AMC Francesca James

[EricMontreal22]

After Monday's episode, where I thought the highlight was how well it was directed, and noticing it was Francesca James who directed it, I was thinking...

I know I wasn't too keen when she ran the show as EP after FMBehr (hard to top Behr) but I'd love to have her back as EP now--she has a history and character knowledge of the show lacking with much of the staff

In the 1997 book Worlds WIthout End that accompanied the Museum of TV and Radio's soap exhibit she had this to say on Pine Valley (she was EP at the time, and Broderick was HW)

"Pine Valley is the Peyton Place of the 90s, and if I have my way, of the 2000's too. It's that small town just a train ride away from Philadelphia, Center CIty, and New York City, that has never truly changed, even with big businesses booming up there. We have no interest in really going urban or going bizarre, because that doesn't serve the character and purpose of this particular show.

The show has always been invested in realistic storytelling and characters, never manipulating character for story. I try to run it thinking it's like the great movies of the forties. That, to me is what daytime really is about. It's replaced all the Susan Heyward or Bette Davis movies that simply don't get made anymore.

I try to listen to fans but not let fanbases sway me. What I hear is basically what fans of our show have always wanted--they're looking for family, friendship, romance and suspense, and basically in that order. What is that? it's a great forties, or fities Douglas Sirk style movie!"

When I read that--and i know EPs can talk the talk and not walk the walk, but still--I instantly wished she was still at AMC and not just as a director.

[DaytimeFan]

Over JHC? In a heartbeat. I for one really enjoyed Francesca James' run as EP.

[AMCGio83]

I liked her work. Amc's problems during that time were due to the writing. First Lorraine Broderick wrote that unpopular Erica kidnapps Sonia story and then McTavish took over and well, there were poisoned tats. In 96 I remember AMC being pretty entertaining.

[EricMontreal22]

Right that storyline seems like gold now, but I remember how unpopular it was online.

I still don't get why Behr was outed--I guess falling ratings, but funny after she replaced McTavish with Broderick she was fired pretty quickly. What year was James out for Burke?

[quartermainefan]

Douglas Sirk, that's exactly what AMC is supposed to be. It really lost its way in the 1990s and now PV is basically Soho, NYC or South Beach, Miami. It really needs to get back the small town vibe where drama is boiling inside stately houses and quaint small town shops. PV has no business hosting a cosmetics company or a nightclub.

[EricMontreal22]

Well Douglas Sirk with a bit more humour (i LOVE Sirk and he does have a subversive humour but not quite the Pheobe and Langley type). I totally agree--i was kinda shocked when I read that how much I agreed with her (it echoed somethign Robin Strasser said recently though about OLTL, that she saw daytime drama as ideally the last place to tell the kinds of stories and characters that old movies used to and no longer do).

I'm ok with a nigthclub within reason (Nick and then Erica had disco's very early on afterall) but it shouldn't try to be a big city one. there's a diff.

[quartermainefan]

This was such a good movie in a bad sort of way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dq9hyH6-qk

embedding doesn't seem to work for me.

[EricMontreal22]

Hold on--I ADORE Written on the Wind. It's my fave of his. LOL (I wrote a film class paper on Sirk's films--mainly his four most famous women's pictures, Magnificent Obssession, ALl That Heaven Allows (which was the inspiration for the great Far From Heaven), Imitiation of Life and Written on the Wind). It was a MASSIVE massive influence on Dallas obviously. Yeah it's over the top, but I actually buy tis melodramatic emotions becuas eit's so skillfully made. I admit it's the kinda movie you could either watch and laugh at everything--I guess it says something about me that I don't. lol I love when Dorothy malone dances to that jazz as her father dies. And then she goes down and symbolically clutches that giant phallic oil rigg paper weight later on! LOL

Sorry I'm in absolute love with that movie. Maybe I'll watch my DVD tonite. LOL I do wish soaps were more like this in general. However I suspect James meant more lower key Sirk like All that Heaven Allows--which deals a lot with prejudices and class issues (as well as ageism) in a small town and is a bit less over the top. It's the type of story I wouldn't even be that mad if a soap ripped off it or one of the other stories from his films (well maybe not Magnificent Obsession, base don a faith based novel even Sirk didn't like with a particularly ludicrous soapy plot--Rock Hudson being an egotistical doctor who accidentally blinds Jane Wydman and then vows to bring back her sight while falling in love with her... Actually i think soaps have ripped off that plot )

[quartermainefan]

Don't get me wrong, I love the movie and wish all soaps were that overwrought with over the top goodness backed by an orchestra adding oomph. I also like Vincent Minelli's Home From The Hill, which if I had to be money I will say is the true inspiration for Dallas. There is just too many similarities btw Dallas and that film for it to be a coincidence.

[EricMontreal22]

I admit I don't knwo that movie--my Dallas connection si from the bonus material on the Criterion DVD and the info in the intro when TCM shows it. I only know Minelli's musicals but i've alwasy intended to see some of his melodramas (I have seen the tepid adaptation he did of Tea and Sympathy a story I know some soaps did rip off)--I've always heard they're utterly over the top