ABC FAMILY New Springfield teen set to appear on 'Switched'

The local actor learned how to water ski, and a New Jersey girl learned a song.
By GARRY L. CLARK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
Brent Maimone of New Springfield will be featured at 12:30 p.m. Thursday on ABC Family's reality TV show "Switched."
Also participating on the show will be Maimone's voice teacher, Rick Blackson. Blackson, along with his wife, Mary Jo Maluso, is a local entertainer as well as music teacher.
Reached by telephone Tuesday, Blackson said that Maimone has studied voice with him for about two or three years, and approached him when he found out that he had been chosen for the show. Maimone switched places for a day with Amanda Heckenberger, a girl from New Jersey, living in each other's homes and participating in the other's daily routine and interests.
For 19-year-old Maimone, that meant learning to do some water-skiing tricks, and for 17-year-old Heckenberger it required learning and performing a song.
Time to sing
That's where Blackson became a part of the process. He was asked to teach Amanda to sing a song. Blackson says that his first suggestion was to teach her a song that was already well-known and that she would recognize, but because of royalty and copyright issues, the show's producers said that something original would save a lot of time and money. Maimone, a songwriter in his own right as well as an avid motocross rider, has written many songs, but to learn and perform one of those in a single day would be too difficult, so Blackson wrote a simpler song titled "Just Like You" for Amanda to perform.
Blackson said that Amanda had virtually no experience singing, but she was able "to match pitch."
He has not yet since the final cut of the episode and was not present for Amanda's actual performance of the song, although he said that Maimone's parents told him that "she pulled it off."
Maimone was challenged to do a "ballet line on water skis" as part of his switching roles.
His career
An aspiring actor who has just received his membership in the Screen Actors' Guild, Maimone has worked for Nickelodeon as a pit reporter and correspondent for its weekly show "Nickelodeon Dirt."
He also has appeared on "CSI: Miami," "CSI: New York" and "Alias," among others. Speaking by telephone Tuesday from Los Angeles, he said also just finished filming a small part in the upcoming movie "Bewitched," starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell.
He plays a cameraman and is part of the studio audience, "but they film thousands and thousands of feet of film, so I don't know if they'll use it or not," he said.