GH: Michael Fairman interviews Valentini & Carlivati

[dragonflies]

http://michaelfairmansoaps.com/general-hospital/the-frank-valentini-and-ron-carlivati-interview-general-hospital-one-life-to-live/2012/12/26/

[LeClerc]

I had eaten way too much over the last 2 days. Thankfully most of it came back up while reading the lovefest between these 3.

[Graham]

So much sucking up I just can't...

[SFK]

Thanks for sharing dragonflies!

[Eric83]

+1.

I don't dislike "Cartini" as much as others but I wish sometimes these people would call them out on their shortcomings such as handling of minority characters and Carlivati's obsession with turning potentially great characters into psychos to force his couples together.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I missed the fondue scene referenced in this interview, but even setting aside for a moment how ridiculous and embarrassing it sounds, that example just illustrates for me how far off track soaps have gone.

I can't help but hope that maybe sometime soon a producer at one of these shows (while there are still a few of them left) will think of a way to do a sequence or an episode or maybe even a single scene in which actors are actually allowed adequate rehearsal time, and spin it as something so novel as to be attention-grabbing. I mean, OLTL was able to do that "live week" as a stunt/homage to the olden days of the genre, but of course the OLTL gimmick happened a few more decades after soaps stopped taping live than any of the remaining shows likely have. I guess things that were standard practices only a few years ago don't have the same retro cache.

That's about all I really have to say about this. I don't actually hate these two, or what they've done at GH - some of what I've seen is very entertaining and fun - but I did think that they had a lot more potential than they've lived up to for the past several years. They also probably have a lot more insights to share after working in soaps some 40+ years, collectively, than these silly interviews convey.