As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

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Poor Iva. And she's in the cross position. How fitting.

I'm not used to Emma being so openly emotional.

Another sign of Steve's coming downfall.

Nice to see that even with Meg's selfishness, she does love her sister and her family.

Love seeing the moment where Lucinda confronts Barbara about Tonio. She took it better than I thought she would have. And the scene with Barbara and Dusty was also wonderful - so rare to see them interact by this point, and to see this motherly side to Barbara. As Duncan said, she has so many sides.

[soapfan770]

Thanksgiving 1994 is up, its pretty much the last hurrah for the Marland era Snyders and we have Janice:

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[DRW50]

[TimWil]

Here's my Chris Goutman story. Bear with me on this one, it's somewhat comvoluted but it has a good payoff:

In 2000 a friend called to tell me that he was dog sitting for a staff member of ATWT (no, it wasn't Goutman) and he asked me if I wouldn't mind doing it for him since he had too much going on at the time. He said this person had a lot of ATWT scripts just sitting around. I said OK and it turned out to be for quite a few weekends throughout that summer as well as the summer of 2001. I never met the ATWT staff member because my friend and I were very thorough about not making it known that I was actually doing the dog sitting, not him. There was no doorman, for starters, and the neighbors always kept to themselves.

I revealed a lot of the storylines I saw in those scripts on a website which I don't even remember the name of now. I only started going online in 2000 so I suppose I felt a bit "drunk with power" at possessing this info. One of the biggest storylines I leaked was Barbara being roasted like a kebab in that

gazebo. I posted under the same name as the one here. I can't say I felt terribly guilty about doing this, my only pangs came from the likelihood that some people on the show might be unfairly accused of doing it.

The spring of 2002 I was a judge for the Daytime Emmy Awards. The ATWT fan luncheon was being held the same day at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. I stopped by to say hello to someone I met via the website I'd posted on. We'd corresponded using the website's email. I had my picture taken with a few people at this luncheon. One of those people somehow found out I was the "leaker." They had also been told that I'd been a background actor on the show many years previously. This person was apparently friendly with Chris Goutman and promptly told him about me. And here's what Goutman did-

He put up a WANTED poster of me at the studio in Brooklyn. A friend of mine who had just started working part-time doing make-up told me he saw it on a bulletin board in a hallway. This was a few days after he'd heard Goutman bitching to another staffer about "that f**king leaker" and how Goutman wanted to handle it personally. On that WANTED poster was my headshot from the early 1980s (??!!), the photo of me from that fan luncheon, an old phone number and...much much worse...my Social Security number. When I was told this I wanted to throw up. My crew friend said he couldn't take a picture of it because it was too close to the production office. He really needed a job there full-time. He apologized profusely. I understood where he was coming from.

I knew one of the stage managers there-we were acquaintances during the late 1970s via a mutual friend, an actress. I knew she lived at the same apartment complex as a friend of mine because we'd bumped into each other a few times in the lobby. I wrote to her about the WANTED poster and how disclosing my Social Security number was a serious breach of privacy and most likely illegal. I wrote that if it wasn't taken down immediately I would consider legal action. I left the letter with her doorman. It must have been passed on to her because my friend the make-up artist informed me the WANTED poster was taken down a day later.

If I had not already been dealing with the impending death of a close friend as well as several other problems I might have gone ahead and tried to sue Goutman. It would have been a tough case to prosecute though, not to mention bizarre. Talk about something out of a soap. I would understand the lengths Goutman would take if I was actually an employee of the show but I wasn't! I did realize how stupid it was to do what I did with the leaking by not at least posting what I'd learned anonymously. The Datalounge site became good for that. Which leads me to....

Fast forward to 2010. ATWT was several months away from going off the air forever. Goutman was still in charge, of course. A friend of mine worked a location shoot up in Westchester County and he told me a major new character got hit by a train and was killed. He didn't actually see who the victim would be, he only knew what he knew by what he had heard on set. I put two and two together, however, and came up with Reid. I felt in my gut it was Reid. I posted my suspicion as fact on Datalounge. It caused something of an uproar there since DL's posters are predominantly gay. This then spilled over to other message boards like TWOP and perhaps this one, I presume. I called up my friend the make-up artist to wish him happy birthday soon afterward and he told me with glee in his voice that Goutman was really catching hell by CBS-they were apparently not at all happy with the enormously negative response by unhappy fans over the prospect of Reid getting killed off weeks before the show ended forever. The soap press was also bugging him about it. Goutman was, as a result, feeling under siege by the stupid decision to kill off Reid when he very likely thought it would be smooth sailing for him until the show's final fade-out. He was wrong. I got my revenge, sorta, didn't I? It took a while but I did.

Well, as my father often said, "Never f**k with the Irish." Or, even better, "What goes around, comes around."

Edited May 24, 2014 by TimWil

[Vee]

In light of recent events in my own corner of my business I am reminded again just how small an industry this is.

I was on the DL back then, though I don't remember the ATWT threads at all. Thank you for your story and all your invaluable reminiscences.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Vee

[NothinButAttitude]

TimWil,

That's horrible that he had a headshot of you with your social security on it posted in the open for everyone to see? What if it had truly went wrong and someone took your identity? That would've been effed up, and I'm sure Chris would've looked stupid had you pursued legal action. I don't see why you leaking a story is that bad if you don't work them. I'm sure it didn't hinder the ratings as World Turns was flourishing in the early '00s. I am just that you got your revenge in the end, and Goutman got much needed heat from it.

It may be farfetched but because of you spilling the Reid tea and the following backlash, maybe that is the reason why Goutman has been inflicted on another CBS soap.

Thank you.

[Khan]

Leaking pertinent storyline details online might not have been the wisest decision, especially as it wasn't done anonymously. Nevertheless, posting a "WANTED" sign in the studio (with your SSN, no less) was OTT even for Goutman. He would have been better off contacting you and asking you politely not to leak any more information about the show.

Edited May 25, 2014 by Khan

[Soapsuds]

I love classic episodes.

The show had no focus at this point and Janice and her tea...lol...but even back then the show was miles better than what Goutman and Pissy did to it later on.

[Soapsuds]

I was at the SOC boards when the whole Reid dying spoilers leaked. Everyone was furious at the time and bombarded Goutman...lol

[P.J.]

Eh...I didn't care. I do know there were a whole contingent of fans that got up on the cross like they were the only ones suffering at the time. I'm sure they would have been happier had Helen Wagner simply died earlier, so Goutman could use Nancy's death to fulfill his wrap-it-up vision.

[TimWil]

Exactly, Khan. It wasn't wise of me at all to do what I did. And OTT is definitely how I'd describe Goutman's "plan of action" against me. He obviously got my Social Security number and old phone number from the casting files from when I did background work on it in 1983. Yes, they do have files that go that far back.

NothinButAttitude, I was terrified that someone could steal my identity by usiing my Social Security number-in 2002 we started hearing a lot about identity fraud. Putting it on that bizarre WANTED poster had to have been illegal. That alone made me think about looking into prosecution.

Soapsuds-hah. Just...hah.

Forgot to add something-just a month ago I worked on Saturday Night Live and I was told by a background actor that he, along with 9 other of his felllow regular ATWT background actors, was actually made a member of NATAS and it was paid for by, you guessed it, Goutman at ATWT. This was so they would be eligible to vote for the Daytime Emmy Awards. Not much of a surprise, huh?

Edited May 25, 2014 by TimWil

[Soapsuds]

Yup...I remember fans of the show saying this better not be true...it got to the point where Goutman had to make a statement about it and basically denied the whole thing...until later on when the end of the show was near...he made some lame excuse that Reid and Luke would have been the end game had the show not been canceled ...yeah right...whatever.

[Khan]

Too bad none of those files contained information on previous storylines; and if they did, too bad no one on the writing staff bothered to consult them. Who knows? It might have prevented the writers from making so many continuity and historical mistakes in the last years.

Edited May 25, 2014 by Khan

[TimWil]

True, Khan! There was never such a thing as a continuity consultant on American soaps as there have been on British soaps such as EastEnders and Coronation Street.

[Vee]

I thought Margo Husin was in charge of that at OLTL. Maybe it meant something different over here.