OLTL: Michael Malone question

[brimike]

His novels are FANTASTIC, and I'm a huge fan.

Loved his first tenure at OLTL, but from what I understand, the EP back then was very hands-on, and much of the stories came from her.

His time at AW wasn't necessarily bad. But fans were already feeling "The Storm of Change" from JFP's sweeping changes in both how the show looked, and which characters to focus on. So Malone wasn't necessarily a bad fit, it's just that so many other things had changed at AW, we fans were really sensitive to ANYTHING else changing the status quo. But AW was in MUCH worse hands than Malone's in its last ten years.

As for his last tenure at OLTL, it *reeked* of network interference. I'm not saying Malone didn't have a hand in it, and he should share part of the blame. But everything about the show during those two years just screamed "CLUSTERF*CK!"

He's flawed, like any other writer. But he's still aces in my book.

[Cheap21]

Malone was absolutely DREADFUL during his last run. He was good for the first few months but quickly fell apart towards the end of that summer. The show became a boring clusterf-ck after Mitch was killed off. I attribute his obsession with making the Santis and McBains major players one of the huge reasons why his run was a flop

[brimike]

Yeah, but based on the amount of screen time Antonio and John had during DH's run, something tells me that was network driven.

[cal3]

I agree with Jess. I too count as one who enjoyed Malone's work. He was far from perfect and had big misses in both his terms at OL. Still overall the show was more enjoyable than it had been. I also thought that the show reeked from Frons.

One observation I have is that the show has been repeating all the same mistakes regardless of the writer since FV and Frons took over. I do think Malone was far more in your face and we saw their pissing contest play out on screen.

[Vee]

Antonio was no Frons directive. He was Malone's white knight of the streets. As far as Michael Malone was concerned, there could never be enough Antonio Vega. He tried to briefly take into account the audience's well-rooted distaste for Tonio in years since his first run by having these clumsy, stupid scenes with Antonio and Rae Cummings "facing his anger," but that didn't help. It wasn't until Antonio was backburnered, then paired with Talia, then written by RC, that he, shockingly, became likable again. He can't be frontburner. Period. Not anymore. But try telling that to Michael Malone.

The sad fact is I do not trust Malone with OLTL anymore. It'd be like giving my senile uncle the car keys. Sure, he means well, but will he drive into traffic? Will he drive with his feet? Will he come back with a pedestrian lodged in the windshield? Who's to say?

[marceline]

Count me as a Malone fan. As others have stated he made some horrific mistakes especially during his most recent tenure but the thing that I like about Malone is the way he writes characters. He approaches characters like a novelist. I feel like he has a backstory in mind even if we never get to know all of it.

It reminds me of the "scandal" when JK Rowling announced that she wrote Dumbledore as gay. A lot of people accused her of "rewriting" history but when I looked back through the books it's all there. That's the feeling I always got with Malonian characters (and to be clear, I mean characters he created, there were definitely issues with his interpretation of existing characters.)

And I personally like the way he deals with issues of race, sex and class but admittedly I was raised on Norman Lear and shows like MASH so I love that kind of stuff.

Maybe Malone will do what Joss Whedon's doing and create a show for the internet. Then he won't have to deal with Frons and Valentini.

[Jess]

Antonio may be Malone's creation. But Jessica and Antonio were Frank Valentini's wet dream. As far as frontburner, Antonio is no worse than Jared, who is RC's wet dream. Every writer has their overexposed character and it is usually one they created.

[Paul Raven]

Some statements from Malone about taking over AW from SOW June 97.

"In order to achieve more diversity and balance,we need more young people.The show is very solid in the middle aged range,but except for Sofia,Nick and Tomas,where are the young ones?

Let's find some more people for them.Let's get some triangles going.For that you need spoilers and troublemakers.With a character like Maggie gone,who's going to becausing trouble for the young group?

There are 2 kinds of characters you can't do without:One is Scarlett O'Hara and the other is Heathcliff.

By Heathcliff I mean a brooding,mysterious,troubled person of great romantic torment. By Scarlett.I mean someone who will lie,heat and steal toget what she wants. We need a Scarlett and a Heathcliff."

"One of the things that needed to be done with that story(Bobby and Vicky)was that while it was taking upo a lot of time,it wasn't moving anywhere;it was circling. Get on with it already!

Who is Bobby? What happened to him? When is his past going to catch up with him? What are the consequences going to be?

When I got here Bobby and Vicky were falling in love.Let's take that and see all the twists and turns that will follow.One thing you're pretty sure of is that nobody ever ends up for good with anybody.But we need to look around the canvas and see where to go with this story,to tell other characters' stories.

Drama is about what happens next,and if you don't care what happens next,then you don't have a story.

We are going to have a very large young people's summer story involving Nick,Sofia,Tomas,Toni,Chris and Tyrone,a new African American character coming in to the Burrell family;there is going to be a very explosive.controversial event that happens.

We're going to to tell a story with John/Felicia/Alexander/Sharlene/Michael group.A story for Paulina and Joe,Gary and Josie. There are a lot of other wonderful relationships.

Yes.the show has reached the point of relying too heavily on Bobby and Vicky.Jensen Buchanan and Robert Kelker-Kelly are both wonderful actors,but they needed a driving plot."

[cal3]

Well said.

Why must it be either black or white? Malone had his moments good and bad but why are the writers at OLTL always the scapegoats? Santi was a mess but it was more than the story concept that contributed to its downfall. Anyone want to contend that the casting of JM as Tico was inspired? The execution has been off for years in addition to the writing in everything from wardrobe, sets and casting.

Jess also raises a good point about Antonio. He was Malone's weakness but every writer has his or her Antonio.

[Sylph]

A review from Malone's beginnings:

February 6, 1992

Review/Television; Megan Truly Has (Sob!) Only One Live to Live

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR

Forget tissues. This tear-jerker cries out for towels, big, absorbent ones. Megan is dying this week on "One Life to Live," and as family and friends gather at her hospital bedside, the occasion is being used to provide a retrospective of the show. "Tell me everything about the old days," Megan weakly whispers. And every weekday from 2 to 3 P.M., the visitors do just that, telling her stories to keep her going, with help from a sprinkling of clips from the 6,000 episodes churned out since the show made its debut on ABC in July 1968.

Triggering this retro splurge was the decision of Jessica Tuck, the actress who plays Megan, to stretch her talents elsewhere, perhaps in prime time. How to get rid of her with maximum impact? Linda Gottlieb, executive producer, and Michael Malone, head writer -- a team who joined the show just in July -- decided to hit her with an immune-deficiency illness, in this instance lupus. The disease is not normally fatal, so kidney complications were added as plot insurance. Mix with the Scheherazade storytelling gimmick, and viewers get what the network hopes will be "an uplifting emotional journey." Welcome to daytime drama.

"One Life to Live" was created by the soap doyenne Agnes Nixon as an alternative to the WASP-dominated stories found on shows like NBC's "Another World," on which Miss Nixon had been head writer. Her new show, set in Llanview, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, reflected an ethnic and social diversity unusual for the genre in the 1960's. Viki, daughter of the local newspaper's publisher, married a working-class Irish-American Catholic named Joe Riley. Other important characters were Polish-American. Black characters were introduced; in 1979 Al Freeman Jr. became the first black actor to win a daytime Emmy for his role as the police captain Ed Hall.

Ratings have been erratic, probably to be expected with a show that could send nuns to do dangerous missionary work in Latin America or conclude one of its Gothic story lines with a masquerade party that lasted a month on the air. There has been a goodly share of casting problems. Early on, when an actor decided to leave, his character was badly burned in a fire. After plastic surgery, the bandages were removed and, voila!, the character was being played by the actor's brother. The ploy proved popular on other shows, not the least on "Dynasty."

Under the team of Gottlieb and Malone, "One Life to Live" has gone from 11th to 4th in the ratings. Ms. Gottlieb's background includes producing feature films ("Dirty Dancing") and television movies. Mr. Malone is a quite favorably reviewed novelist ("Foolscap"), said by one critic to possess an "underlying wicked humor barely masked by the steady hilarity on the surface." As for his connection with "One Life to Live," Mr. Malone, in an interview in The New York Times Book Review, said: "I think Dickens would have done it. I make up characters and there they are in the flesh. I have my own Shakespeare company." A bit of that underlying wicked humor, no doubt.

But back to poor Megan. Things don't look good. "She's septic," Dr. Larry Wolek (Michael Storm) says grimly. "Tell you what," says Viki (Erika Slezak), Megan's mother and, just three weeks ago, her kidney donor, "I'm going to tell you another story." Not content with recalling her own weddings and birthings, Viki, herself the victim of a split personality linked to some nasty pornography scandals, recalls memorable moments from others' lives.

One is the doctor's ("Had more than his share of sadness in life," Viki says), specifically that time he discovered his wife was a prostitute. In a tumultuous court scene, she screamed: "Why don't you punish me? I've been waiting so long to be punished. You want blood? You want me to say that I'm lower than the lowest scum?" The very dramatic, and heavily watched, scene won a 1980 daytime Emmy for Judith Light, who moved on to prime-time fortune with Tony Danza in "Who's the Boss?"

For most of this week, Megan's husband, Jake, has been trapped in a foreign prison with Andrew, a minister out of Yale Divinity School who, not so secretly, is also in love with Megan. Jake is blunt: "You wouldn't happen to have, uh, a thing for my wife?" Andrew, though, is too nice to provoke a scene. Both men will be back in Llanview, of course, in time to say goodbye to Megan tomorrow afternoon as just about everyone on the show gets an opportunity to let the tears flow freely. Although a week early, a Valentine card looms large. And, taking a cue from Heathcliff, Jake carries Megan to the hospital window, enabling her to see the tree they planted on their wedding day. The emotional journey hits pay dirt.

Now, more to the point, where will Ms. Gottlieb and Mr. Malone be taking this oddly durable property? One Life to Live

Created by Agnes Nixon; David Pressman, Peter Miner and Jill Mitwell, directors; Michael Malone, head writer; produced by Charlotte Weil for ABC; Susan Bedsow Horgan and Leslie Kwartin, supervising producers; Linda Gottleib, executive producer. Weekdays at 2 P.M. on ABC. Viki Buchanan . . . Erika Slezak Dr. Larry Wolek . . . Michael Storm Megan Gordon Harrison . . . Jessica Tuck Dorian Lord . . . Elaine Princi Tina Roberts . . . Karen Witter Andrew Carpenter . . . Wortham Krimmer Bo Buchanan . . . Robert S. Woods Cassie Callison . . . Laura Bonarrigo Herb Callison . . . Anthony Call Asa Buchanan . . . Philip Carey Wanda Wolek . . . Marilyn Chris

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DE123DF935A35751C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

[detroitpiston]

I know I'm probably alone on this, but I enjoyed the Dorian return story in 03. Mainly because I was just glad to see Robin back on the show(which I never thought would happen). Everything else was bulll s.hit. And the less I say about the Santi story the better.

[Vee]

Unfortunately, it's a long way from 1992. I just had to recount today for a friend the "Angel Square Hotel assassination follies of 2004." Malone was always interesting, but often unwatchable in his second run. He had good ideas and a few good executions, but looking at it overall it was a disaster. I say that as one of his biggest fans. I don't want him back.

By the way I'm not sure if I've said it, but: Originally, Malone wanted Dorian to come back in 03 having deliberately faked Mitch's death in the 80s. He was going to say Dorian had bargained with Mitch to fake his death so she could score brownie points with Cassie - who Dorian had found Mitch standing over, ready to rape her. RS was so angry about this disgusting retcon she made Malone rewrite it that Dorian had not known Mitch was alive until finding him in Europe. He also wanted Mitch to murder Addie.

[Sylph]

OK, but: how much of it was him? And not interference from 'higher places'?

[Sylph]

Also, what kind of effect did Josh Griffith have on his work?

[detroitpiston]

I do think Frons was dictating a lot of story and making sure his faves got a lot of airtime. I don't really know which stories were more Griffith and which ones were Malone, but when JG left, they all got even worse IMO.