EricMontreal22
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Everything posted by EricMontreal22
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Those shirts!! I mean and that seems to be a coffee place? LOL Love the end credit music Also--interesting they credit Art Wallace--the creator and first HW of Dark Shadows--as a creative consultant. I know his wife wrote scripts around this time... Still, kinda random. Agnes Nixon seems to have had admiration for DS. She never has said so specifically but she picked Gordon Russell for One Life to Live based on his only previous daytime work DS (and he came with Sam Hall). And a few times she has said how Dan Curtis had the right Idea to save the tapes of his soap from the start. -
(By Bravo I mean the Canadian Bravo which isn't connected to Bravo US). I remember really liking it--I think at that age anyway it connected to me more than Mary Hartman. It was outrageous but more grounded in a discernible reality (as I think Ann says in that clip). I swear I taped some episodes but would have to go through my storage.
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Well they were given a year and five months--not two years . Sure, you could say two years if you count their time on Loving--yes, with the same EP, but writing for that show was such a completely different *thing* (and of course was focused around one major storyline--I will say ABC's "suggestion" that they open The City with a similar serial killer storyline was bad on every level) I dunno, maybe I am being too generous, but with all the growing pains of the show (the camera work for the first few months was hard to take) etc, I think they deserved at least two full years. And again, I do think that from the point Tracy came on, it's compelling, good, stuff. At the time I thought it was the best thing ABC had on the air (granted 97 was when their other soaps were having troubles...) I do know that B/E said the Cassandra storyline was one they felt they had to finish before the show ended and so drastically rewrote to bring it to a quick conclusion. Not sure about any other storylines...
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Did anyone watch creator Ann Marcus' followup to Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, the late night soap parody from 1980, The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts (L.A.T.E.R.)? Bravo briefly reran it as part of their TV Too Good for TV block in the early 90s (which also, if I recall, is where I first got to see Mary Hartman--they also showed Soap and Twin Peaks and... Cop Rock LOL). I'd love to see full episodes again but can only find this:
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Watch this space... Aww thanks--that does make sense. You're right (although Sydney did own the building and had the penthouse, but...) It made more sense with Tracy given her life situation. But, while I defend the last half of the City, I completely agree that it might have worked better to pull from a small neighbourhood (maybe fictional) in NY instead of one building As FrenchBug says that's always a problem when you set a soap in an actual big city (and even small town soaps suffer from this when they started to have every conceivable thing in their town including several massive businesses). The UK soaps do make it work by creating fictional communities within a big city, although even there you do start to wonder why they all seem to live, work and have fun on the same four streets...
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Within two weeks--hang on to your hats--I should be able to upload and post some of the Jonathan sells his soul to the devil/turns into a snake storyline 😮
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Was that me? I told someone that they could read the AMC bible at the NorthWestern archives. I was able to go there as research for my MA essay and actually have scanned a lot of stuff I can share. However, I have to warn you, there is remarkably little about OLTL compared to AMC and even Loving and her pre OLTL soap work. But no--nothing is scanned in. I had to scan what I did myself, and that was a bit of an iffy thing in and of itself (I went twice, one time the person was fine with me scanning all I wanted, the other time I was being watched VERY closely)
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I was glad Erika was able to make an appearance as some of her comments were the most interesting (and wow, someone involved in the show actually mentioned Gordon Russell and has some sense of when Nixon was actually still writing for the show--I'm impressed). Everyone seems to remember Agnes whole heartedly approving of the 90s Vicki DID storyline except for that one interview with Agnes herself which she seemed aghast that she would have ever approved of that (in hindsight I think she was confused by the way the question was asked of her, actually).
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The recast happened before then, but yeah, one of Broderick's misfires was new Taylor and the whole Jamaica storyline with her hunting them all over the island (and voodoo). I have it on authority from one of the writers I interviewed that that outlandish storyline was partly pushed on the show by ABC who wee concerned about the sudden rise of DAYS with its crazy stories--and that they were "allowed" to tell stories like the over a year long Michael Delaney/Kevin Sheffield "gay" stuff as a deal if they balanced it out with increasingly over the top storylines. (The other Broderick story I hated was Tanner--everything about Tanner including drunk Hayley thinking she slept with him). Exactly how I feel. I really appreciate that Locher does these, but they're always frustrating (partly because, as he has admitted, he never even watched any of the Nixon soaps so he often gets details wrong, or repeats stories that all of the fans know already but he acts like it's new info ). I didn't expect any depth, though I did repeatedly ask him to ask Debbi (and Darnell) about Nixon persuading her to join Loving and her time there. So we didn't really get anything new, but I wasn't expecting much (and it was nice to hear Burnett tell her story herself, though of course I had heard that story 100x lol)
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I had the same reaction to Anton (the actor of course later played Dracula opposite SMG's Buffy on an episode of Buffy). I dunno--I think people like looking at McTavish's run as the start of the slow decline of AMC. Perhaps, but her first two years were mostly great . It was only at the end that you understand why FMB wanted her out. Yes her show was quite dark (though still had classic AMC comedy) but I'll stand by it.
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Was Another World trying the same thing? I... don't see that but I'd love to hear what you mean. Your description of The City isn't wrong, but it makes me think you've only watched the first six months or a bit more. As I've said before, I think it really came into its own in its final six months or so and (rather quickly all things considered) understood and improved from a lot of its early problems (including short term "shock" stories like how they handled the racial and trans storylines). There was a much stronger sense of a found family and genuine affection. And of course having Tracy on the show helped immeasurably (I don't think I've ever liked her character more).
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I scanned it when I was at her archives at Northwestern for my grad paper research. Send me a PM (I suspect any copy floating around comes from mine--I have sent quite a few to copies...)
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She absolutely did during that early period. Patrick Mulcahey said in one interview that he left the Loving writing team after a year (I believe) because every script he'd get would have tons of notes, not from Marland but from Nixon (and I've seen scripts of other shows with her notes--like early AMC scripts--she is very clear). He noted that that's a valid approach, but not one he can work under. My friend who posted them said he only recently got them transferred digitally. Sadly, this is all he has (for now). The Dorothy Lyman intro BTW actually aired AFTER the Loving movie the night before--not as an introduction to the daytime premier. A great summation--I think you've studied the bible closer than I have and I was the one who scanned it! LOL Thanks for that. As for Lily's return in 1987. Someone (Schemering?) pointed out what an awful return it was--and some of those episodes (a rather dull, non-descript era for the show) are online. She basically became a bland, blonde, husband stealing, vixen with little nuance.
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Remember there were a few months where Gottlieb had taken over by Craig Carlson (?) was still HW, and the transition at any rate didn't feel immediate. (and of course the initial plan was to put some of the focus on short term story arcs--one involved that guy from Body Double as an abusive husband--though they quickly realized that went against the point of a soap.
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Ha, if he ever was open to it, surely his time at Loving changed all that... (As the pre-Marland bible makes clear, as well as Nixon's notes during the first year, Agnes Nixon was extremely involved in the overall plotting and somehow I doubt that even if it had been a monster hit in its first year, Marland would have happily stuck around ).
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That's a trip with Phoebe visiting... I remember Myrtle showing up to I think Dinah Lee's wedding (this was after hannah and her had stayed with Myrtle on AMC), but not Phoebe. I love details like this that reinforce the shared universe (even if it's odd that Loving and later The City characters watch AMC...) especially since I can't imagine it was done in this case to try to bring over AMC viewers...
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Agreed about Beecroft--he also had good chemisgtry with Brooke (maybe some exec saw that and pushed for it to be more romantic). And wha?? I wanna hear more about this bomping Agnes story! Maybe that's why she was gone so quickly lol Pretty sure Becca/Scott was Agnes at leas in concept (Greenlee too). As I've said before it felt like she was trying to bring back one of her initial young love stories--Becca being very much in the Tara model--but it just wasn't working (and maybe never would have worked around 2000)
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Was that all in the last half of 1999? I have been intrigued by Elizabeth Page--she was initially listed as Agnes' co-HW, but pretty quickly it was her and Passanante as her co-HWers and then just Passanante as co-HW (and eventually HW which is when the [!@#$%^&*] hit the fan--stuff like "dog boy", the ghosts taking over PV and of course Passanante apparently broke her contract to quit early--why?--and moved to ATWT leaving AMC without a credited HW for two months).
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That's a fantastic interview. He said he did not like working with her, but also implied he was ready to leave. Broderick gave him the job at GL (I think he claimed he didn't remember writing a thing) because he needed less than a year more work to get full benefits or a full pension or something from the WGA, and Broderick basically gave him the job as a kind gesture. I'm sure he did That does make sense though. I guess my issue with the Real Housewives is the very little I've watched never give me a sense of families made up of generations, families at all really (despite appearances by some family members), a diversity in tone, etc. But I do get ya
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