AMC Tribute Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

I did not know that. She was Senior VP of ABCD from 2000-2004, so you're saying they fired her & brought him in instead of giving her another term. Geeze Louise! When Michael Kape, of Soap Opera Now, first interviewed Frons in 1983 he already hated the genre, hated soaps & literally wanted to kill them. That far back!!! That early on!!! It says so much of the awful underlying psychology of the US daytime organization & business that someone who wanted to do away with them was in a position of power for so long over it! He's not called the Daytime Destroyer without cause!!!

[Maxim]

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A lot of AMC episodes uploaded in the last 24 hours by this retro channel. And some of it in really good quality. 

[Maxim]

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25th anniversary episode. 

[DemetriKane]

Ha! Ha! The good ole Phoebe what a hoot!

[DemetriKane]

Always loved it when AMC did gothic. This Dixie/Adam/Brooke storyline would always be my favorite for that reason.

The Julie/Jackson flirtation had potential. 

Same!! This was a great beat in the storyline and really made me like the character. 

I do find it interesting that you are not crazy about Nico/Cecily they usually get a lot of praise from fans. I much preferred Nico with Julie, I can't resist the classic good girl/bad guy trope.

 

[EricMontreal22]

I was soooo excited for the 25th anniversary week (even if I had no idea who half the character cameos were) and the primetime special.  As someone who had only been a viewer for 4 years but was obsessed with the history--and with no way to see old episodes, it was a godsend (and of course around the same time they released the coffee table book, I think the first for a soap opera.)

It was a few pages back now that we discussed Gothic Agnes Nixon storylines, but in general I loved when AMC would dip into the Gothic too (Hell for the intro to Wildwind they were riffing on no less than Rebecca, Jane Eyre AND sensation serial classic Lady Audley's Secret all mashed up together.)

I wasn't a regular viewer back then but I do like Nico with Julie best (I couldn't believe how appealing I found Nico actually, since I've NEVER been a Sonny fan...)

[EricMontreal22]

Randomly, through several different rabbit holes, I came across an interview with Jean Passanante when she retired from soaps in 2017.  As most here know, after the disastrous McTavish second run at AMC, Agnes Nixon came out of her semi-retirement (she had still, and would continue to still, attend most of the story meetings even when she was "retired" but apparently would try to keep her input to a minimum) to help refocus the show (her previous last credited stints as a HW had been AMC in 89-92 as we've discussed, and Loving in 93-94.) 

Though Wiki lists Elizabeth Page as her co-HW, she wasn't in the initial credits (I remember being thrilled when I saw Nixon's name.)  This was a bit before the Bianca coming out story, but what Nixon did best was to return a sense of Pine Valley as a community again (even bringing back characters to add colour like Enid Nelson)  She also, as she does, did some retreads with mixed results (introducing Leo/Greenlee/Becca which played into past character tropes for "the young lovers" Nixon would always have during her runs at AMC--I think Greenlee was meant to be a new take on Erica Kane back then, with some similar issues but... rich.  Becca, was a throwback to Tara but for a variety reasons that kind of character did not play very well in 1999) 

This was June 1999 or so.  But by the Fall, Jean Passanante had started being credited just under her as co-HW (and I only really knew Jean as a HW from her brief year at OLTL which was not good, but to her credit she says she was always told she was just an interim writer until the Labines came in and so was not meant to do long term story.)  I still think AMC remained good for a year (certainly better than under McTavish) but after that the show did start to seem pretty schizophrenic with some great and some not good at all material (Libidizone!  Dog boy!) and choppy storytelling, which of course I blamed on Passanante and not Nixon.

And that's probably unfair, though I still blame it primarily on Passanante and once Nixon's name left the credits the show became close to unwatchable (I'd say it was at its worst, but the worst was yet to come...)  It does sound like they worked pretty separately which was clear on the show.  According to Wiki, Passanante started getting solo credit in January 2001 and was out by the Summer, with a month or two with no credited HW (I remember the gossip at the time was she broke her contract to go to ATWT.)  Then we got the year of Richard Culliton which was odd, filled with potentially good stories that were dropped or poorly resolved, and Culliton seems to have blacked out the entire experience (he was left to wrap up the extremely convoluted PROTEUS storyline Passanante started.)

ANYWAY that's me rambling on about AMC history.  But I found Passanate's interview answer about her time there, kinda interesting (and LOVED what she said about Nixon's "vertical storytelling":

After AW’s cancellation, you went to ALL MY CHILDREN and worked alongside Agnes Nixon from 1999-2001. What was that like?

Passanante: Working with Agnes was a revelation. The network execs and producers I’d worked with up until then had generally demanded we write fairly detailed long-term documents before we launched into a story. But Agnes, being Agnes, didn’t really have to do that. She wasn’t wedded to a document or preconceived notion of where the story was going, at least in terms of its details; she approached each day one scene at a time, and all the plot points came straight out of character. She also believed in “vertical scenes” — scenes that advance character, not plot, say, a chat between Myrtle and Erica just to illuminate the audience as to Erica’s frame of mind. Sometimes the powers-that-be on certain shows don’t love that kind of scene if it isn’t precisely moving story forward, which is kind of a shame. I really saw her as a mentor, though we had different styles of working. She couldn’t believe I actually thought in terms of building story toward some kind of climax or cliffhanger at the end of the week on Friday. She asked me once if I was good at jigsaw puzzles — I’m not — because of the way I like to piece plot points together. She really didn’t think like that. I’m not sure that was a compliment! She had a great, raucous cackle. And she loved a juicy piece of gossip. When my [AMC] contract was up after two years, I had a chance to go to WORLD TURNS and I grabbed it. Over my time with her on the show, Agnes had gotten increasingly less involved at AMC and frankly, at that point, I thought my days were numbered.

[DRW50]

Thanks. That was around the time I quit watching on a regular basis (I thought the show had just become dull and unpleasant and that hadn't really changed even after McTavish was fired), but I appreciate hearing her thoughts. 

[janea4old]

Carol Burnett!

[Franko]

What was "dog boy"?

[EricMontreal22]

I don't fully remember.  It was a teen boy who had been kept in a cage much of his life as he was abused and I think was somehow connected to Alex and Anna Devane and their evil megacriminal mother (??)  At any rate there was a new teen scene in 2001 (I believe) including a mean jock, Marcus, and one of the younger Santos daughters (Rosa?)  And they were trying to acclimatize him back into society, and Rosa (or Anita?) had a connection to him, but Marcus was jealous, and the mean kids would call him dog boy.  Oh also all this teen scene (including I think Laura--second Laura) also were involved in a typically unrealistic story where the kids were all doing a lot of Ecstacy.

I swear I'm not making any of this up...

Passanante also was responsible for Gillian's death (which again I think was connected to the Devanes' mother) which led to a Heaven sequence where we got to see past characters (kinda a mini version of OLTL's Vicki in Heaven) which fans liked--well they liked seeing past characters--but it got extended much further, Gillian possesed Opal so she could kiss Ryan at one point, and Ghost Jesse actually SAVED Tad from almost walking into a nboose (which made no sense if he was a ghost, but...) etc  That as well as Libidizone were both just too out there IMHO for AMC.

[DRW50]

His name was Gabriel. He was their half-brother. He was initially mute. Bianca was heavily involved in parts of his story, which made some fans wary that the show was going to try to "turn" Bianca (I think they just wanted to avoid writing a romance for her).

I think it was Rosa. I think people also pointed out how old the actress seemed for that part, although I may be wrong.

 

[Contessa Donatella]

It was Passanante who ATWT asked if she could take her experience writing on the team who gave us "Bianca comes out as gay on AMC" & do it again only with a guy, Luke. Later, of course she created Julie Pinson's character Julie patterned after herself but unfortunately she ate the whole show.

Edited Thursday at 08:56 AM by Contessa Donatella

[Franko]

Thank you. I do remember the Heaven sequence getting positive feedback. If I recall, Gillian encountered Jesse, Cindy, Travis, Jeremy, Natalie, and Harold the dog.

[Maxim]

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 One of my favorites. Every episode she is in... I'm thankful for. I wish she has a more leading storyline. I can only hope so. 

Ah, I feel like I'm just in the very very beginning in my AMC journey and hearing your history with the show is just fascinating to me. I am still slowly going through 1989... 1-2 episodes a day. Slowed down from my marathons, because of work. I can't wait for the first Agnes Nixon episodes to come.