DramatistDreamer

Having participated in numerous workshops where my work and everybody else’s work can be picked apart at any time during the process, you have to be able to handle critiques and discussion of your work and as long as it’s coming from a genuine place, I don’t see a problem with it.

Personally, I think Marland was a great writer. Was he perfect? No one is perfect, but he wrote some storylines that still have relevance today. He wrote real conversations between characters in situations that had relatable aspects even when those situations stretched into the bizarre, and when the actors were truly well cast, the dialogue could really ring true and truly profound. I am just going to go on ahead and say this: I think that sexuality had an impact on how Marland’s work was promoted (or rather, not promoted) by the network and the production company P&G, similar to the way that Irna Phillips found her ambitions thwarted by P&G because of her gender. In terms of criticism, what soap writer didn’t have misfires? In regards to those misfires, I find myself extending grace because one, writing is not easy, especially for writers like Marland who tended to juggle multiple stories in various stages of progression over long story arcs that spanned a lengthy period of time and two, we don’t know exactly how many stories suffered from interference from either the executives at P&G and/or the executives at the “Tiffany Network” both of which had to have been among the two most conservative entities that ever produced entertainment television. I try to keep these factors in mind whenever I analyze any master soap writer. Otherwise, it’s just being b*tchy for no reason, lol. I feel like I have said this before, on some level.

Years ago, I floated the theory that Marland’s work illustrated a lot of mortality, particularly in the last two to three years of his work and heard crickets. It was obvious that he was preoccupied with mortality. A writer’s life is sedentary, often requires late nights, requires some solitude, not exactly the healthiest lifestyle. Combine this aspect with the fact that Marland was a chain smoker— it is likely that he had developed some underlying health issues, even if nobody else knew. If you compare a fifty year old man back then with a fifty year old man today…most are not even in the same age group physically, probably not psychologically or psychically either. Writers today are also very different from writers back then. I remember while in grad school, one of my screenwriting instructors (a man who had written an award winning screenplay and has since unfortunately died after a fatal heart attack) lamented that the lifestyle of writers had changed. Observing that some of us had apparently healthy lifestyles (some of us worked out, a few were vegetarians or abstained from red meat, didn’t smoke) quipped “What has happened today…where’s the drinking…the smoking?!” Marland probably knew something was wrong with his health. He was an intuitive man, you can’t have such sharp insight into human personality, especially the neuroses and pathological side of human behavior, while lacking intuition. Even if he didn’t know that the end was emerging soon, at the pace he was working, the aspect of him working himself into an early grave more than likely entered his thoughts. It doesn’t take a huge leap for one’s preoccupations to trickle, even bleed into one’s creative work. Like I said before, what someone considered to be the age of decline was a lot earlier back then.

Donald Cryer, the father of actor Jon Cryer, played two villains on As The World Turns. The first appearance he displayed such great chemistry with Eileen Fulton that, looking back, in later years, I had always hoped the show would bring him back, but as a different character that would be a love interest for Lisa, who was still full of vigor at that time. Unfortunately, the show demonstrated that they had no use for Lisa.

When TF will Americans be sick of this? This is insane!

Another day, another lawsuit for Musk.

I agree. You don’t always need a major character being centered to drive a story, especially if it’s such a tragic story. Something that often annoys me about today’s soaps is that idea that one character has to endure an avalanche of awful events that happen to them, especially when it’s in a short period of time. You can have one single character be raped twice, kidnapped lose a spouse and be in a car accident or crash of some sort. It becomes ridiculous. Why not have that marginal character become embedded in the canvas for a year or so and let the horrendous tragedy unfold. If that character is written fairly well, most viewers will come to care.

Speaking of Wimbledon, they stand alone.

I don’t know but I think it’s kind of sad that a promo from nearly four decades ago is infinitely more fiery and intriguing than this new promo, which looks relatively tame by comparison. I think it’s Jess Walton in that screen capture.

Vivica is definitely a maximalist in terms of decor but she looks really good here (not pulled too tight). This show used to be exclusively a NYC show but I guess it has expanded over the years.

The tone has a lot of urgency to it. Good luck to them. Hopefully they’re engaged in other fundraising efforts on multiple fronts.

Thank you for stating this! Unless people watch the lived experiences of these characters on a daily basis, they won’t understand that. In the Soaps thread, I mentioned how good a number of P&G soaps were at presenting taboo topics in the everyday. But because the performances tended toward the understated, it has been easy for some to dismiss them. ATWT often did have major characters in storylines that presented taboo topics. Susan and Dan in an open marriage during the 1970s?! When I saw an episode a few years ago…well, that one still blows my mind. Also, thanks for posting this episode. I look forward to seeing it.

It you don’t have a clip of a character like Lauren Fenmore wearing mirror shades in you Some Like It Hot promo, then you can keep it. By the way, does anyone know about this apparent fundraiser that has been happening on YouTube for the Museum of Classic Chicago Television. What’s going on with this?

I am also told that Serena will be dipping her toes into competition at Eastbourne in doubles with Ons Jabeur.

While most daytime soaps seemed to focus their business stories more on the personalities in the boardroom and the intrigues, Y&R was really effective at giving equal time to the actual products involved in their corporate stories—at least, once upon a time this was the case. P&G soaps were said to be somewhat stodgy but at their best, soaps like ATWT and GL were surprisingly very effective at broaching taboo topics in a way that was suggestive, risqué but somehow palatable to their audience. Characters who were in an open marriage in the early 70s. In the 1980s, a woman who decided that she’d had enough of love and was just going to build her business “brand” while choosing lovers for her sexual gratification. Also in the 1980s, a woman talking to her husband about their non-existent to lackluster sex life, while the husband squirms. Also in the 1980s, a tearful woman strips down and jumps in a fountain and declares herself the slut of the town because that’s the way she’s been made to feel in front of the man that she’s in love with, as he recoils from the scene.

Well, this seems contentious. https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-meta-is-investigating-ex-facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg

The NYT has begun their 2024 whisper campaign of “Democrats are “whispering” that Biden shouldn’t bother running for re-election. I don’t feel like posting the article. The same news outlet that apparently believes that Trump running in 2024 is somehow viable. Yet somehow they also manage to inject a quote from Howard Dean decrying how much of a trash heap the next generation of Democrats in office are. How subtle.

Who did this?😂

In the Northeast, the problem has been a combination of suburban sprawl and the remnants of manufacturing having left a hollowed out center, at the same time that many Northeastern areas outside of NYC and Boston had been gradually and consistently disinvesting in public transit. Come to think of it most of NYC, especially Manhattan doesn’t really have a downtown but it has districts (Brooklyn, the largest NYC borough does have a proper downtown though), garment, meatpacking, theater, various shopping districts, etc. In the rest of the Northeast where post-industrial degradation has taken hold, the idea of “walkable” cities where amenities are within reach has been floated around for years, with very little action being taken to achieve this. As a kid in the 1980s, whose adolescence occurred in the early 90s, I still have memories of seeing butcher shops, hardware stores and the local skating rink all accessible on foot. Now those areas are hollowed out with some small businesses being built to fill the void that has existed for two decades, mostly bars and cafes. For shopping or entertainment one needs a car that will drive to a neighboring suburb, or do what most end up doing, take a commuter train into NYC.

The result of decades of depending too heavily on real estate, primarily office real estate to support downtown areas. Should there still be a dedicated “downtown” area, or should cities be looking at decentralization of amenities? This piece in the San Francisco Chronicle analyzes what has happened to downtown SF and how it has been accelerated by the pandemic. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/sfnext-downtown/

TBH, I really don’t care what Fox News does since I have never bothered trying to waste time watching that channel. Last night’s hearing aired previously unreleased footage so, who knows what is in the pipeline for Monday morning?

Yeah, I thought about this after I posted last night and thought of my friends on the West coast, one of which texted me earlier that day. I guess this first session was done at that time because at some point in the televised session, it would hit prime time viewing in all U.S. time zones for maximum exposure. The next session, which is on Monday is in the morning though. Fox News channel, like much of the GOP is in serious denial.

Why are these January 6th hearings being held so late in the evening?

Y&R and TPIR are the only two shows that were on the air when that original campaign aired. Two years before B&B debuted. Are they going to have Drew and The Talk crew running around in cheaply done GCI flames too?

^^And as it turns out, nobody killed James Stenbeck but somebody did die.