EricMontreal22

Ha, I'd never seen that 1986 clip--that's great.

http://cdn.crushable.../alg_brahim.jpg

I have to admit I really like GGW despite myself, but it is VERY much Benny Benassi by the numbers, and anyone could be singing it--I expect and want more from Madonna. It does sound, again from that review solely, that there will be at least a few more interesting tracks on the album though.

You think Madonna would forget? Yeah i was going to post that Attitude magazine. It certainly makes the album sound way way more interesting than Hard Candy. Take it with a grain of salt though--Attitude is always always glowing towards the gay divas (Kylie, Madonna, Gaga, etc)

I agree Carl, though I hate to blame one team for what was used from their material later on by other teams, I think it's a fair point.

Great post Carl--thanks. It's a shame more was not done with Valerie--but I suspect her first love is the theatre and she certainly hasn't wanted in terms of acclaim in that depeartment since. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYS5BROQxw0&feature=related

We're going to have to agree to disagree, particularly the last comment (IMHo it was Ron who played lip service to the show's past, I would hate to have seen Malone and Griffith do the same). It can be argued that Malone should have tried harder to bring on less new characters, and reached into the show's past more. But, as you said, the show really was in dire states. I don't think his overhaul was as total as other successful ones, like Monty's at GH, at any rate.

That's a great read, I assume it was a year or so after The City started? Had no idea good ol' Nellie was doing soap press back then. It does seem weird they weren't up for an Emmy--I also never new they shot so out of sequence, though it makes sense--or thought about how usually a director on soap does focus nearly entirely on performance but with The City they really did have to think about the angles, etc (I appreciate that they aknowledge at first they were too busy)

I love these--Paul could you say what the date of both issues was?

I find that slightly unfair--=Malonereportedly spent hours with Agnes Nixon among others and tried to be fair to soaps as well (which is why one of his first stories was the week of flashbacks for Megan)(. Of course he had a learning curve, but... And as brilliand as Lemay's 70s work was, I'm starting to be unvconvinced of his later work... Granted it's hard to tell--he only had brief runs at Doctors and AW again, but all his talkas a consultant (where he was best friends with Jill PF of all people) make me think he was starting to not get soaps.

I'm glad you agree about the rape. As to Marty, I think she could have been successfully matured as a *true* shrink, not just an aged heroine with no actual shrink storylines. The desire to help others after she has helkped herslef makes a lotof sense--but I'll never understand why soaps have never (in my experience) been able to keep a *sane* shrink an interesting character (I hate to say this but Marlena may come the closest--at least every 10 years she offers some shrink-like advice, but she's not even close to what I mean). Usually shrinks on soaps are day players, or are psychopaths--yet to have a core member of a show be a shrink seems such an easy soap fix--most soap fans would love to see sessions where characters actually talk about their dilemnas in an organic way. I agree about Todd. From all I've read that was one place where Griffith and Malone disagreed as well--Malone gives Griffith credit for developing Todd, but then Griffith wanted Todd off the canvas, and Malone seemed all too eager to make him some Byron-esque figure--but none of that is really Gottlieb's fault. I think we'll have to disagree about the Vicki story--partly for personal problems--her story actually helped my mother deal with a lot of her past, and I can't imagine that happening from any other medium, but it is true that no one knew what to do with her after that. She was too vibrant a character to turn into a Ruth Martin type figure already at that stage, yet... Not much they gave her since then really was preferable to that outcome.

Some of this is just my reaction to the show at the time--and I was fairly new to soaps, and hadn't really found any appealing except AMC and, less so Loving--so stories like Marty's rape were a revelation to me (it also was the story that got my twin sister and mom fully into soaps--briefly for my sister, but more longterm for my mom). The point was that Marty was unlikeable--wasn't it?--but I guess that was very "un-soap like". Todd not having enough reason to be a rapist is nonsensical, when you look at real situations, but I admit was outside of the norm at the time in soap operas where rapists were either characters who appeared that very episode, or long term characters. In a way the criticisms remind me of those mid 1970s criticisms in the soap press for AMC which (largely) read to me as people objecting to a soap doing some different things... You are right though that she deserves (well, her and her collaborators) slightly more criticism than I stated above for the fact that others seemed unable to make many of her key players and story concepts work past her. I still think though, particularly considering how soaps fell apart in the second half of the 90s anyway, and how many other examples there are of great eras of soaps and characters imply not working when their key creators leave (AW in the 70s being a good example), that it's not a fully fair criticism.

So new single Girls Gone Wild is much more what I want from Madonna, even if it sounds a lot like Get Together from Confessions--and the remix of Celebration that was released to radio--no shock as it's also produced by Benny Benassi. TeamMadonna seems to be doing damage control, claiming THIS is the first single, and the previous single was just a promo single...

Marlena's attitude to LG really is one point where I don't agree with her view at all (I often disagree on points, but I think fundamentally I usually get where she's coming from). While she vaguely mentions it, she doesn't give enough credit to the absolute shambles of a show OLTL quickly became in the 1-2 years before Gottlieb came in. I also don't, in hindsight, get the offence many soap fans felt towards having an outsider come in on "their" show--I guess since then we've had such worse examples of people both from outside of the soap industry, and more so, from inside, who have done far more damage to the shows they come to--what Gottlieb did to OLTL really didn't ultimately betray the show's tone or fabric at all, and there WAS a lot of deadweight to get rid of. The short term stories and characters didn't work, but they tried that, and gave up on it relatively quickly (really within a year). The social storylines in hindsight seem kinda heavy handed, but at the time I don't think they did, and I also think OLTL needed a return to that--they had gone as far in the other direction as they could have under Rauch. I get what Carl says about the era ultimately leading to in the way the destruction (at least partially) of characters like Vicki, but really i someone had come on to the show and instead of changing directions, tried to just one up, and take character and story from the successful Rauch era, I feel much of that would have been destroyed MUCH faster. It seems unfair to blame lame stories that took their starting point from the Gottlieb era *on* the Gottlieb era, unfair. That's like saying that the sequels people have done of Pride and Prejudice mainly suck, and it's Jane Austen's fault... (well, not quite, but) That less talented teams of EP/HWs (and that includes later EPs who worked with Malone and Griffith--but mainly Malone solo) have taken seeds from their characters and stories and turned them to crap, isn't their fault--although some of what they did was destructive in and of itself.

Wow his humour sounds kinda... pretentious.

LOL It's probably partly that I'm still drunk from last night, but I swear I almost cried when I realized this thread had been moved to this forum.

This REALLY needs to be in unpopular opinions. The Laverry curse was played out (years later) but made some sense on paper. as Chris' ever? At anyrated his yokel delivery was horrible--if Carlos had been mor of a major character, Chris and he would be at my bottom of worst soap actors. I am sure he was a good actor in some life but he and Erica were so awful-the nadir of Cullionton's run (which otherwise had un-touched potential)

I think that's very much true... In the OLTL tribute mag Paul Rauch gives Michael Schnessel a HUGE amount of praise, making him sound like the most brilliant writer who ever lived. I wonder if that was one reason he was at such a loss after his passing.

It came up when I was looking for an opera singer with the last name Valentini actually... Very random. And yeah--I can totally see why a number of people, especially who had been sucked in by the Rauch era, fled in 1990, as we've discussed. Of course he also says he started watching in school and it sounds like, like many, he stopped when school and college were done and work started.

Has this been posted? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6rd8CfRT0

Ugh I expected an element of forced camp (ie unlike the true--in other words unintended--camp which was part of the appeal of the original), and to be disappointed, but this stykle of humour sounds AWFUL, even less than I expected. It sounds like the trailer makes it all about an old vampire coming to in the 70s making jokes about how he doesn't understand the real world. A vampire version of some crap like Encino Man. Sigh

I can completely relate to that...

And you know that I did like Greenlee particularly back then, one thing we'll just never agree on That's fair enough. I think calling it a return to form was definitely too much, though I did feel like some of the AMC "feel" that I found eroding was coming back (mind you for me much of that feel was the early 90s when I became a fan--and as you you also know some AMC fans feel that the AMC feel was gone much earlier by the late 80s). And I did love the Marian story, I just wish it had been featured more. While I admit it's easy to not put any blame on Agnes, I do know when she returned by then she did basically say in her typical subdued way that she couldn't be as fully hands on as she used to be for a myriad of reasons--which I guess is why she always had co-headwriters though Elizabeth Page was at least a better fit than Passanante. There were things I think Agnes tried but didn't work--like Becka (who of course was part of the Greenlee story too, and it seemed like an attempt to do a 1960s/70s classic nice girl heroine that just never worked) and the Brooke Eliot story which I've admitted I DID like but fans largely hated and that seemed to cause its abrupt end--although fans did seem to like the fact it refocused Brooke with her homeless shelter. I think part of the failure for these plots actually might have been that Agnes Nixon wasn't completely involved or invested--a lot of this time, as much as I enjoyed it, did feel half baked. Maybe the network also wasn't too impressed with such low key storylines, which I suppose could have led to Passanante being hired.

Bianca's coming out *was* well done I think--by that point that seemed to be, from comments made to the magazines anyway, the only story Agnes Nixon was really actively involved in. (I could be wrong though--are you discussing later)? It is true that ABC Daytime was starting to get muddled creatively around this time in general--falling ratings on all soaps were, I suspect, allowing increasing network exec interference, the Disney buy out didn't help, etc. When Nixon and Page first came out the major change really was more little character scenes--and I appreciated that. But they didn't last into the Passanante era (to put it mildly), even Passanate as co-HW really--and I don't think they did anything for the ratings.

I don't care if I'm wrong, i thoroughly give the candy cane stoiry to Jean Passanante and not Nixon... I think the changes, even if many were superficial or minor were in the right direction--they just needed to go with them for a while longer. Not to mention that I doubt ABC Daytime would have paid the money to license the actual Supremes original...