Wisner Washam interview

[DeliaIrisFan]

I always get confused by the timeline of AMC's powers that be at that time in history...wasn't Margaret DePriest head writer at some point in the early '90s, prior to McTavish taking over? Then, that Erica wedding episode that SoapNet aired years ago had Nixon billed as head writer, if memory serves. I'm assuming she stepped in temporarily - perhaps while Broderick and Washam were being rehired? Was there a noticeable shift in the writing at the time, or was it just a blip on the radar screen because McTavish must have taken over not long after that? Then, to add to the confusion, I could swear that when A Daytime to Remember aired the Will murder episode, the head writer listed in the credits was a name that I recognized and which surprised me - I want to say one of the Cullitons? (I was in high school at the time and just discovering online soap boards, so the list of writer names that I would have recognized was short.) I know that the Will whodunit was essentially McTavish's audition and by the time the killer was revealed and the ratings went up, she had been promoted to head writer. But were Washam and Broderick driven away because of McTavish and the looming inevitability that she would curry enough favor with ABC to take over, only for ABC to go to the trouble of hiring another veteran head writer in the mean time?

In any case, as someone who has never been a primary AMC viewer but has followed the show and seen a lot of clips via retrospectives and YouTube, I do think the fact that such a motley crew of head writers came and went in the course of only a few years and the show maintained even a modicum of consistency in tone is part of where the rumors of Agnes Nixon "ghost writing" come from. It seems clear that Broderick and Washam were her proteges and the most talented of the bunch, but apparently she did manage to rein in all of those writers, to some extent, at least for a while.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I recall Susan on Phil Donahue extolling the story, saying something to the effect that this is the genius of Agnes Nixon, to reach into the past to come up with stories. Was Agnes dictating story to McT at this point, or did McT come up with the storyline? I guess that's a whole different issue. This was probably a few months after the story began in 92 or 93. Maybe you're right. As the story went on and her relationship with SMG grew more and more strained, quite possibly this colored her view of the whole thing. Personally, and I've mentioned this before, but I thought it was a huge mistake to go in that direction. Whoever wrote it, Agnes or Megan, it just didn't ring true. It took the Erica character in a much more melodramatic direction than she'd ever been, with a teenage rape faciliated by her father, a resulting baby, the stabbing of Dimitri, etc. Yes, she'd been in melodramatic situations before, but they were always tinged with comedy. Also, Susan's strength is light comedy/light drama--not high drama--and I don't think the material played to her strengths. I understand that they wanted to grow the character, and maybe Susan wanted to be challenged, but I don't think that was the way to go. And don't get me started on that whole legacy of rape crap later on that sprung from all of that.

[Khan]

Maggie DePriest came aboard (as HW) when Felicia Minei Behr, fresh from the just-cancelled RYAN'S HOPE, assumed the reins of the show from Steve Schenkel in '89. Before then, Lorraine Broderick and Victor Miller were HW's, but remained on staff w/ DePriest as AHW's. IIRC, too, DePriest was there for Tad and Dixie's first engagement (when he proposed in the chicken suit - don't ask) and wedding. Unfortunately, ratings fell under DePriest's watch, so Agnes Nixon agreed to return full-time as HW. Nixon then coaxed Washam into returning; and he wrote outlines for her, along w/ Broderick and Megan McTavish.

As has been said many times on this board, DePriest and Behr reduced the number of storylines running concurrently on the show. The belief was that there was just too much story going on; as a result, the writers' work was suffering as a whole. However, under DePriest, there were some serious storyline mishaps, such as Erica's father, Eric Kane, turning out to be alive and a circus clown. When Nixon returned, however, the show seemed to get back on a somewhat even keel. They got "back to basics," so to speak, though many longtime favorites - Cliff, Angie, Donna, Chuck, Myra, etc. - were being or had been phased out by this time.

Probably not. Richard and Carolyn Culliton were AHW's under McTavish, who was probably HW by that point. Broderick and Washam had jumped ship (to GL), so the team was rounded out by Hal Corley and (I wanna say) Frederick Johnson.

I've always believed MMT was hired, b/c the network wanted someone with a "fresher vision" in the HW'ing chair. Nixon came back to ensure AMC didn't go off the rails completely, but she was probably not looking to stay there much longer; and although Broderick had been there for years, the show's ratings actually dropped when she wrote w/ Miller. Unfortunately,

[Khan]

You can say that again! "Who Killed Will Cortlandt?" was a good, if gruesome, murder mystery. By the time Janet was unmasked as the culprit, however, AMC was quickly becoming a very dark, nasty show, as was reflected in the frequently snappish dialogue.

[Khan]

And I would say that's true, lol. Sometimes, I'd watch those two onscreen and I could just tell something was "off" about SL's performance, like someone had made a mess on the floor just before the cameras rolled and it was all she could do not to vomit. Her heart just wasn't in it, as they say. Of course, it probably didn't help that Gellar, according to what I've heard, can be an absolute b***h.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I've heard Gellar, Eva LaRue, Kelly Rippa, and Sydney Penny were one big bitchy clique on the AMC set in the mid 90's.

Gellar must have gotten on with enough people at AMC though. Several AMC cast members attended her wedding, but no one from Buffy was invited...

[LoyaltoAMC]

I noticed a change right away. If memory serves correct, Megan first showed up as HW the week of Jeremy and Ceara's wedding. I remember watching those episodes and thinking that something was very off about the writing, that it was lacking a certain unidentifiable something that had been evident with Agnes, Wisner and Lorraine. You could chalk it up to a transitional week when it came to the HW team, but the lack of that certain identifiable something lasted all throughout her first tenure.

I'm not as huge a fan of her first go-around as many others are. Like you said Khan, it just became a very dark, humorless show, and so much of her stuff was lacking in basic logic (I give you the Ted Orsini story). What saved her and kept the ratings high at first I believe were the incredibly popular Tad/Dixie, Edmund/Maria, and Julia/Noah love stories and the appeal of Sarah Michelle Gellar. I think viewers at that point would've watched these actors read the phone book on air. Plus her tenure was coming off a ratings high that Agnes had attained starting in 1990.

[Khan]

"Not surprised," he sniffs. Frankly, as much airtime as those four wannabes received, I'm surprised they didn't change the name of the show to THE GIRLS OF PINE VALLEY. I'm supposed to accept those heffas after I've had years of Julia Barr, Susan Lucci, Kathleen Noone, Candice Earley, Taylor Miller and others? Really?

[Khan]

Same here. After they worked so hard on selling us Ceara's history of child abuse and her chemistry w/ Jeremy, their wedding was just a major letdown. Even her dress was puke! Plus, it probably didn't help that ABC felt Genie Francis was worth more to them as GH's Laura than as Ceara (who, IMO, was probably her best role yet).

Lord, yes. What was the point of that [!@#$%^&*], Megan?! I mean, other than, "Crack is whack!"?

[JONNYSBRO]

LOL I remember in 1999 when McTavish was hired for OLTL as consultant and then head writer that she and JFP got along very very well. LOL Jilly/Megan getting along makes total sense with their personalities LMAO.

[Khan]

Not necessarily, lol. If anything, JFP and MMT have to be the female equivalent of a pissing fight. I don't know why, but I always get the feeling Megs was foisted on Jill, b/c ABC felt she was good at lifting the ratings. Plus, OLTL had been head-writer-less for almost a year, so they were probably desperate for someone to come in. Otherwise, as much as Pamela K. Long's run turned out to be a real "miss" w/ the audience, I feel like there was a sort of symbiosis between her and Jill that translated into some of the most exciting hours of OLTL in quite the while.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I still remember fondly Felicia Behr's comments about McTavish and JFP's OLTL being "absolutely unwatchable." Never has a network exec been that explicit, and you could tell that whatever respect Behr and McTavish had for one another was gone.

But scary enough, like her first stint at AMC, McTavish's OLTL was steady in the major demos.

[Khan]

It's what I now call the "Hitchcock Effect": you know none of what you see onscreen makes any sense whatsoever, but you're compelled to keep watching nevertheless.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Oh they loved each other because they thought just alike in how to do soap opera. I remember JFP giving an interview to Jonathan Reiner in his old TV guide column at the time saying how great Megan is, that she knows just how to program story that appeals to the 18-49s. She called her a pro at sensing what appeals to that demo. Nothing about her creativity, her drive, her passion...just that she knows how to program a story to a target demo. That sort of tells you just how soul-less and lacking in creativity they were in that they essentially viewed writing as dissection of focus group surveys. Maybe that's the reality of modern day soap writing, but it still sad.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It's funny though, as soon as the JFP/McTavish combination went over to GH, GH started hitting all time lows in the ratings, and their GH wasn't that much different from their OLTL.