Thom Racina

[Sylph]

Puhleez! Ice Princess, anyone?

[Sylph]

Nope.

[Cat]

I got it from this very thread:

[Sylph]

He didn't say she was dreadful, just to clarify, he said nice things, but somehow only about her as an SW, and there was this air of him faking the praise...

[MTSRocks]

Nobody's perfect, but he's doing a good job. Some people want old school Y&R dialogue, others want new, edgy, modern. Eric Braeden did an excellent job delivering that piece of dialogue, albeit a less than stellar flow in the writing.

[Toups]

I don't see where Thom said anything bad about Michele.

At 74:57 of the interview:

Ryan: What was it like working with Michele Val Jean at Generations and Santa Barbara?

Thom: Oh I love Michele! Oh God.......yeah, we had a ball. I remember when Sally and I hired her and she said, “I want this job so bad,” she said, “I’ll prove to you I’m good,” and I said, “Okay, stop the whining.” She was just so desiring. Every inch of her being wanted to work on that show and being African American was wonderful for us because she offered us a lot about that world, that we didn’t, you know, that two white people didn’t know a hell a lot about....and she was great fun.....who went on to a fabulous career.

Ryan: Michele is one of the beloved script writers that fans love over at General Hospital and I think her best, her well known scene is a monologue that she wrote for Tony Geary, where they revisited Luke’s rape of Laura. Luke had to tell Lucky the truth about what happened and it was a 9 minute monologue.

Thom: Oh my God.....wow.

Ryan: And it was phenomenal......phenomenal......Michelle occasionally mentions it in the magazines....but that when....you know.....that’s when a lot of fans say that’s her definitive moment, that was her big moment and I would love to see maybe if she would...but then again you know that some people like yourself don’t want to be Head Writer....too much work....too much nonsense.

Jen: Well she was Head Writer many years ago......at GH, wasn’t she.....so she’s been in those shoes.

Thom: She’s a script writer. Her specialty is putting the words down to the actors. She is first and foremost a script writer. You’re right.

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At 59:03

Shawn: Can you talk a bit about the Dobsons?

Thom: Oh the Dobsons....oh boy...[laughs]...there’s a pair. [laughs] I don’t know....I just gotta tell you, they just seemed a little nuts. They came over to my house a couple of times and we had these little lunch kind of get togethers and never really discussed the show much which we were suppose to be doing. I remember going over to their place......I had a big wonderful house.....but, my God, they had a palace in Beverly Hills and the waiters and the butlers.....It was just like old time Hollywood, I guess. But there were times they were screaming at each other and throwing things at each other behind closed doors. It was quite a time, I gotta tell you. [laughs]

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[Sweetness]

Well, I have to disagree. His tenure on Days with Sheri Anderson is my favorite era on any soap, EVER.

[DrewH]

I think he's doing a great job with the script. The scenes are coming off much more logical than they have since LML's team took over the writing duties. The scenes flowed from scene to scene.

However, I think he needs to refresh himself on the character history of the characters on Y&R. For him to have Victor say that Sabrina was the love of his life was just wrong. That's not true. Their little couple month marriage cannot even stand up next to Victor's time with Nikki, Ashley or Hope.

[SOAPSFOREVER]

I have to say: this was one of the WORST speeches by Victor in many years. I don't believe for a second that Victor would say such a vile thing to Nikki, even in pain. Like another poster said, the guy needs to study Y&R's history. He may work out, but his scripts in no way remind me of the good old days of Y&R.

[Sylph]

I can do away with the "good old days of Y&R" dialogue, thank you very much. However, that was the most cliched, awful speech ever.

[Sylph]

This is what's wrong, this is where I see a lot of problems:

I'm a HW, I can be an SW, but she's only good as SW. That's what's horrifying. As I said, only my method of reading into this.

[rangethatrover]

I can't stop laughing at your comment.

I really liked Y&R's soapy, slightly stilted dialogue from the 70's and 80's/early 90's!!

I think it worked because Bill Bell was an EXCELLENT PLOTTER- I loved Y&R's plots.

The old fashioned dialogue always made all of the characters sound intelligent-- highly intelligent, if not particularly realistic.

The dialogue worked with the production values- the lush background music (now gone), the dark lighting (kind of gone) the beautiful camerawork.

I always found Y&R like watching an old movie from the 40's or 50's.

The dialogue WAS truly awful during "social issue" storylines. The character would alwyas have non stop educational speeches that sounded completely unnatural. I.E. The Jessica AIDS storyline from 1989 or 1990.

[Sylph]

And all that you say make sense and you're not the only fan of that dialogue. But, frankly, Y&R is not a German expressionist drama and all of its characters shouldn't speak in "high-learnedness mode". Basic rule: you have to diversify your characters in as many ways as possible. And this includes speech.

And yes, he was an excellent plotter.

[rangethatrover]

That was PERFECTLY put. The characters always spoke in high-learnedness mode!

But i LOVED it. For some odd reason.

When I was a teenager I was a huge OLTL fan in the mid-late eighties. It struck me even then how OLTL's characters sounded so much more contemporary than those on my other show Y&R.