Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DeeVee]

There's also a scene after Long took over between Amanda and Billy. They often talked about her being a savvy businesswoman. In this scene she actually IS one, taking on Billy Lewis and more than holding her own. There's also a sparky vibe between Cullen and Clarke. Amanda was already on the way out at this point, but nice to image the what could have been if they had done an Amanda/Ross/Billy/Vanessa quadrangle.

[P.J.]

I didn't realize until recently that Amanda flipped out because they were hiding Kathleen's pregnancy. 

Maybe Amanda is different under the Dobsons. But I always found the most interesting thing about her to be her mother Lucille.

[cassadine1991]

What was the point of having Amanda NOT be Alan’s daughter?

[P.J.]

As Brandon's daughter, Spaulding was split three ways.

Although honestly, I think originally, Amanda received a hunk of stock in Brandon's will.

[Speed Racer]

All of this talk about Amanda is yet another reason why I'd have Ed and Amanda eventually tie the knot.  It'd be an interesting question:  who has the more lecherous, wandering eye?  Ed or Amanda?  Maybe it's time for Ed to be cheated on.  How would he deal with that, given his wont to do the same?  Lots of story potential in that, lots of interesting writing. (Maybe Blake is the one who ends up giving Ed the sage advice needed).

If anyone needed to rediscover her sexual roots in the mid 1990s, it was Vanessa.  Talk about cloistered!  The new character I would have introduced - in place of Matt - would have tossed Vanessa's bra in the fireplace...with her stoking the flames.

Sometime in 1993, Billy called Vanessa "uppity".  A perfect way to describe her character and behavior at the time.

 

 

 

[DeeVee]

That is correct. She received the bulk of his estate, including his Spaulding stock. Philip got money as well as material stuff like Brandon's stamp collection, but nothing close to what Amanda got. It made her so powerful at Spaulding that Alan had no choice but to work with her. He even talked about her taking over before he knew she was his daughter.

[P.J.]

Ed had been cheated on before. Both Holly and Rita had affairs during their marriages to him. Holly slept with Roger (which is why Ed thought Chrissie was his daughter) and Rita slept with both Alan and another doctor (who I believe was named Greg, and who at some point dated her sister Eve). Rita had just received word that the child she was carrying was Ed's when Roger kidnapped her (after the chase through the hall of mirrors, hauntingly set to Donna Summer's Enough is Enough). She miscarried the child after a fire started in the cabin she was trapped in.

1993 would not have been the first time Billy called Vanessa "uppity" and/or a snob. They have a hilarious fight the night before their second wedding because he is suddenly acting like an ass over Nick's treatment of Mindy while Eve was crazy (and doesn't want Nick invited to the wedding or dating Mindy). Vanessa calls him out for being upset with Nick, but upset that Henry has called him out for his treatment of Vanessa in the past few years since jilting Vanessa at the altar after Reva's "death". 

While Vanessa never lost her uppercrust ways completely, in 1993 I can't think of anyone other than Nadine and Buzz she would've had issues with, and they deserved it and a lot more. 

 

[Paul Raven]

@tonymidnight and all GL and Marland fans.

Doug Marland interview from SOD August 16 1982. This was  was conducted a few months before he left the show. As I was typing I had some thoughts that I'll share later, but for now I hope you enjoy and we can have some discussion.

An interview with Guiding Light head writer Douglas Marland

Will Guiding Light ever beat its #1 competition General Hospital?

 

While lunching recently with Emmy award winning headwriter Doug Marland, it quickly became obvious to me that this is a man totally dedicated to making Guiding Light the best soap on the air today. He is a man very proud of his craft and very well versed in this phenomenon called soap opera.

During the two and a half years he's been writing Guiding Light, Doug has completely overhauled the show adding many fresh new faces and sprucing up old favorites by creating innovative, provocative stories for them.

In the interview that follows Mr Marland takes a look at Guiding Lights past. Present and future. Can a #1 rating be far behind?

 

SOD How did you become a soap opera writer?

 

DM I started out as an actor.I'd been an actor all my life , up until eight years ago. I was on TD and ATWT. I always wrote as a sideline, though. It was a way to ease my frustration when I wasn't working. I guess it was the last two or three years of my acting career that I found myself wanting to spend more and more time writing.

 

SOD What was the first soap you wrote for?

 

DM I worked on AW for a while and then NBC asked me to take over as headwriter for TD. From there I went to GH. It was thrilling to be part of the rebirth of a long forgotten show that even the network thought was a turkey. It was probably the single most exciting experience of my career.

 

SOD Why, Doug after you helped catapult GH to #1 in the ratings ,were you suddenly fired?

 

DM I think I was fired because Gloria Monty (exec producer of GH) and I are two equally strong creative forces and I was just as strong in my convictions as she was in hers. We came to loggerheads. Also,it was very disconcerting to me that the writing was never mentioned as one of the reasons for the success of GH. Once I brought that out into the open, once we reached that point,there was no return.

 

SOD How did you get to your present position as headwriter of GL?

 

DM Well, after GH, I wrote ATWT for a while and then P&G switched me over to GL. When I started watching GL I was fascinated by it. There seemed to be a lot of potential. Of all the shows I've written GL is my favorite. I like the feeling, the chemistry of GL -the family ties and values, the family love. I adore the Bauers. The values the characters hold give me a great jumping off place for things to stem from all kinds of storytelling. The show was very well set up. I inherited the wonderful Alan-Hope romance and had the pleasure of marrying them. And I had the pleasure of killing off Roger Thorpe, who'd been the villian of the piece for eight years. Although I hated to lose the actor who played Roger, it was fun to devise a way to give him a finale equal to his talent.

 

SOD What were the elements of GL that you felt needed to be changed?

 

DM One of the things that bothered me about the show was that there weren't any teenagers. Because I love writing young stories the best, I wanted to bring in some young characters. So that was the birth of Morgan and Kelly, and I changed some of the other young characters like Kate, Hilary and Floyd. And I brought Tim back. It's been wonderfully exciting to see how the audience reacts to these characters who were new two and a half years ago. They're standard characters now.

 

SOD How do you conceive your characters? Are the based on your imagination, from newspapers, or from people you know?

 

DM I think a combination of the three. They're all brought about in different ways. Kelly is a very special character to me. I think we all tend to project something of ourselves into our characters if we're going to create a hero. After I brought Kelly on, Nola came about, That was a lucky day!I wanted a girl who would be from the other side of the tracks. That was the other problem with GL-everybody had achieved. Everybody lived in a nice house and nobody worried about money,I thought “We have the haves, where are the have nots? I remember we were testing for Morgan and suddenly on this tape of Morgan's came this red haired, big brown eyed girl with a throaty voice who had a sound different from everybody else. I sat there fascinated. This girl was no more like the Morgan I envisioned than the man on the moon, but I couldn't take my eyes off her.. I had to get her under contract before anybody else did, because she was wonderful. Since I wanted to bring on a have not family, I put Nola in the boarding house as the daughter of Bea Reardon. So that's how Nola was born. Everything else has come from what Lisa Brown has brought to the role.

 

SOD Do you discuss with the actors the direction you want their characters to take?

 

DM Yes I do, especially with the young actors. What I really do with most of the characters is watch, and the first time I see it's terrific, I call the actor or actress and say, “That's dynamite. You've got it, now just stay with it”.

 

SOD Do you listen to the actors when they suggest storylines and /or changes in the direction of their characters?

 

DM Oh yes,I always listen. But I don't think actors are the best judges of where their storyline should go, because it's all tied into them personally. I always listen if an actor doesn't understand why a character does something or where he's coming from. I'm a firm believer in open communication. The better the communication, the better the show. The old myth about a headwriter being some strange, mysterious person who sends his material and says hello to the cast at the Xmas party is awful. I'm trying to destroy that myth. I go to the studio and socialize with the actors, talk to them. You write better for the actors when you get to know them as people. Sometimes when you get to know them, you find another side of their personality that you never find onscreen.

 

SOD Do you have any favorite characters?

 

DM I'd love to say that I don't, but I do. Kelly is one of my favorite characters. I love what he stands for as a human being. I love the fact that he can be wrong. I love the fact that he can be crazy jealous, which is an insecurity. Kelly can cry and still be a man, and I think that's today's man. Hilary is a woman you can see doing anything side by side with a man. She holds her own. Her brain works. She's very much representative of today's woman, who's out in the world doing things and has a life of her own. Yet they still want a home and a family just like the woman who stays home all day. I love the character of Morgan, because she's layered and complex. Nola is one of my favorite characters of all time. Floyd knocks me out. He's dear, gentle,talented. Carrie is an incredible character. I love them all, but I'm partial to the characters I created, because they're mine.

 

SOD What do you think makes an actor stand out from the rest?

 

DM I think it's a combination of the storyline and the actor playing the role. You have to have a multi faceted character with a lot of things boiling inside and then cast an actor who can pull on various sides of that character. You have to fascinate the audience so they never know what to expect-What is – going to do tomorrow?

 

SOD Where do you get your storylines from?

 

DM If you keep your characters alive and consistent, they tend to create their own stories. I guide them, but they do make their own plots. I don't believe in telling a plot – no matter how good it is- if it isn't right for the characters. You have to keep your characters, more or less consistent. If they're going to change, you must build up to that. You can't change them overnight. The audience has to understand the character's motivations. I'm interested in telling stories that work for my people.

 

SOD Do you prefer writing for the lighter characters, like Floyd, or more serious ones, like Kelly?

 

DM I enjoy them both. A writer needs relief from the heavy drama as much as the audience does. It's a wonderful release to switch from a tense, dramatic moment to a lighter one. If there's too much intense drama all the time, the show becomes top heavy.

 

SOD What are you most proud of accomplishing on Guiding Light?

 

DM I guess I am proudest of the young people I have brought on that have been accepted by the audience. They've become an important part of GL, and if I took them out now, the audience would scream. If I'd taken them out a year ago, the audience would have said 'Thank God you got rid of all those kids running around.'

 

SOD Many viewers complain that the soaps have become too youth centered. What are your feelings about that?

 

DM I don't think youth has been overdone but I'm willing to say I might be wrong. The interesting thing is that the kids I brought in two and a half years ago as teenagers are now young adults. In another eight or ten years they will be where Ed and Mike and other older characters are now. If I could reply to all the people who complained about the teenagers I brought on, I would have said, “Now wait a minute. When you started watching Guiding Light, how old were you? How old was Ed Bauer? How old was Mike? They were the same age as the people you are now complaining about.

I really want to sat to those people, “Give the new characters a chance. Give the people who are watching the show for the first time the same chance to identify with the young people the way you identified with the young people when you started watching the show.” I like writing the young characters because I think the audience can forgive them of almost anything. It's much easier to forgive a 22 yr old than a 32 yr old., because you feel that by that age you should know better. There's a vulnerability in youth that is appealing and exciting.

 

SOD Another complaint we hear frequently is that there are too many divorces on soaps. Why is that?

 

DM I think that its because you only have a limited number of characters, What you are doing is taking the population of a town and trying to represent with 30 people what goes on in today's society. The divorce statistics are incredibly high and you do need to keep freeing characters for new romantic entanglements. I don't think the divorce rates on soaps are out of sync with society today.

 

SOD Do you think you've made any mistakes with 'Guiding Light'?

 

DM Perhaps that I didn't fight harder with the network's decision to drop some of the older characters. If that decision hadn't been handed down to me, I would have worked harder to find them something to do.

 

SOD How did you feel when Guiding Light won the Emmy for best writing last year?

 

DM I was shocked because I though General Hospital would win. They were a solid #1 and the most publicized soap in the history of daytime television. I had no clue we would win. I just expected to go to the Emmy awards and have a wonderful time. I also felt vindicated because when you have been fired from your job and then win an Emmy...it was a wonderful vote of confidence from my peers.

 

SOD Do you have plans to bring any minorities onto Guiding Light?

 

DM Yes I do, in fact. I created the first black characters on GH. I'm going to bring a minority family onto Guiding Light some time soon. I'm working on a storyline now.

 

SOD Do you always become involved in the casting, or do you usually leave that up to the casting director or the producer?

 

DM I'm very involved in casting. It's important because the writer is the only one who really knows the characters and where he wants them to go. I've approved every new character who has come onto the show, even if other people didn't want him in the role. They never fight me on it. Having been an actor myself, I have an instinct for actors and what they can and cannot do,

 

SOD What about the current trend towards celebrity guests on the soaps?

 

DM I have mixed feelings about it. As far as Elizabeth Taylor is concerned, I think that to bring her on as anybody but Elizabeth Taylor is wrong. (Miss Taylor had appeared as Helena Cassadine on GH) People believe soap actors are real not actors. Suddenly there's Elizabeth Taylor on the show playing someone else. I really think it explodes the 5 day a week reality and the believability of the show.

I don't think there's anything wrong with bringing her on as Elizabeth Taylor if there's a place where she would logically fit in. We're going to be bringing a lot of name people to Wired for Sound on GL. We'll have singers coming on as themselves to sing their hits. That's a realistic situation to bring these people into, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

SOD What is your hope for Guiding Light's future?

 

DM To beat General Hospital in the ratings! That would be wonderful. Seriously, I just want Guiding Light to be a good, healthy show that everyone is proud of. I want it to be a show that everybody enjoys and really cares about.

[P.J.]

I guess I'm surprised he sees himself so much in the character of Kelly. I probably shouldn't be surprised he has such a fondness for the Morgan/Kelly/Nola story, but in my head, it's Doug's fondness for Nola that sticks. I just never think of Kelly or Morgan as layered or complex.

[Mitch64]

Agreed on Poser..she was unlike anything on GL, or really soaps at that time..( I can't even imagine her in white bread Oakdale.) I thought she could do it all, comedy, camp, vamp, bitchiness, and could show the real person hiding under all that. She disappeared under Rauch as she was, not Reva or Cassie, not blond, not "generically soap attractive" Annie had the villainess thing all tied up (endlessly, I was glad to see her go, thinking that Reva's airtime would diminish..ha!!!) The writing under McTavish was just her being her, mean spirited jokes (I remember Alex complaining that all the drains in her house were clogged because of Amanda, which WAS kind of funny.)

Your point about all the men not noticing her..and that was another problem with McTavish writing..maybe all soap writing at the time, everyone was a cardboard good or bad, so Ross couldn't seriously be tempted by Amanda, Matt had to be totally in LURVE with Vanessa ( I remember him blackmailing her to stay away from Ross, uh, Matt, its not of your business, Ross is in charge of his d*ck not you) and Roj was just using her.

The point about her being Brandon's daughter was Rauch's idea to consolidate Alex and Amanda..it made no sense and it was weird to hear Alan bitching about "his sister" like he did with Alex, it did not work. There was a bit of history, as Lucille thought she was Brandon's daugthter (and he left her Spaulding in his will for some reason.)

They could have written for her after Zaz..with RR being SO ineffectual as Alan, they could have had him busy holding Annie's purse as he did, while Phillip and Amanda run Spaulding, both trying to up each other. I have no idea why they just saddled Phillip with a triangle story, did anyone ever to to work at Spaulding to run it?

 

[Efulton]

Were Barbara Norris, Adam Thorpe and Stephen Jackson the older characters written out under Marland? Were there others?

Edited Friday at 02:55 PM by Efulton

[P.J.]

It's unclear to me whether Marland meant "older" as in advanced in years, or simply characters that predated his tenure. Jackie Marler got killed off under Marland, when I'd assume Marland's instinct would've been to recast to play out the reveal of Phillip's parentage. Sara McIntyre's role certainly dwindled under Marland, where she's basically just a talk to to the sexually frustrated women of Springfield. Evie and Katie kind of fade into the background.  Elizabeth Spaulding, Lainie Marler, Ben McFarren also leave town.

Other than Barbara and Adam (and you could argue that Holly and Roger's exits make them expendable) and Stephen, I can't think of another "aged" actor that got let go. I'm not sure how big a presence Viola Stapleton ever was in town.

[Efulton]

Thank you

[Mitch64]

I think Marland  had a fondness for the actor more then the charcacter, who was as bland and sexless as possible...(which is weird considering they had him in Speedos, even having coffee with Bert.."Dear, it is a bit early to be confronted with your package when I havent had my first cup."

[Contessa Donatella]

I love seeing this interview posted. Very much nostalgic, for me. I remember reading this in its original foray into fan minds. 

I am bold to say that there is a legacy, of writing, to be observed: Irna taught Pete. Pete taught Marland. Marland taught Mulcahey. Unless someone knows of anyone who Patrick might have taken as a protege, then, the line stops here. Why do I persist in calling Harding Lemay, Pete Lemay? Because I read that he hated "Harding". He found it necessary for official & legal documents & also his entire family of origin all called him "Harding" which he hated. He actually liked "Pete" & so that's what I call him. 

Possibly scandalous but I think he had a crush on the actor. I'm NOT suggesting that he was going to do anything about that, other than be buddies. However, much more important to us is his statement that Lisa Brown was his muse & so Nola & Iva, it is definitely a thing.