chrisml

I know more about Hutchison because of all the media attention he got for his relationship with a teenager than I do for his work on GL. Kriezman's answer felt a bit passive aggressive since Courteney Simon was another writer on the panel. The only thing I remember about the Sebastian storyline is that I saw a scene where someone was being held prisoner in a cell. Don't remember who was being held captive. Holly? Or was she holding Sebastian hostage? Who knows!?!?

I was listening to a Locher Room interview from four years ago with some GL writers. In it, David Kreizman said one of his unsuccessful stories was the Sebastian story. He said he couldn't play it correctly because Peter Simon wouldn't come back to the show at that point. I remember people liking Doug Hutchison (before his real life nonsense) but not caring for the storyline. Is this accurate? Again, this is a case of me trying to keep up with GL but not watching much of it.

A quick look: Gail Kobe, Paul Rauch, Harding Lemay, John Corrington, Judy Lewis, Robert Calhoun, and Beverlee McKinsey have died. From the Texas standpoint, Joyce Corrington is alive, but is she willing/able to talk and does she have memory of all of this considering she's 88? Pamela Long is the only one alive at this point and she has spoken about her time on the show. She also wouldn't know about the creation aspect stuff so we may never know about how the show came to be unless there are people on the AW side who are still alive. And who would they be?

I was not watching when this Matt/Dinah stuff happened, but it just feels emblematic of how mean-spirited and icky GL got in the last few years. So many stories seemed designed to be cruel and to tarnish couples or beloved characters.

Are the people that would have known the backstage and network stuff still alive and willing to talk? Who would be able to discuss these things?

I agree that the podcast was very rough, and if I weren't doing something while listening, I would have turned it off. I felt sorry for Donna Mills as she would try to make a point and Lee and Van Ark would talk over her or change the subject. The McCashin/Lankford interview was much more interesting because they just talked rather than feeling the need to stick to some set of pre-approved set of talking points.

I can't seem to find the posts, but I remember someone talking about Another novelisations. Has anyone read them? Do you recommend trying to track them down?

Thought this excerpt from Tina Sloan's book about Michael O'Leary might amuse people:

I always thought Frank Dicopoulos was the kind of actor you need on a show because he is a comfortable touchstone when so much of the cast is a revolving door of faces. I liked him and I wish he had been given more to do. I'm not suggesting he's a Michael Zaslow talent waiting to bust out with Emmy reel after Emmy reel but I think he had charisma. I have a soft spot for those long-term supporting players who usually get axed when shows want to save money. re: JFP and the 1993-95 years. Was her budget cut at GL? When she was on SB, she made excellent music and directorial choices. I remember seeing some of the clips from the Joe Lando story and thinking it was painful to watch. I suppose some of it could also be the number of recasts/new actors who didn't have the same rhythm as previous actors.

Re: Dusay and Coleman. It just felt very one-note to me. It was the combination of the predictable writing and what I thought was such a comedown from the original actresses. I like Coleman and Dusay, so I was prepared to enjoy them. I might have felt differently if I had watched it in context, but then I know the storyline did not go over well so who knows? To be fair, it didn't help that I watched this after I viewed a clip about Vanessa blackmailing Alex to go to Nick and Mindy's engagement party. In that, I felt Dusay's performance also did not feel like Alex. I think this must have been closer to her arrival on the show, and I honestly have no idea what she's doing. She plays Alex as more neurotic (DRW50 points this out above). I have a lot of blind spots in my GL viewing so I have tried to watch some of GL post-January 1993, but I find it difficult. I find the show incredibly lifeless as if all the energy has been removed from every scene. This surprises me because JFP could usually craft good music and pacing for a scene or episode, but so much of what I have seen just falls flat.

I watched some of Marj Dusay and Signy Coleman's scenes tonight. Depressing. I respect both of them for trying, but boy they did not work as Alex and Annie.

I don't remember the scene between Alex/Lillian, but I'm sure there are also quieter moments with Alex and Henry or Fletcher along the way. I don't think those scenes negate months of sexist ridiculous storytelling when the writers were doing their best to turn VI's character into Saint Nick. Again, it wasn't just Alex. It was Mindy who was being sacrificed for the character of Nick. It was another example of destroying female characters to prop up a male character. I have no problems with characters behaving badly or doing things out of character occasionally because no writer is ever going to be perfect, but it felt to me that the balance in the last year or so of Alex and Mindy's storylines was extremely skewed towards the men. They pulled the same thing with Eve who went crazy because she could not have Nick.

I was not watching at the time, but I remember there was some controversy during the time of the "Who killed Georgie?" storyline. I seem to recall that some columnists felt that the show was teetering on racism in the way they were writing the character of Rachel. Am I misremembering? I missed a lot of JFP's tenure on OLTL so I don't want to speak out of turn if I am confusing this with something else.

re:Alex and Mindy. Once McKinsey and Simms left, there was no story left. It did all fall apart because the story just wasn't there. They made the idiot plot work as long as they could. Once Hamilton and Crampton took over and Joe Lando was forced into the show, it was clear the story was an absolute mess and a waste of time. JFP was already in danger of losing her job in 1993 and that's when the whole Marcy Walker debacle happened. Was Walker hired before or after the Joe Lando story that did not go over well? As for Beverlee McKinsey, it's clear she wanted fair working hours. She did not want to be overworked, and she wanted to be treated with respect. That's certainly a foreign concept in daytime especially to producers and network execs. The same network that was angry at McKinsey than turned around and treated Zaslow so abominably.

I forgot to thank everyone for the information about Alec Mapa and his Pasham character. I was watching then and have wiped that story from my memory. I like paulraven's idea as I never liked Mary and Vince. They had no real spark, and by the time they got together, their children were gone or almost all gone. I thought Mary and Reginald (if they were going to go that route) had more chemistry. Maisie was such a fun character and I wish she had not been sacrificed for that serial killer storyline.

I doubt McKinsey would have stayed since she loathed JFP (something JFP was dishonest about in the Locher interview), but to reduce Alex to being so desperate and pathetic over Roger and Nick was just ridiculous. The character of Nick was just not worth the character assassination of Alex and Mindy. Simms's Mindy had matured so much that to resort to the switching of the DNA to keep this man was just so idiotic. It also made not one bit of sense since the man was a dead ringer for Lujack.

re: Locher interview with Coleman. A shame Signy Coleman didn't have a good time on GL. However, I'm not surprised. It was never going to go well, and it was not well-conceived from what I know of it. Others who watched it may have other opinions. She does not like Kim Zimmer. That's definitely clear from the interview. Simms/Curlee: We know McKinsey did not like how Alexandra was written in the last months of her tenure. I think Simms was much more understanding of what was going on during the storyline, and her character was also made much more desperate and pathetic as it went on so I think she got it even at the time.

Constance McCashin didn't seem upset with any of the cast members over the salary except she obviously did not like Ted Shackelford. Kim Lankford was obviously still upset with Jim Houghton over what happened, and she may not have said anything if he had not died recently.

From what I remember of Lucy's portion of the story, it did feel that the writers were going out of their way to terrorize and punish Lucy with the rape/Brent/Marian storyline. Yet the audience's attention was more focused on the Brent/Marian of it all. I suppose Satra didn't have it as bad as what JFP and Pratt tried to do to Jessica Collins on YR until that was nipped in the bud. JFP really is/was a sexist menace. I always liked Fletcher. He was a comfort character. I think shows need them and too often they're overlooked or dropped.

As callous as it is, I remember people not caring about Lucy during that storyline. Their attention was on Brett and then Marian. I'm sure part of it was fatigue from all the rape storylines on daytime. I think some of it was just that people were tired of the Coopers (save for Nadine) by that point. I came across a letter to an editor where a soap viewer was angry that Lucy had been raped because she said something (paraphrasing from memory here) like "Now I have to care about a character I can't stand. I'm not going to do it." If I can find it, I'll upload a screenshot.

Exactly. Irizarry managed to escape the FOJ label which was good for him. She didn't do him any favors on Santa Barbara so perhaps that helped as well. His storylines on SB were not great although he did met his first wife and Annie #2, Signy Coleman.

In looking up Barbara Crampton's tenure on GL, I found an L.A. Times article dated May 7, 1995. IT announces her departure from the show. That was not the interesting part. It's the tidbit underneath about Jay Hammer that amused me. Does anyone know the writing team he refers to?

I vaguely remember the beginning of this. I think I was so annoyed by the writers turning Eve into another of JFP's desperate man hungry loonies that I didn't watch. I don't think I watched any of Crampton's tenure as Mindy so I have no opinion of her work. If I did see her as Mindy, my memory is as bad as hers. I have more memory of Hamilton's work.

I don't think I've ever seen an interview with a performer who was so detached from the character, the cast and the show she was a part of. It felt like Locher had to prompt her to remind her of details and then remind her that GL was not still on the air. She was clearer about her time on DAYS where she was only on for a year according to her. It was very obvious she had no affection at all for her time on Guiding Light even if she were too graceful to be direct about it. She also thinks she was on for three years, but everything I've seen says she was on for two. Maybe she felt like it was three?

I went back and listened to Barbara Crampton's interview with Locher and she said that she was asked to audition for Mindy. She refused. Later, JFP called her up and offered her the role. Reading between the lines of what she did and did not say: it did not seem like a very happy time for her. She also did not seem to know much about GL in general as she thought it was still on the air as of the time the interview happened (2 yrs ago).