2007: The Directors and Writers Thread

[heatherwebber]

I haven't been too impressed with most of what I've seen from writers under 30. Not a lot of depth to anything.

But I also haven't been impressed with certain soap writers over 30.

My memory is Port Charles was at least interesting most of the time until it became a supernatural mess. It wasn't that supernatural stories are bad. Far from it. Those particular stories didn't make any sense at all- horrendous Buffy the Vampire Slayer copycats.

Josh Griffith might be more responisible for what's been going on at Y&R than people think. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I still say it's working and is a very good show.

[Toups]

Yeah, I'm not too sure about Carolyn co-HW GH with Richard (after Karen Harris left). I have her down as Co-HW in her profile but not in the History of EP and HWs thread. So I must've mixed up my information a while back. I also don't have any credits from 1997.

I need all the help I can get to try to make the database as accurate as possible. LOL

[Dan]

Youth has nothing to do with it. There are people here under 30 that can write better than Kreizman. The only problem tied to his youth is that Kreizman is a HW who simply cannot write anything outside his own experiences. There was a little internet thing that went around awhile back that said that his parents were first cousins. Coincidence? Besides, the menopause story on GL progressed as if it was written by a 30 year old man.

Mostly, Kreizman is bashed because he sucks. He has brilliant general story ideas at times, I admit (I loved the hint at the Holly/Alan/Blake/Sebastian story a few years ago). But his execution is awful, his characterization is cartoonish, his writing is juvenile, and his pacing is haphazard. Add in the "Inside the Light" episodes that breeze through entire weeks worth of story and you have a badly paced show. Add in the effects of the budget cuts and you have one steaming pile of [!@#$%^&*].

[Kubla Khan]

IIRC, from following a past thread last year, it was GladGirl who revealed that Courtney was Megan's niece. And from what I can tell, she's been spot-on about everything.

Brian Frons (more likely than not) personally likes Megan a lot. So I doubt they would get rid of Courtney just because they showed Megan the door (they should get rid of her for her lack of talent). I bet she'll be cut loose, though, if Brown and Esensten decide to bring some writer friends over with them.

[Sylph]

No, you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking solely about head writers, but writers in general - breakdown writers and dialogue writers. We need someone to sizzle things up a bit. Anyway, Kreizman is a joke, someone said it nicely - he is cheap, CBS is probably giving him the minimum salary. That's why he's head-writing.

[Sylph]

Exactly!

Anyway, jfung79, look at primetime television - it's full of very good shorunners who are young and know their stuff. Of course, every member of the team shouldn't be under thirty, that's wrong, but at least 40%-50% of them should be. I'm not talking about youth-Nazism, I would just like that chance be given to younger writers. And then you can add 40-year-olds, 50-y-o and so on. Eighty is good, too.

[Sylph]

I'm merciless, you should know that.

[Sylph]

Whatever happened to GladGirl, anyway?

I think Courtney's out already, she just doesn't have the same cycle like Megan, who knows, maybe her contract's up already. Jim and Babs will fire her, surely.

[Sylph]

Anyway, that 'speech' is a worst peace of sh!t I have ever read. Well, not exactly, but it comes way too close. Good grief!

[jfung79]

Ah, but to me, American primetime television doesn't know its stuff -- that's why I watch daytime instead!

Also, I am mostly happy with soap writers below the headwriter level. Many times I have words of praise for a script.

Having an avenue for new writers is always important, but I don't think the writing staffs of soaps need to be cleaned out. It is usually only overall story direction that has needed to be improved greatly on the soaps I've watched, and I'm not convinced that that's because there aren't opportunities for new writers. To me, network interference and network chasing of youth viewers are more to blame for some of the more aimless stories. Also, flaws like bad pacing, and always changing how characters behave, seem to be particular to certain bad writers who keep being recycled (perhaps because networks find them easy to boss around), rather than to the older writers of soaps in general.

I have to say it's kind of convenient for your case that you can just choose to downgrade the one example of a young headwriter in daytime, whose staff also has some younger writers like Kimberly Hamilton, along with experienced ones like Donna Swajeski, as "cheap" ... Actually though, I like Kreizman, and I think his talent is great evidence FOR your case. The outcry against him by some is, to me, just evidence that significant segments of soap fandom don't like the experiments of youthful, new thinking, such as the ITL episodes, which Dan considers to contribute to "bad pacing" but I love.

My biggest problems with soaps today are the lack of multigenerational storytelling, the lack of connections among characters outside of their stories, and the lack of enough story for veterans -- problems which I just don't feel like a 30 year old is going to write well for to address all that often (David Kreizman notwithstanding). We need more people who know and care about the history of a soap's characters writing for soaps.

[R Sinclair]

Well, firstly, I will only have been here a year next month (damn, a year already?!), so I never saw GladGirl. I was speaking about a specific "insider" -- who was so full of shit -- that once it started panning out that she was, indeed, full of it, she disappeared before people could start stringing her up toes! So, since she was the only one I knew of who mentioned Hot Mess being McTavish's niece, I just assumed that was another lie as well. But if it's been said by someone else who was more reliable, then so be it. I kinda wish it wasn't... Just the idea of McTavish's hack writing genes continuing to contaminate this show terrifies me to the core.

Secondly, you've pretty much spoke the truth about B&E bringing friends over. I think it's a requirement in daytime to bring as many friends as you possibly can over to any show you work for if you're in a position of hiring power. Hot Mess Bugler will be out on her ass in no time (Take Agenda Beall with you, Bugler... PLEASE!)

ALL MY CHILDREN NEEDS SOME NEW, SKILLED, SCRIPT WRITERS!

[Adam]

Other than your beloved Cohen Sinclair, would you keep anyone else?

I have no idea where Cohen came from (maybe right out of school) but she really has been a wonderful surprise. She writes with feeling and emotion in her scripts. She is awesome.

[R Sinclair]

And the thing that bothers me is that some people wanted Jeff Beldner -- the damn SCRIPT EDITOR WHO LET'S THIS CRAP GET THROUGH (sheesh, I shudder at the atrocities he actually DOES edit when he gets her drafts ) -- to be head writer.

THAT baffles my itty bitty brain.

GH's Elizabeth Korte may have lost mega points with me for giving the Girls' Night Out episode to Karen Harris instead of Michele Val Jean, and her Mob Love (Korte's, that is)... but I have to hand it to her -- the dialog on that show is MUCH better than the dialog on AMC right now.

I haven't been keeping up, but where the hell did Mimi Leahy go to? Even though Bradbury's 2004 "K-A-N-E" was under her watch (if I'm not mistaken), Susan made it work. But come on! Giving that beach garbage to Cameron?

[Kubla Khan]

It seems relatives of the writers never work out well. Agnes' son-in-law, David Hiltbrand, wrote during her final tenure as HW. By all accounts, he was one hot mess, and totally unqualified for the gig, and was fired a couple of months after Agnes formally stepped down.

(Agnes' daughter, Cathy Chicos, wrote for the show in the 70s/80s though and she was outstanding).

[Sylph]

Well, it's not all sunny days, roses that fall from the sky and all... But, at least, it tries to do something new, to push the limits a bit further. Once, in a golden age far behind us, it was daytime television that challenged the limits of television and so forth.

It's a mixed bag - there are good ones, worth keeping, but there are much more terrible people who earn big bucks writing sh!t I can write while sleeping. And be ten times better than them.

Wishing is a funny thing, you never know what may come your way. Yes, we need the avenue for new writers. I argued with EricaKane4Life about integrity and writers and networks and... you can read it in "Who should replace Latham". I hate that argument!

But Kreizy is cheap in every way imaginable, from his low salary to his stories etc. Guding Light should be put out of its misery, as much as it pains me to say this.

In the end, there is no recipe for a great story. If there were, everybody would be a HW. Multigenerational or not, I don't care, I just want a beautifully written soap. I want them all to flourish, but that is an utopian idea, which will never pass from Plato's world of ideas to our own, earthly plain.

Anyway, ceterum censeo Kreizman esse delendam. Not literally, of course.