Vee

Zimmer stood by her contract for the same reason Jerry verDorn left the show and took a major contract role on ABC when it cut him to recurring in 2005 - GL and CBS were screwing them both. (Grant Aleksander left shortly before JVD after being pushed out by the same regime) Their reasons were all valid IMO. It's obvious someone wants to mitigate Wheeler's, the show's, the network's and parent company's shared responsibility for its consistent failure state til its cancellation and the tactics they employed against the GL ensemble. (And I'm sorry, but Donna has a well-documented history of forgiving Ellen or other AW alum anything.) Kim, loud, flamboyant and divisive, is simply a convenient choice vs. trying to also throw blame on Grant or a dead man. Noelle Beck is a nice lady and a fine actor. But that recast was a failure and never worked, for the audience or most of the cast. She was all class suggesting they bring back MB for the end. Martha left in part for reasons that are perhaps best left unsaid, as she is clearly too disturbed to talk about them in public even today.

LOL we'll never get over that. I have expounded at length in the past on how and why I would bring Emily and Georgie back even just as a special event and then quickly usher them offscreen again, just to have them available for potential future use with recasts - Lindze Letherman still looks great in her various ghost appearances in the last decade but I am pretty sure she is fully retired from acting, sadly. And had an anniversary been pending I would've tried to convince Amber Tamblyn to make an appearance as Em, and IMO she might've done it. But now I think the best thing is to bring one or both back, usher one out but maybe keep an all-new Emily (a doctor, a Quartermaine) around.

I don't think Dillon and Georgie have anything to do with Pratt. Guza was clearly enamored of Scott Clifton/Dillon and therefore kept trying to put him with anyone but Georgie, because yes, in his second run he did disdain most 'nice' characters. That couple was an unexpected major success for the show, and any time 2000s GH came across an unexpected success (Julie Berman, etc.) they would try to mold it into or around the characters and concepts Guza preferred - Berman's Lulu and JT's Patrick become BFFs with Carly, Dillon becomes a surrogate son to Luke, Dillon is slowly moved away from Georgie towards Lulu, etc. But Pratt was no better. Most of the characters he crafted or adored were dated, camp primetime soap stereotypes, including his conception of Courtney, the kung fu kickboxing blonde champion and Faith, the blonde evil mob whore who humped her criminal rivals to death like Famke Janssen in Goldeneye. All of Faith's popularity as a character came in spite of the atrociously broad writing for her and was due to Cynthia Preston's talent. Reese was almost certainly another Pratt concept, and probably the last. Billy and Alison became afterthoughts for MP in later years, as Pratt became more ascendent at that show. Nice characters like Georgie are no different, and Pratt was never the prime mover at GH.

LOL I'd forgotten this moment from the great original Exorcist commentary and featurette:

Nah. It was my own idea to pair them ten years ago as screwball opposites with an intriguing older irresponsible woman angle. Today both actors and characters are beyond spent and don't need new story to write them out. You can revisit that idea when there are fresh options (and hopefully a more invigorated Kirsten Storms if possible) after Maxie spends 3-4 years offscreen. And she was horribly treated by fans, something KS IIRC passively encouraged. That being said, no, I do not think she should return. An actor like Lilley being decent in a role or badly treated by the show, or just a nice person IRL (hi, Martha Madison), does not mean they should be given the job or change the fact that certain characters are burnt out and need to go for awhile or in some other cases permanently. I think people are sick of Michael in general, not just Chad. Michael is a wimpy joke at this point. He needs a break. Not as long as Maxie, but awhile.

Maxie and Michael both need to be rested a minimum of 3-4 to 2-4 years, respectively.

Linda Blair's IG tribute.

I didn't know Friedkin had actually gotten around to filming his new version of The Caine Mutiny. I look forward to it. Thread from GDT:

@DRW50

This isn't even the tip of the iceberg with Friedkin! (And I actually think Al is pretty good in Cruising, but they did not get along.) Friedkin made a strong comeback even in his late years with Bug and Killer Joe, a film I am still scared to see but hear great things about. I'll have to do it now. Also revisiting the two cuts of his barely-released serial killer/death penalty critique, Rampage. And yes, his Boys in the Band is so good. Ellen Burstyn put out a nice statement today - those two had quite a history, both on and off-set of The Exorcist (where he permanently injured her back during a stunt in one of the movie's most famous/infamous scenes).

Madison is blandly serviceable at best to me. My Sarah choice will always be Gina Tognoni.

One of the greatest of all time. I thought he couldn't die.

I think it's probably just a dumb glitch and customer service reps not talking to each other.

They did about 80 permutations with the devil before it was over. Whether RC initially was into it or not he certainly ran with it whole-hog. And I'm sorry but I don't buy that he isn't for most of the actor swapping. He originated the trend forcefully and proudly at GH. Having little cameo gigs from Eileen Davidson alongside Stacy Haiduk and then inventing a whole new and even more obnoxious character for Rob Wilson seems right up his alley. His ego long ago made him a firm believer that for soaps he is the last man standing, the true north and that he can and will sell an audience on any choice or die mad trying.

I mean, we've noted the Cullitons' kid being hired and he mentions friends and family being hired over minorities in several tweets. On this Jamey is right - nepotism and friends and family rule the day in these lucrative positions inside an incestuous, closed industry. We were just talking about it not long ago. (He was also one of the above with Ron, of course.)

Nora's contract coma on OLTL was longer. Six months. But that's probably not the longest either.

I don't recall offhand but it's entirely possible and does sound familiar. I recall Mary Beth Evans turned down the Paige merry-go-round at one point - such a huge host of names spun around or cast for such a pointless placeholder character, up to and including the period when (as we've learned recently) Frons' ABC was taking it out on Hillary B. Smith for advocating for the OLTL cast in labor negotiations by coming very very close to killing Nora off and supplanting her with Paige.

Zimmer was blamed by the show and/or network for other people taking cuts, which she's said in her memoir was untrue - she outlined the timeline fairly clearly, IIRC. And Jerry verDorn left for the same reasons. She also said they tried to blame his exit on her.

An anonymous actor quote from the very latecoming SOD article:

And she was right. Ellen Wheeler doesn't get a pass for being an incompetent EP and bad businesswoman just because she was on Another World.

His statement is clearly looking for a fight, IMO. And full of blaming everyone else. But it's also yet another sad indictment of the state of the genre - is Alarr of all people truly the first and only Black EP or co-EP in soaps (not counting stuff like Ishmael Reed's experimental avant-garde soap Personal Problems from over 40 years ago which almost no one has seen)? GH has hired and possibly fired a handful of new Black writers in recent years, too.