Members Y&RWorldTurner Posted July 23, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 I believe bellcurve is referring to Karen Harris's stint as HW of PC. I know he really loves her and her stint as PC's HW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Oh, right on. I'm actually in total agreement. I think she'd probably have a clunker here and there (who wouldn't), but I would hand Karen Harris the keys to any kingdom in a heartbeat. She certainly wouldn't be any worse, that much I know. And I have a lot more faith in her than I have in most these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cara mia Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 I got shot down once here for mentioning Dan Brown, but I really think a novelist is what soaps needs to survive. You need a "Dickensian" mind. MAB, Hogan and the rest all have a taste for camp, gore, and the bizarre. I'll be kind and compared them to a writer I love, Edgar Allan Poe. That said, I would NEVER EVER want Poe to write a soap opera. Poem? Sure. Twisted Short Story? Great. Novel? Um, no. Soap Opera? Never ever never. If your favorite movie is Psycho and you're name checking Gilda, then writing a soap is not for you! You want writers who worship Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Thackery, Margaret Mitchell, James Clavill, James Jones, Diana Gabaldon, Judith Krantz, and especially Homer and Virgil. Writers that write EPICS. You need writers who don't think sweeps to sweeps or month to month but who think in terms of years. You can even model yourself after a darker writer like George RR Martin, just make sure that your stories are still character driven and being set up to play out over years. That's what makes a soap special. TIME. Why not use your greatest resource? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 While I agree with you in a perfect world, cara mia, there's no way a writer who thinks in terms of "years" would survive in today's daytime landscape. Ever. They have to think in terms of 13-week cycles because their employers are so fickle, and change their minds every few months based on crap like focus groups and fanbase campaigns. They do not understand creativity, or the build to a story, or romantic longing. They see their fans saying "We want them together!" and BAM - they get thrown together immediately with no story in between. What you're looking for is exactly what daytime should be, but it will never be again, because the suits don't think of soaps as a great, sweeping novel. They think in terms of how to raise the demo by the next Sweeps period. Period. It sucks, but it's the reality of the daytime world right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bellcurve Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Her clunkers, IMO, weren't really "clunkers." It was dropping one plot point(Rachel plotting to be Chief of Staff at GH and her mystery conversations with this guy that would buy GH once the hospital crumbled from the Strike) or not following through with Karen's recovery from her drug relapse(we never saw her in rehab...she disappeared after her arc and came back). And alot of that may have to do with network interference or the switch between head co-Head Writers. Karen Harris' PC attempted to make the staff and the set of characters at GH as real as possible, while keeping them interesting. It was great seeing characters WORK for a change instead of their work being a mere afterthought. I also liked the idea of having a patient during every story arc or referring back to past patients. And for me, that method of storytelling worked, especially considering I had grown out of the NBC Lineup and their storytelling(the cancellation of Sunset Beach was the final straw for me). You have no idea how absolutely PISSED I still get when I think of Felicia Minei Behr's interview with Michael Logan, saying that PC leaned on GH too much. It was a struggling soap set in the exact same town as it's parent show. And I think when Harris came on board, she DID attempt to capitalize on GH's popularity to woo PC viewers, but there was never this "leaning on" sh!t the way there was under the Cullingtons and especially Lethal(ugh, who could forget the "Who is the dead blond guy hanging from the rafters on GH? Tune into PC Monday to find out." or Kevin and Lucy's double wedding with Felicia and Mac?). Yes, Alan crossed over frequently, but he was the Chief of Staff at the damn hospital! And it's not like GH was really using his ass anyway. And YES, Lucy visited the Q's to flirt and beg for their vote and support for getting elected to the GH Board of Directors, but GH needed a little Lucy every once in awhile. And Sonny and Alexis crossed over too, but it wasn't like you had to watch one show to watch the other, the way it was when Lethal did her crossover stunts. Any soap would be very lucky to have Karen Harris as a Head Writer if she was as good as she was at PC. Do I think she'd be a great fit for Y&R? Well, I don't know. But I'd love to see her push humanity and friendship on any of the remaining seven soaps, something I feel all of daytime lacks at the moment. ANYWAY... I make the point to illustrate that a show doesn't have to go at a Bill Bell/Jimmy Reilly pace to hit the story beats if it chooses not to. But it definitely shouldn't be this accelerated, random, James Lipton way of telling a story either(most of today's daytime synopses reads like the final months of Capitol). I think a middle of the road approach is great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bellcurve Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 FYI, there are lots of head-writers/writers who I am impressed with or used to be impressed with. And some of the ones I used to be impressed with I believe still have potential. I bitch about the soaps, but there are still fragments of this industry I enjoy and appreciate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to write all that up - I'm a Karen fan, myself. It's nice to hear somebody else analyze what she did at PC, and the strengths she brings to a show. I still firmly believe her GH scripts are by far the finest, especially considering what she's given to work with from above. I always love hearing perspectives like this. Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Y&RWorldTurner Posted July 23, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 You mean the finest on that all star script writing team? Guza might suck or he might have run out of steam lot time ago, but that scriptwriting team sells his sh!it in a way no other scriptwriting team in daytime does. Sometimes it's as if the SW's know what horrible crap they're given to make seem real and human and they use what they have to do as the voice of reason or the voice of the general audience who might hate what's going on. I don't think I can find that on many other soaps. GH has a stellar team, the best in daytime, its HW though? Not so much... That said, I think Karen is a good SW, but my favourite on that team is Michele Val Jean. Sometimes I can know what episodes she's written without watching the credits. No one can handle things as diverse as emotional family drama and bitchy catfights like Val Jean. I think it's a shame JFP/Shapiro never gave her room to shine when she was briefly HW of GH in Wendy Riche's last few months/JFP's first few months. She was also behind Liz's rape story and the decision to bring Luke's rape of Laura back to the forefront. I'd take this woman at any soap, there so much heart and uniqueness of individual "voice" of characters in her scripts. I'd even go as far as to say Val Jean is the female equivalent to Patrick Mulcahey (pre-B&B of course). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bellcurve Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Which begs the question, Bloom could have pushed any of her GH/ABC writer friends onto Y&R when she had the chance(Patrick, ValJean, Harris, Mary Sue...). Why Lynn Marie Hackface and her friends, of all people? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Oh, I'm sure there was some favor owed or some crap like that. You never know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Exactly. Well, I think ATWT had a fantastic script team for a while there. Not so much now, but ATWT is the only other one that came close for a brief period. Dansby/Donato/Tate/Salmons/Simons were pretty tight when they were at their best. Well, duh. Of course. That goes without saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Y&RWorldTurner Posted July 23, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 You know, it's always the worst writers that get passed around... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Y&RWorldTurner Posted July 23, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 I think he could be the Patty we know and love at any other soap, just not at B&B. I mean, B&B is one of those shows where if you join, you start writing in the "B&B way." I think every writer, like the ex-Y&R-ers, that went there came out with a vastly different way of writing that was in-tune with what B&B typically goes for. That said, I think Patrick should be shipped from B&B to Y&R. I know he's a storyteller and he had a rough time as Co-HW at GL with PGP and JFP after Curlee left and there was another HW-ing team where he vowed never to try his hand at that again. But, the stuff Nancy Curlee said he was a huge part of during her HW-ing run at GL makes me positive this guy knows good story and I do not find it strange that he was brilliant at many other shows, just not at B&B, where no one is truly brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Sylph Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 BANG! BANG! Dan Brown is - awwwful. You shot me for saying he is the worst prose stylist that ever walked the Earth and wondered WTF does style have to do with writing for a soap?! Let me tell ya: a lot. Dan Brown is a bad researcher, terrible at structure, shallow and superficial writer who can only provide banal, cheap "adrenaline" for his readers. He & Latham are two sides of the same coin. Yup. Something I've been saying ever since I joined this board. I think... Or perhaps I'm becoming senile... I even started a thread: Are playwrights or novelists better HW material? Or perhaps that was somewhere in the TDAWT... Dan Brown is a Dickensian? Where is brimike? Yup. Total word. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brimike Posted July 23, 2009 Members Share Posted July 23, 2009 Holy crap, it must be a full moon again! Because I'm agreeing with everything Sylph writes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.