Sylph

The thing that bothered me about Grey's Anatomy when I used to watch was the invasive, self-consciously "quirky" music that was meant to prompt us how to feel and signpost the emotions.

And the fact that I don't buy that waif actress as some uber-talented doctor. Or that her chinless, whiney-voiced boyfriend is the hottest man on earth.

I totally co-sign! But tell me about that agenda-pushing!

I like Cristina Yang (no h apparently ) and Addison Montgomery.

Why?

I have to say, I struggle to get into Grey's. I don't no what it is, their's just something about it that doesn't make me want to tune in.

Oh, I never said I watched the show! Who do you think I am, Ben? A Grey's Anatomy regular viewer?

Simply because her Charmed scripts were the cr*ppiest and she rose so high after that show. I don't think she deserves it. I was even disappointed in another Grey's writer - Allan Heinberg, who I really, really loved (he wrote for Sex and the City, among other shows).

Maybe it's Shonda Rhimes who tells her writers to put incredible amounts of sap and sleaze in those scripts...

You know, I really hadn't realized how much of a Spelling fan I actually am. I used to watch, Melrose Place, Charmed, Charlie's Angels, Dynasty... my mind's gone blank. Every show had his unique signature, which cried out 'I'm produced by Aaron Spelling!' No other show could emulate that magic.

See, I watched all these to. To think to how many writers Charmed was a starting point... Unbelievable. The only one I cannot stand is Krista Vernoff, who runs Grey's Anatomy.

Again John Pickard and Frank Provo, who I mentioned in that other thread.

I think Eric from Montreal mentioned them once or twice before the SON crash.

Has anyone here heard about Frank Provo and John Pickard?

Just kidding, of course. LOL! "The Catlins" was a laughable soap.

No wonder, Elizabeth Page was a writer on that one! Although... the reviewr on IMDB praised the soap.

Anyone in their right mind would not look to that as the best soaps have to offer. Kay seemed to like the Labine/Mayer writing in general. In that transcript posted here last year, she said that RH had some of the best writing ever, or something to that effect.

Actually, I think she didn't say very nice things about RH in that MIT podcast. What transcripts are you referring to?

Actually, I think it was "The Catlins" LOL

What? I'm not kidding. She loved Claire's Where the Heart Is.

LOL, really? I never knew that.

No, wait, I made a mistake: it was Where the Heart Is, another Labine & Mayer.

Kay Alden's favourite soap.

Robin Thicke - Magic

I like the strings, horns and conga drums. Very Mayfield & Gaye.

Hardly! Try the opposite side of the country. LOL, and I was being facetious about hanging out with the Big B. I was but a gleam in my father's eye when Y&R first went on-air.

A shame - I could have told you where to read certain things.

Oh, OK. I never hung out with the master himself and so never glimpsed the bible. And I've only seen snippets of the early episodes, so...

Are you close to California?

Also SuBe was an hour-long soap from the get-go with a fairly large cast of characters. Not only that, but it had a number of back-stories when it first started... Ben's Mr. Rochester-esque "dead" wife and the whole mystery there. The legendary Armando Deschanel and his descendants and their impact on a host of characters. Del Douglas. Annie's Poor Little Rich Girl background. I could go on. But I won't!

In contrast, Bill Bell was starting up a half-hour, slow-paced soap with far fewer characters and not as much back story.

Bill Bell's bible outlined what his characters were doing before the Y&R story began. Only 1/3 of it, or less, was about future storylines.

Thanks for the interesting article, Sylph. I read in an interview that Aaron Spelling did for SOD, and he said the bible was around 300 pages. That still seems a lot, but it must have been very detailed.

I'd have to check this, but I'm pretty sure Bill Bell's original Y&R bible had 75 pages or so. And it covered a two-year period. Which makes this one even more monstrous - but I do have a passion for meticulously crafted story documents, even if the stories suck more often than not.

Thanks for posting the article, Sylph.

I knew you would like it!

I was surprised at this 400-page bible thing... It seems like a lot.

And you never got the chance to see how good I've done

And you never got to see me back at number one

I wish that you were here to celebrate together

I wish that we could spend the holidays together

Hollywood: Daytime Goes to the Beach Aaron Spelling will bring sunshine and sand to set-bound soap operas with his new ‘Sunset Beach’

Nov 4, 1996

By Betsy Sharke

Except for a nasty cold, Aaron Spelling couldn’t be in much better spirits. He’s spent most of the day with his office crammed full of wardrobe racks and cast members from Sunset Beach, the first daytime drama that Spelling Entertainment has ever done and the first daytime drama to be introduced on network TV in eight years (1989’s Generations was the last — and it didn’t).

‘We brought in 12 racks of clothes,’ says Spelling. ‘I think fashion is as important to a serial as anything else.’ Fashion sets the tone. It defines the palette. The length of a skirt, the style of jeans, can tell the viewer volumes about a character before the first word of dialogue is spoken.

Spelling already loves the Sunset Beach cast — their names have been added to his annual Christmas party list — and on this day he is doling out advice to them on everything from buying a new car to renting apartments to how to handle fame, should it be lucky enough to come.

He has issued his no-hair-changes dictum — Sunset cast members had better be happy with the style and color they start the show with, because Spelling isn’t about to let them confuse a new audience with a makeover any time soon. It is a long-standing rule for a Spelling show, and his staff knows that he’s deadly serious about it even if some of the awestruck actors don’t — yet.

On Jan. 6, Sunset Beach will hit the air. ‘The series is a critical component of NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer’s plan to make the network’s daytime schedule as potent as its prime time. NBC is in third place in daytime, though the net is up 20 percent this season and is closing in on second-place ABC. Ohlmeyer has his sights set on first, which CBS now owns.

‘With Sunset, we have something new and hot and exciting,’ Ohlmeyer says. ‘(In) the ‘80s, NBC daytime basically disintegrated. We are in the process of rebuilding, but we have to deliver the goods. That’s how we’ve built prime time, with distinctive programming.

‘There hasn’t been a successful soap launched in 10 years. It’s very difficult to do, but with Aaron’s touch and looking at the cast we have, we think it’s worth the effort. Some of our affiliates are very receptive (to the show) some, we’re in the process of kidnapping their children.’

On Stage 11 at NBC Studios in Burbank, carpenters and set designers are working late into the night to complete the sets that will form the primary backdrop for the show. The small community of Seal Beach, roughly a 90-minute drive south of Los Angeles, has been scouted nearly grain by grain of sand. It will be the exterior home for Sunset, and unlike most daytime soaps, the location will be a frequent player. Last week, readings and the first of three weeks of shooting exteriors began. The Santa Anas — California’s devil winds — stirred up the sand, making it sting on the skin. The water, which is never warm at Seal Beach, was even colder than usual. But no one was complaining.

The 22 actors who will give shape and form to Sunset Beach are a beautiful bunch indeed, a canvas of racial diversity plucked from the talent pool in New York, Los Angeles and other cities including Philadelphia, the hometown of Spelling Entertainment president Jonathan Levin, who went back for that casting session. They are also young faces, part of the strategy to make Sunset a daytime soap for younger viewers, to do for daytime drama what Ricki Lake did for talk, at least in terms of attracting a new audience.

Spelling is considered a master at casting, instinctively knowing which faces will work together as a couple, which actors will have that all-important element of chemistry. Now the virtually unknown Sunsetters are all in front of him, many meeting for the first time, and the air is electric.

‘One of my favorite sports is finding new people and combining them with other people, and I had used so many people from daytime on our soaps,’ says Spelling, whose legacy includes such prime-time legends as Loveboat and Dynasty. The company is currently on prime time with an unprecedented four dramas: Melrose Place; Beverly Hills, 90210; Savannah; and Seventh Heaven.

Sunset has been 18 months in the making, and Spelling is like a proud papa, surrounded by actors whose future he has just secured. The series, which is co-owned by Spelling and NBC, has a one-year commitment from the network. That’s 51 weeks of shows, 255 hour-long episodes guaranteed.

‘I wouldn’t tell Candy, my wife, for a week after the show was sold, but my daughter Tori is a daytime addict, and she kept saying, ‘Do it,” says Spelling. With four shows already on the air, he has little time. Launching a daytime soap would siphon off even more of it. ‘I don’t think it hit me for a while. On Melrose, we wrap on the 22nd of November and don’t come back until January 5th. The actors and writers get a chance to rest. This is never-ending. But it’s been a strange, great experience.’

Worldvision, which sells Spelling’s shows internationally, already has 10 countries signed on for Sunset without one scene shot, based on a four-minute video that outlined the premise of the show and included Spelling talking about it. The foreign sales are important, as is NBC’s share in the financing. Mounting a daytime drama from scratch is a massive undertaking.

‘It requires the logistics of mounting a military campaign,’ says Levin. ‘There’s huge construction, there’s an enormous amount of lighting, tremendous casting, wardrobe problems. It’s not like prime time, when you see life in a kind of episodic way. Daytime is an endless stream of programming that, once it’s begun, can’t be stopped.’

Ohlmeyer puts the production investment alone at about $50 million. ‘Then there’s the cost of launch, advertising and promotion — it’s a major commitment on our part,’ he says. ‘With daytime, you’re not really going to know anything concretely for 18 months. I feel we’re very much on track. We’ve done this in a really organized way in terms of laying out target dates, scripts in by here, cast in place by here, task force working on clearances to this point we’re right on schedule. That still doesn’t change the pucker factor.’

NBC was initially looking at four ideas, Spelling’s idea among them, for a daytime soap. Spelling’s concept originally was loosely defined as ‘Melrose Place at the beach.’ When they began to look seriously for a title for the new show, Spelling ran a title contest in-house. The winner would get $200. There were dozens of suggestions, but the most serious contender, Never Say Goodbye, came from an unlikely source: Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, who suggested it during a dinner with Spelling.

‘I loved the name — it says romance, which this show is all about,’ says Spelling, whose company is part of Viacom. But in testing, viewers were drawn to the ‘beach’ motif more than anything else, Spelling says.

Executive producer Gary Tomlin (Santa Barbara) and Robert Guza Jr. are the people on the front line of the creative side of Sunset Beach. The initial groundwork on the series was done by Chuck Pratt, who was an executive producer on Melrose Place, and Guza, whose work everyone knew from Spelling’s Models Inc. Together they wrote a nearly 400-page bible outlining Sunset’s premise, characters and storyline. Spelling remembers the bible for Melrose Place being closer to 40 pages.

Unlike most daytime dramas, which tend to build their storylines around families and family rivalries, Sunset Beach is about young singles and couples who have been drawn to the town, and the relationships that emerge as the action unfolds. The producers also created an underlying mythology about the town as a place where one can find true love. ‘We loved the idea of creating a town and making the town a character,’ says Guza, who is cocreator and head writer. ‘(With) Sunset Beach, you get to create this world and these characters, and then you get to screw up their lives.’

Sunset Beach is being written at a faster pace than traditional daytime dramas. It’s a delicate balancing act to move action through each episode without losing the audience. ‘We would love it if people watched five days a week, but they don’t,’ says Tomlin. Three days is more typical. ‘We have to make certain they’re able to pick up where the story left off and that it hasn’t moved so rapidly that they can’t figure it out.’

The show is also being designed to allow room for cameos by big-name prime-time stars. Spelling wants to give viewers as compelling a reason as possible to tune in to Sunset. ‘On top of needing to have a terrific show, you are fighting against viewer habits that are long, long ingrained,’ says Levin. ‘It is very difficult to change the loyalty of the daytime viewer, and we’re talking about shows that have been on for 30 years. That’s one of the reasons we’re targeting young viewers — they’re the most available and the most flexible in their viewing habits.’

Then there is the station lineup. Affiliates exert their independence far more in daytime than prime time. NBC says that Sunset is cleared on 85 percent of its affiliates; the network expects to reach 90 percent by the premiere. With the cast now in place and the first rolls of tapes being produced, the network knows that stations that are wavering at least will have something concrete to see.

‘Will we get sufficient coverage — that’s a constant battle,’ says Levin. ‘Will the local affiliates elect to air the show in desirable time slots that will afford us the best opportunity to be sampled? These are things we are lobbying for but ultimately we don’t control.’

Spelling and NBC executives hope that Sunset Beach will be scheduled to follow Days of Our Lives, which has made a dramatic turnaround. ‘Over the last 18 months with that show, it’s been unbelievable, going from being in the middle to the top,’ Ohlmeyer says. ‘If we can get that kind of performance from Another World — and we think we’re finally on the right track there — with Sunset Beach we could have a solid three-hour block.’

Copyright ASM Communications, Inc. (1996) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=510703

June 14, 2008

Star Shuns Emmys, Angering Producers

By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES — Writers and producers for the ABC hit “Grey’s Anatomy” are fuming after one of the show’s stars, Katherine Heigl, said this week that she had opted out of the Emmy race this year because she was not given good enough material to work with last season.

The remark has fueled speculation in Hollywood that Ms. Heigl, 29, wants out of her contract on the series. This is the second time in little over a year that a dispute between Ms. Heigl and the show’s producers has spread beyond the studio soundstage.

The dispute has broader implications than just another celebrity tiff. “Grey’s Anatomy” commands the highest rate for commercials of any series on television after “American Idol,” making it one of ABC’s most profitable programs.

Following her high-profile roles in two feature films in the last year, “Knocked Up” and “27 Dresses,” Ms. Heigl may well be the show’s most visible star, although she is only one of several supporting members of an ensemble cast.

She has recently begun to produce films as well, most recently signing to star in and produce a feature based on the memoir of Carolyn Jessop, who in 2003 fled the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints.

The latest disagreement flared on Wednesday, when a Los Angeles Times Web site devoted to Emmy coverage noted that Ms. Heigl, who last year won the award for best supporting actress in a drama series, was missing from the nomination ballot for the same award this year.

Asked why, Ms. Heigl said that she had decided not to have herself submitted for a nomination. “I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention,” she said in a statement. “In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Heigl said Friday that the actress would not comment further. Spokeswomen for ABC Studios, which produces “Grey’s Anatomy,” and for the ABC broadcast network also declined to comment. And a spokesman for Shonda Rhimes, the creator of the series, said she would not comment either.

Two people involved in the production of the show said that the program’s writers and producers were angered by what they considered a slap by Ms. Heigl at the people in the writers’ room. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, which was granted because they have been involved in discussions with the program’s top executives about the situation but were not authorized to speak on behalf of the series. The series is to begin production on its fifth season on June 25.

This was not the first time that Ms. Heigl has lashed out at the producers of “Grey’s Anatomy” or alienated colleagues on a creative project. In a cover story in the January issue of Vanity Fair, Ms. Heigl said that she found the film “Knocked Up,” which made her into a bona fide box-office star, to be “a little sexist,” adding that “it was hard for me to love the movie.”

In the same article, Ms. Heigl questioned some of the drama that the creators of “Grey’s Anatomy” had written for her character, Dr. Isobel Stevens, known as Izzie, who had an affair with a married friend. “It was a ratings ploy,” she said, adding that she wanted to see more “cooperation between the business end and the creative end.”

In February 2007 Ms. Heigl temporarily suspended contract talks with the show’s producers after she sought a raise that she felt would put her on par with other actresses, including Ellen Pompeo, who plays the title character, Dr. Meredith Grey. After ABC issued a statement saying it had already offered “to raise her compensation significantly above the terms of her current contract,” Ms. Heigl said she felt disrespected.

Ms. Heigl is currently under contract with the program through at least the 2009-10 season, according to one of the people involved in its production. But the thinking among the show’s executives, that person said, is that Ms. Heigl wants to be free of the commitment to pursue more feature film roles.

At times Ms. Heigl has been supportive of the “Grey’s Anatomy” writers. During the recent strike by television and film writers, she was a visible presence on the picket line in their support, and she was one of the first actors nominated for a Golden Globe award last year to say she would not cross a picket line to attend the ceremony.

If she were to depart, the effect on the series could be significant. Advertisers paid more than $400,000 for a 30-second spot last season, according to Television Week. That amount reflects the show’s popularity with young adult women as well as its prime spot on the Thursday night schedule, when many advertisers seek to influence consumers’ decisions about the coming weekend.

The next most costly series to advertisers, “Desperate Housewives,” commands only about two-thirds as much per commercial, even though it draws more viewers. Spots on “American Idol” cost close to $1 million, more than double what advertisers pay for “Grey’s Anatomy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/arts/television/14heig.html

Jennifer Lopez - If You Had My Love

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sK0DjYE-GVA

Bleeding Love...Leona Lewis

I like Better In Time more than this one.

You two could never be on the same head writing team!

Who knows!

You didn't? LOL I've been raving about Marty Davich for years now. Yeah, I pay attention to the music. I love background music. I download tv/film scores that I love.

Oh, I collect film scores, too! Look at that!

I think B&B has one of the worse BG music. I hate the saxaphone cues especially. B&B's music is so cheesy. There's nothing beautiful or sad or haunting or dramatic. It's just.....horrible. LOL

It's hard to believe B&B/Y&R share the same composers. They're so good at one show while sucking at another show.

(Just a tiny note before the rest: the mysterious woodwind is from B&B.) And I don't find it cheesy, not one single bit.

I actually found your piano cue corny.

I guess one more thing we disagree on! There's just nothing, nothing I agree with you on, is there?

Oh, I love Marty. But, Toups, I'm surprised!! How come you pay attention to music? I didn't know you had a thing for it!

I'm impartial and think that B&B has magnificent music. With Y&R coming a very close second. I especially like that mysterious woodwind music, I think it's an oboe... Though I'm not 100% sure.

Wet Wet Wet - Love Is All Around

Why are you laughing?