Contessa Donatella
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Posts posted by Contessa Donatella
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13 hours ago, Faulkner said:
Bridget Dobson bridges a lot of gaps between soap eras, and the Santa Barbara revelations would be splendid.
JFP probably has an interesting book in her.
Bridget has recently done a 6 part interview. It reads like a memoir.
JFP? ACK. I just choked a little.
10 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:Robin Strasser
Louise Sorel
Lauren Koslow
Linda Dano
Jennifer Bassey
Dano would be great!
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4 hours ago, ~bl~ said:
Crystal Chappell already wrote a memoir. There is an archived thread about it on SON.
I've read it. It's very good. But, I want more of her in another memoir!
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2 minutes ago, robbwolff said:
According to Entertainment Weekly, they had more than a year to research and plan for the change. That’s plenty of time to prepare. And World Turns did not have much more time than GL. That’s just not true. GL ended in September and CBS announced it was canceling ATWT two months later.
I think that's where I would be dubious of EW's reportage. But, it is true that they, where they is PGP/Televest by that time, announced about World Turns very soon after GL. So, we both agree and disagree here, too.
On 9/26/2019 at 3:45 PM, Mitch said:I do think that GL's worst exec was John Conboy, who did not GET the show at all, and he came at the crucial time to not only derail the show, (despite Rauch's interference Taggert was doing well) but make it almost impossible to save the show, from the budget being busted, to the return of Brad Cole, to Maryanne Curathers (blowing decades of GL cannon) to making Alex Reva's stalker, drugging Alan, then being under Alan's thumb and then making her a Drug Dealer, to bringing back Eden (Taggert got rid of her) giving her a storyline which made Ben a serial killer who gets berated by Jeffery on his death bed, and Ed slapping Michele... Mac and Cheese Alan....Terrible stuff..(I cant even bring up the Teen Gay Rave, Marah's outdated Day Glo Fashion Show, the possessed TIki God Head, and the goofy drug thing...) And he only had two years.????
I agree with you all the way and thank GOD he only had 2 years!
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3 minutes ago, Chris B said:
@Donna B I agree that Chris Goutman did a horrible job with the exception of the production aspect of the show. I loved the sets and the lighting and the outdoor sets and location shooting. Considering they had a lower budget he did a good job of not making the show look cheap. Now on the other hand I hate how he treated the cast (especially Martha Byrne) and his lack of respect for the history of the show. But I still fail to see how Ellen Wheeler had no time when they gradually started adding in location footage with those cameras and did test episodes prior to officially launching it. And then I remember when it launched they didn't even have any stories going. The show was just treading water and letting the viewers drift away. Yes they had a good pairing here and there, but overall the show was horribly written in those later years.
So @ChrisB we disagree on some & yet we agree on some. It's true that in the beginning Wheeler's team wasn't ready with new writing to go with the new production model. But, they got that writing going & it was terrific. Kreizman, Gold, Chris Dunn, Jil Lorie hurst, Donna Swajeski, Karen Harris, they had a strong Writing team & they tackled great subjects. But, everything I know about what was going on behind the scenes is that they did not have time to prepare the physical side of the new production model & that they had to learn OJT. They learned how to do what they were doing as they rolled out the new production model. I blame CBS for that.
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2 hours ago, ~bl~ said:
That episode of Guiding Light aired when there huge snowstorm in the eastern part of the US, and a lot of people were stuck at home. It was on or around President's Day, so most of the schools were closed.
thanks
2 hours ago, Chris B said:Ellen Wheeler had plenty of time to prepare for the new production model, she was just a horrible, horrible producer. ATWT used the same cameras and that show looked fabulous with their outdoor shoots blending in nicely with the studio work. GL had a gift with the ability to have standing sets and a town to film in, but they clearly picked the wrong town and also the writing was so bad that it didn't help things. Also when it began there were so many odd scenes set on the side of the road next to a bunch of damn bushes. It was just bizarre. Then the shaky cameras. No reason they had to make things as cheesy and cheap as they did. They really could've benefited from hiring a UK soap writer who understands how to write for a soap with standing sets and outdoor shooting. Trying to tell the same ole US soap style stories and show glamour was a stretch.
I don't think that they did have time. But, I also think that we're not going to agree. For example, I think Goutman did a terrible job as EP at ATWT. I was hugely disappointed in him. And ATWT had much more time than GL did. But, I think GL's writing was brilliant. Otalia & Jammy were internationally famous.
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7 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:
The genius of Bill Bell's writing was that the stories he told and the character motivations he created were often very adult, very ambiguous, very complicated. As a viewer who was watching the show when the Bill-Laura rape/seduction occurred, I'd say that to label it a simple case of straightforward rape doesn't quite capture the complex nuance of the situation.
Bill and Laura had been in love first, but when circumstances drove them apart, Laura married Mickey, basically for comfort and security.
Can you remind me how Laura ended up with Mickey? What I remember so strongly is that Bill & Laura were madly in love with each other. And, the situation was that they were brothers.
7 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:She never loved Mickey with the same intense fire that she had had for Bill. When Bill came back to Salem, he and Laura were still hugely attracted to each other, longed for each other, but fought to control and suppress their feelings. Bill got drunk, cast his inhibitions aside, and made physical moves on Laura. She resisted, out of a sense of duty to Mickey and social mores, but it had been clear that she really wanted him too. Was it rape? Was it a case of Bill putting Laura in a situation where she had no choice but to give in to her acknowledged-but-socially-unacceptable desires? In the final analysis, Laura did say no, so Bill should have accepted her protests and stopped. Anything that happens after the word NO is not consensual in a clear-cut, right-and-wrong definitive sense. But human beings and human interaction are more ambiguous and complicated than that, and what viewers witnessed on screen left us with many conflicting questions and opinions.
In short, the Bill-Laura business was a complicated mess, but at least William J. Bell made Bill suffer for many YEARS because of his actions.
From what I recall, Kitty Horton never tried to blackmail Bill over "rape," she threatened to tell Mickey that he was not Mike's biological father, a secret which neither Bill nor Laura wanted to come out.
You've done a good job of putting distance between the situation with Bill & Laura in the doctor's lounge one drunken night and Luke & Laura on the disco floor while RAGE played. Well said. And, partially why Laura was able to be with Bill again later & have Jennifer, etc.
What part of it came from Pat Falkin Smith?
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29 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:
For Actors: Deidre Hall, John Aniston, Suzanne Rogers, Genie Francis, Jonathan Jackson, Susan Flannery, Victoria Wyndham.
For people who worked behind the scenes, I'd love to read from anyone who worked with James E. Reilly, to find out why he chose to depart from traditional story during his first stint on DAYS, and also why he declined so much in his later career.
Crystal Chappell for every soap she's been on & Venice & the movie they made & generally going from "just a talented actress" to a real mover & a shaker & person behind the scenes who can write & direct & produce; Cady McClain for being an actress and a director and writing a solid memoir of her life and producing content; Jill Lorie Hurst for writing GL and working there; Nancy Curlee Demorest for her writing at GL and for those she wrote with; Ellen Wheeler for her entire career; I would have said Susan Flannery, Vicky Wyndham, too, were they not already listed.
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49 minutes ago, beebs said:
It says in the article that they intended to run it until Christmas and extended it to Easter. Read carefully.
Thanks, beebs.
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On 10/30/2010 at 11:16 PM, Bright Eyes said:
One of the best soap tales of all time. And personally, I feel the whole Bill/Laura/Mickey et al story was Bill Bell's best in his history.
It was certainly an amazingly long time gap between Bill's drunken rape of Laura one night in the doctor's lounge until the reveal when Mike was a teenager. Mickey was sterile. Only Laura & Tom knew that. If only they hadn't played one of those games "rape or seduction?" Bill Bell, Pat Falken Smith, Gloria Monty, ...
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1 minute ago, robbwolff said:
Despite what Zimmer said in her book, I can assure you an episode aired on CBS television in February 2007. Search for it on You Tube. It's there. Yes, there were webisodes, but GL devoted an entire episode to show their volunteerism. And Zimmer is featured in the episode.
Total speculation, but I wonder if the experience documenting the volunteerism with handheld cameras is what gave Wheeler the idea for the 2008 revamp.
I believe you. It seemed like Kim got really into what they were planning despite the fact that up front she was dragging her feet about it! I just wanted to find it in the book because I knew it was there & that there had been a discussion. I'm just too stubborn not to go look for the passage, LOL.
That's some good speculation there. Does the time work out? When was the anniversary?
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On 5/27/2016 at 6:00 PM, Vee said:
I'll give it a shot!
Oprah should act more often.
She is good.
3 minutes ago, London said:Oooooooooooooooooh, no I never saw that.
I guess it might have been worked out since it is still airing.Sure thing. It must have.
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6 minutes ago, London said:
That was about the show? Or within the show? I won't lie... I never heard of a lawsuit.
I think the only show on OWN that had that, from my recollection, was Love Is____ and they wound up cancelling the show as a result which is sad because it was such a beautiful show deep down and I loved the dialogue overall.0 -
1 minute ago, London said:
When that was posted, it was 2016 and that was S1 in the video, Netflix has S1-3 and they just started the show up again a month or so ago with S4.Thanks! I read that there was a lawsuit. Did they sort that out?
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On 10/11/2019 at 12:21 PM, Donna B said:
Zimmer didn't want to do it for that reason: because she didn't want to break the fourth wall & be Zimmer instead of Reva. That's why they did it as webisodes rather than regular episodes.
Okay, in Zimmer's book, the second way Wheeler came up with to celebrate the 70th anniversary was GL Gives Back where the show would show its appreciation to the fans. (The first had been the special epis that Wheeler & Kreizman came up with, Wednesdays, when characters would show off their light.) The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Biloxi, Mississippi, taping a special epi, in place of a regular epi, rebuilding homes with the HandsOn Network. Now, this epi would be doing what is called breaking the fourth wall. I felt so strongly about this that I did not want to take part. Breaking the fourth wall, I would be Kim. I wanted to stay Reva. When Wheeler called me into her office to ask me why, about this, I was honest. I told her. "Lots of meetings took place before it was decided that the episode would be shot but would air only as a Web series on a Guiding Light-inspired Web site, findyourlight.net."
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On 10/2/2019 at 5:04 PM, Khan said:
I don't think either were fired, @glatwt.
Calhoun quit/retired, and Long quit, because she had encountered overwhelming resistance from P&G or CBS on several proposed storylines.
I am re-reading Zimmer's book because I'm looking for a passage. And, I found something I thought I would share. Kim had won her first Emmy the afternoon before. (That's when they had them in the afternoons.)That was her win when she had those garish hair extensions sticking out of her head at all angles. The next day, in the studio, trying to work, Kim was still so excited about her Emmy win that she couldn't get settled into her dialogue. I knew what it was she was supposed to say but she flubbed her lines for 8 times in a row. After that, Beverlee looked right at her, and cool as could be, oozing Southern accent, said, "You give the girl an Emmy and she can't remember a [!@#$%^&*] line!"
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On 7/23/2019 at 4:56 PM, Forever8 said:
Tammy Blanchard (Ex Drew Jacobs GL) is set to star in the Off-Broadway Revival of Little Shop Of Horrors!!!
OH! She'll be great in that!
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7 minutes ago, beebs said:
Except it didn't, really. They'd been consistently #5 ever since Carly was buried alive. The story wasn't necessary, it didn't affect anything long term, and it ended up running too long and negatively impacting their ratings for the first part 96.
They really ran that storyline too long! Their first plans were to cut it off around Easter - at least supposedly. That's what was said at the time. But they were way too out of control. DOOL has a long-term history where the Hortons were Episcopalians and the Bradys, naturally, were Roman Catholic. Remember when Bo & Hope got married in England in a British Episcopalian vestry? But, oh, no, Reilly got busy turning the whole town, the whole shebang, all the people, into Roman Catholics, plopping them down in RC pews, making John Black an RC priest, and Marlena was Devil Doc lording it over all of them - levitating & having glowing yellow eyes. Honestly, all of my friends were DOOL fans at the time and half of them quit the show. And, the ones who quit the show did not come back. No, they went to GH.
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26 minutes ago, denzo30 said:
AW was always considered the drabby soap filmed in Brooklyn.
That Brooklyn, out there in Brooklyn reputation was so hang-dog. But that studio actually had a lot of high profile stuff created there.
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Just some of the shows I liked:
Jackie Brown
Twin Peaks (the original)
Heroes
The Delta Force
Last Man Standing
Mulholland Drive
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
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Robert Forster Image, such a very good looking man
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On 3/18/2017 at 11:07 PM, amybrickwallace said:
I used to work as a proofreader, so errors of any kind in written form drive me nuts!!
I, too, was a proofreader and a copy editor and it just makes me bonkers! I understand, though, that most people cannot see errors, so I cut them some slack.
I loved Aggie's memoir. There were errors that stood out, true.
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2 minutes ago, te. said:
Ron doesn't care as long as they're shirtless.
Aye, that's the rub, right there! I'm into women so I don't even notice if he's got them stripped of their shirts. I'm just expecting them to act and flirt and romance. Oh, boy, am I off track! LOL
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AMC Tribute Thread
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps
Posted
Who's time? Zarf? Zarf made it hard to watch AMC!