhere."  The film industry - whenever you see a film, they're supposed to show a crosscut of society, a crosscut of culture.  And so there'll always be a need for John Candys and Chris Farleys.  There's always going to be a need for short guys like Danny Devito.  There's always going to be big Arnold Schwarzeneggers.  Well think about it, everywhere you go - anytime you go to the store there's that blue parking spot for those disabled guys.  There are 52 million Americans that have a disability today.  And the statistic is one in five people today will have a disability by the time that they die.  So people with disabilities are real people and they're out there in the general public like everyone else but you just don't see them portrayed on film or television that much.  And when you do see them they are one of two things.  They're either the bitter cripple or the amazing hero.  And at Tripod Pictures the way I perceive things and the way my company perceives things is that, yeah, you're right, we can be those things.  But for the most part we're just brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers and lovers and shit like that.  We're just normal people.  So with that in mind, yeah, I am partial to disabled musicians and filmmakers but I don't close my doors to anybody.

JB-  Do you go out seeking talent or do you have people coming to you?  What's the process?

EM-  It goes both ways.  I've been doing this since I left Big Brother, so I've been doing this for about five or six years.  I've been bouncing around meeting production people in New York, L.A. and Toronto predominantly.  I personally like to seek music.  If I'm sitting in a jazz club one night and I find an artist or somebody that I really like or if I hear some underground music through somebody I try to get in touch with them.  But as of right now, we're in the early, early stages of this company and I've had two people come to me already with projects that I'm considering, so we'll see.