GL on DVD!

[DRW50]

I think that with time Brown would have probably become more like Iva anyway (and Nola in her last year or so seemed increasingly beaten down, from the clips I've watched), but I do think all that heavy drama, year after year, takes a toll.

Brown was a very unique soap actress, with a unique look. I think she was a great pairing with Marland, who seemed to get her. It's strange to imagine how she would have been if she'd stayed on GL through the 80's.

I have to admit I've never really gotten Michael Tylo's appeal. Quint was an interesting construct for a character, but as a leading man, or even a long term presence, doesn't quite work for me.

[~bl~]

Lisa Brown was on GL for 5 years during her first stint. While I do have a two hour clip tape of Quint/Nola the early years, I don't think I fully "get" them though I appreciate why they were well-liked. I still think the story about how Lisa got on GL was amusing, trying out for Morgan, Betty Rea going no way for that role, but I like her, put her on the reel have Marland see her and the rest was well history.

BTW off topic but related to the DVDs, does Roger know if they are holding off sending the orders for outside the US?

[Mitch]

Quint was interesting for the short term, first as a mystery, gothic man that Nola could investigate (he was really a less robust, more scholarly version of ATWT Duncan) and then be there as her "reward," for her redemption. However, long term, he was just that, more a construct then a character, so I can see why Long had a hard time writing for him and them as a couple. Nola was a character on her own, so they should have killed Quint off in an accident and let Nola go on her own (never understood why they didnt do that when Brown came back, have Quint die off camera.) Nola inheriting all of his money and Spaulding stock, imagine her in scenes with Bev's Alex, sitting on the board and getting under her skin, eventually becoming friends.

Nola was such an energetic character and at her heart, a positive character even when she was a schemer ("I am going to get the hell out of 5th street and marry a handsome hot doctore and no one is gonna stop me!") that it was odd that she was so dour and depresssed when she came back to SF even with Quint cheating. The Nola of old would have gone about making sure that her rival was out of the picture and then won him back, only an older Nola might not even want him back after that. I can also see Quint cheating once, but for him to have a girlfriend and be an !@#$%^&*] was totally opposite what he was before. The weird thing is, Quint only became kind of sexy once the dude for DOOL was playing him, and he and Brown had great chemistry, and it all sank when Tylo came back. They should have had the DOOL guy playing a mysterious associate of Quints who may or may not have had him murdered, and we don't know if he is trying to woo his widow to get at something important (I know, too Marlandy...)

Actually, if they had killed Quint off then Nola could have come back with his stocks, etc. and drove Marj's Alex crazy....I could have seen those two having great comedy scenes.

I think that is why I hated Iva the most, it never gave Brown a chance to do comedy, which she was great at (unfortunately that is all Long wrote for her, the eccentric goof.)

[DRW50]

I wonder how much they got out of Henry being Quint's father. I did like the Nola/Henry relationship (they did interact briefly when she returned, didn't they, before William Roerick died), but I wonder if it would have been more dramatic if someone who was a big contrast to the rest of the Chamberlains had been the son.

[Mitch]

I loved Nola and Henry, I remember when she first came back they had a scene in the Boardinghouse swing, where she talked about Quint, etc. Very nice. Then when Henry died he left her enough money so she wouldnt have to rely on "Quint or anyone else ever again." It was a nice scene where he basically gives Nola her freedom of ever having to want for material things again, and Brown does a very sweet, "Thank you Henry," as she looks up to the sky.

[DRW50]

It's a shame they didn't have more scenes with Nola and Vanessa in Nola's return. Maeve and Lisa have contrasting styles and I remember the show getting some praise for the bits where Nola learned Vanessa was dying.

I was wondering, what are your first memories of GL?

Mine are probably the diner, or Reva reuniting Sam and Dylan in Florida.

[RogerNewcomb]

I've only worked on ATWT and GL so far. Imagine if your office was suddenly filled to the brim with thousands of old master tapes. 8000 of ATWT and more thousands for GL. Last time I was in the office a lot of GL tapes were still in storage. There's just no room to put them at Soap Clasics. So I don't know about the timetable for the other shows. It's a small, but efficient set of people working on this, but logistical things like storage space have an impact. The desire to get all this out as quickly as possible is there from everyone. The GL sets have sold well and they know they have found a wonderful niche market.

If you think about these old master tapes, they have to pull the tape out of their box, put up on a reel to reel player, play it for an hour while the show records (it is a full hour on the master with 2 or so minutes of black space for commercials) then edit out the black space once it's done. They have a few machines to do this but working on tons of projects not related to this. Every time I've been there I've seen an old ATWT or GL tape getting recorded on one machine while another was used for other stuff . Logistically I don't know how long it would take to get all these encoded. Seems like a long time but they are very efficient and are doing their absolute best from a technical perspective to use every open second to encode these tapes. I don't have any timetable for all that (streaming eps of ATWT, DVDs of other shows). I would love to work on Another World (or any of them) but we haven't talked about it yet.

[RogerNewcomb]

Nola was a wonderful character. I interviewed Denise Pence this week (Katie) and her character was a Dobson creation. Some characters got lost with Marland, and then the same thing happened with Marland's characters after he left.

There is a lot of Nola on this disc, actually more than I had intended on my original list but I love it all. The Kelly-Morgan wedding happens at the same time as Nola-Floyd's non-wedding so that's almost the main story that day.

The double wedding at the end of GL got added on the last day when we couldn't find the wedding I was going to include from the 1990s. Gus and Harley are there because I originally wanted one wedding from the 2000s that had a good mix of historical and current characters at the time). With the late addition of 2009, there ended up being two and we were already set with the 2005 one. Nola blowing a kiss at Company (Lisa Brown ad-lip understanding the historical context) was a nice moment on theh 2009 wedding along with Lillian visiting Maureen's grave. Both things relate back to previous episodes on the DVD. Anyway, I think fans will enjoy all those wedding whether you knew the characters then or not. There's always a lot more going on than the descriptions reveal.

For Bert Bauer fans, I think she appears on five of these 20 if my count is correct.

[~bl~]

Can you tell us which wedding from the 90s that you wanted to include?

I thought that Nola was on the Kelly/Morgan wedding episode, I wasn't losing my mind...

How many reel to reel players do they have?

[RogerNewcomb]

I loved Nola's line in the wedding episode on the DVD when she sees Vanessa and says she called ahead to make sure they weren't wearing the same dress.

[RogerNewcomb]

There are a couple of reel to reel players that I'm aware of. New projects obviously don't come in reel to reel anymore. Only historical things, but they do take jobs to replicating a lot of old historical footage. Newer ATWT/GL are on these VHS tapes that are twice as big as the ones we used in our VCRs.

Kelly-Morgan wedding is almost another Nola episode. Kelly/Morgan replaced Alan/Hope (music issues). Double wedding replaced Blake-Ross. I wanted to have another Holly/Roger episode later in his run with significance and I wanted to have Ross featured again as well. But we couldn't physically find the tape in time. Some other weddings from those years weren't available either. So on the very last day, I made the decision to go with the 2009 one feeling good that it had returned characters, historical references and a lot of fan favorites, some of which might not be seen otherwise. And we knew exactly where the tape was.

[RogerNewcomb]

From what I've been told the GL sets are selling even better than the initial ATWT DVDs. It could be just more general awareness of Soap Classics or more interest in GL or fans of ATWT also buying GL in hopes of more ATWT DVDs Who knows, but it's great news for all of us.

[Chris B]

I'm beginning to see what you meant when you said you had a time crunch. I'm sure just coming up with a list was a challenge, then sorting through what you couldn't use or find and plugging in last minute episodes must've been something else. I think it all worked out for the best because the episodes chosen are so varied and it does seem like yall found the perfect balance.

This makes sense. I'm sure the other shows are going to be much more difficult to put together, so I don't mind waiting for those. DO you know if there are any plans to release them to retailers? Maybe a deal with Wal-Mart would be smart, like Bravo's exclusive deal with Target. I could see the Wal-Mart consumers buying these DVDs.

[DRW50]

I've never seen the Alan/Hope wedding.

Kelly and Morgan is a beautiful wedding though, so pure.

I think Lisa Brown ad-libbed most of her dialogue in her last appearances. Not sure about the dresses (good line though). I think she did the line about Quint.

Bits like that are why I will always feel gratitude over GL bringing so many people back at the end, even if many of the returns were flawed. At least they tried.

[RogerNewcomb]

I think AW will actually be easier. I have some ideas that might help the process and eliminate the storage issues for this one.

This was the latest communication on retail:

http://www.welovesoaps.net/2011/12/soapclassics-will-hit-store-shelves.html

It's aways been their plans to do retail. There was just no way to get it set up in time for Christmas 2011.