Higley Quit DAYS?

[Toups]

Very very interesting. Now if Nelson spilled the beans on who the actress/actor who's in cahoots with Ed, then it would've been way uglier. I wonder why he didn't do it.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Don't worry, he says he has more to come tomorrow.

[Bright Eyes]

I'm thinking this would be a great time for DAYS to do a major event onscreen where it seems everyone is dead, a la the coronation massacre, since with this news no one knows what the eff is going to happen.

[Ives]

Maybe that is what he is saving for tomorrow. Although his article seems to make it clear it is an actress rather than an actor . . .

[rhinohide]

STEP RIGHT UP!

[Toups]

No thanks.

Nelson can have all the 'glory' here.

[Ives]

So any comment on the use of actor v. actress?

[Tishy]

On a serious note, he better have some damn good evidence if he is going to release a name. That could potentially damage relationships or lead to someone getting fired. If a name is going to be revealed there better be stuff to back it up

And on a lighter note: Thank you for the pleasure of hijacking this thread. Every once in a while it does need to be done...

[Toups]

LOL Nope.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I have not watched DOOL regularly in a long time, and have no strong feelings one way or the other about how I want any of this to play out as far as any of the individual parties involved, but I find this whole situation fascinating. I'm a little confused as to the logistics of all of this...

I know that technically non-WGA members cannot legally write for soaps, but I wasn't aware that the union was in the business of hunting down non-union members who are involving themselves in the creative process when WGA members are employed and being paid at the union-negotiated rate at every level of the writing staff? I would have thought the issue during the strike was that scabs undermined the WGA's bargaining power and that is why the question of who was writing what became important, but when I start to think of every reported involvement of non-writers in writing tasks in recent history, it boggles the mind...

• Why wasn't the Guild involved a decade ago when Jill Farren Phelps, a producer, was reportedly head-writing OLTL for nearly a year? There was nobody officially in the head writing position for most of that time if memory serves (unlike Dena Higley, who it sounds like has still been getting paid her salary). And two WGA members had been dismissed from the head writer position at OLTL in the year leading up to that (one of whom, Claire Labine, was a former WGA East president) after reported conflicts with JFP over story direction.
• Didn't Tom Casciello say in print that one of the DOOL actresses (Kristian Alfonso?) was actively involved in writing the script for the funeral last year? Why isn't that a union violation?
• On a lighter note, what about the alleged clause Susan Lucci had in her contract that AMC would never make Erica a grandmother, and the fact that she was never called Grandma for so long after Miranda finally was born? (I haven't watched AMC in years...has it happened?) Why hasn't the Guild been investigating whether or not Lucci ever crossed an ethical boundary by crossing out the word "Grandma" in a script?
• More generally, why hasn't the Guild gotten involved in the past fifteen years as the locust of control has been taken more and more out of the hands of (union) writers and placed into the hands of network executives? The practice of story-telling by committee, which has been alluded to and in some cases spoken about candidly by a variety of writers, has surely compromised the status of professional writers in daytime TV as a whole moreso than this specific incident involving one (or two) shows. I've read the soap lore about the infamous Search for Tomorrow actor who was supposedly acting as head writer and ridiculously propping up his own character during the 1981 writers strike, but I don't remember ever reading anything about the legal ramifications for that. I think that is in part because he was the laughing stock of the industry and his work was shown to be amateurish and unprofessional in comparison to the union writers' work that began airing across the board as soon as the strike ended, and nothing the WGA could do to him could compare to that. Now, writers seem to be largely figureheads (at best - and surely at least some of today's writers are not nearly as talented as some of the cream of the crop who walked out in the 1981 strike who are no longer with us/working today) and the difference between Higley's product and what Ed Scott and these cast member(s) may have produced is not so self-evident.

My guess is that the WGA has chosen its battles, knowing it did not have the resources to fight all three networks on the micromanagement at large, and has concerned itself more with protecting the financial interests of guild writers even as their creative roles may be getting jerked around by higher-ups. So why are they intervening in this particular case? If it's simply a matter of Scott and the cast members in questions physically rewriting scripts and outlines by hand, is that really such a central issue here?

I'd personally rather continue to collect a paycheck and write what I want, and if someone else writes something else that makes it on the air instead of my product so be it, which appears to be Higley's deal, than have a boardroom full of executives rip to shreds something I'd spent a lot of time and effort writing and then have to personally be the one to rewrite the final product to their specifications, however ludicrous they may be, which I understand is how the process usually works. I'm not defending Scott or anyone else, but DOOL has a paid writing team (more than one, apparently - isn't James Reilly still getting paid his salary from two years ago?) and will no doubt continue to have one, so I highly doubt their internal mismanagement is going to trigger an industry trend.

I have to wonder, is Higley (whose alleged practices during the strike, if proven to be true, would certainly call into question her respect for the spirit of the WGA) the one initiating this grievance with the Guild? If so, do they actually want to take on this battle more than they have previous ones, or is she just forcing the issue more than countless other soap writers who have surely experienced their share of creative interference from non-union parties? This hardly seems like the best use of the WGA's time and resources, given the unlikelihood of this incident setting some kind of precedent, especially if it is all to protect a possible scab.

[Toups]

No. Kristian only helped Tom with Hope's eulogy - it was a collaboration to get the right tone and content. KA didn't write anything, I believe they just spoke to each other.

[Toups]

LMAO!!!! Most hilarious post in this thread so far. Good one jcar.

[Soapsuds]

Toupsy, are you going to post on the writers thread now.......New Head Writer: Unknown Days cast member.

[Tishy]

I love it...Who knows, the way things have been happening it could be a Brady Pub waitress that is the new headwriter

[Khan]

^^^ :lol:

Thank you, Tishy and Soapsuds! Those jokes made my evening!