All My Children AMC: The Prospect Park Era (old production thread)

[Khan]

Really? You think so? Then how about in years past, when others won this "prestigious" award (and it's not a program, Eric, it's an award) and didn't get an opportunity to write a script for the show (which, by the way, would have gone a great deal toward earning the needed credits in order to join the WGA, a must for anyone looking to work as a writer in entertainment)? For that matter, how come this is just for AMC, and not also for OLTL?

See, that's something else I don't like about this: the fact that they're doing it now, just as the show is set to relaunch online. Where was that generosity before, Ms. Nixon? Not everyone has a royally screwed up dad who gets them an interview with Irna Phillips straight outta college. Many, many people could have used your name, even if it's attached to a playwriting contest, as a springboard toward future employment in the biz. But you choose to use it now when you and your shows need the publicity more than ever.

You go. I have an undergraduate degree already, thank you. I'm not about to go back to college and put myself further in debt for another useless degree just so Agnes Nixon, PP, Northwestern will give me the break next year, when they won't be offering this special prize again.

[Vee]

I just tend not to really focus on any staff writers, period.

There's so much that goes into that job, that whole environment, the whole mind-numbing process of the endless meat grinder, that I feel it's often impossible to truly gauge what one of those people goes through, their true talent, temperament, etc. That's why I never understood the Directors & Writers threads or the people in there who obsess over each person like they know them. They don't, at all. Only a handful of them, IMO, have distinguished themselves enough to be known when you hear them since I've been watching soaps. Because while it's wonderful if you can pick out a Mulcahey or a Claire Labine, that's really not their job.

[EricMontreal22]

LOL

As for the contest--at least, IMHO, it is a contest honouring theatre writing *students*. PP could have just as easily have run a contest through SOD, and they probably would have gotten a few good entries (along with a lot of fanfic crap,) but I think, even if it is just a one episode gig, it's nice to give the opportunity to someone in the program. It's been an open secret for ages now that there haven't been enough opportunites to train people in writing for soaps (they seem to fall into the slots--some are just general interns who somehow end up with a writing job, or you do have cases of fans like Kay Alden contacting the writers and lucking into an opportunity.)

[Khan]

No, Eric. I want only a HW'ing gig. Even though I have no experience or track record, I'm not represented by an agent or manager, and I'm not even a member of the Writers Guild. Starting out as a one-time scriptwriter? Proving myself with this first assignment that might land me another gig (if not at AMC, then at another soap, or even primetime series)? That's for suckaz. #comeonnow

[DRW50]

Don't mean to derail - sorry!

I'd love to see Kim Ulrich as Liza (Beth Chamberlain is a little too histrionic for me).

[Khan]

As DeeeDee would say: "No, it doesn't."

[EricMontreal22]

It's an award given to members of a program and school.

"The Agnes Nixon Playwriting Festival is ready to show what it's worked towards with three performances of new works by some of Northwestern's best student playwrights. Writers, Directors, Dramaturgs, and Actors have worked hard all quarter to develop and stage readings of these three terrific scripts, and now you get to watch the final product and from those one student will be chosen." (That was a description from when the festival was first set up in 2010.)

You're right, it does help to get a WGA contract.

Past years the shows were under ABC and ABC seemed far less interested in PP in supporting Agnes Nixon or trying to get in her good graces--they wouldn't have cared. PP wants to look good to her. So they did this. As for AMC and not OLTL who knows--maybe Nixon is still more active at AMC, maybe the writers involved were more into the idea at AMC, maybe since there was only one winner they just picked the alphabetically first soap and next year will be OLTL?

You're talking about the past. It is beyond foolish to look at a new attempt at a prize for an award and complain "What about the poor students last year when Nixon's soaps weren't even on the air who didn't get the opportunity to win this??!? How is this fair?!" Sheesh!

The Nixon thing is new (probably connected to her donating her work to the archives there.) You can't fault someone for not doing something in the past. Plus, we know how Nixon was treated at ABC the last years. Pratt had the power to bar her from even being allowed inside the writer's room--maybe she felt asking for a winner to get to work on a script wouldn't be allowed--she had influence in name only. And Nixon has always been the first to mention how insanely lucky she was to fall into the chance opportunity she did.

I don't wnat to go, I'm happy in my current grad studies. But I won't begrudge someone in that program at Northwestern entering the contest and winning. SUre I'm a bit jealous. Oh well.

[Khan]

You're right. It isn't a sin. But how in the hell do you get people to know you when, half the time, they don't wish to be bothered, no matter how good you are, or how hard you work the system? Mama Khan likes to (quote Teddy Pendergrass and) say, "Chances go 'round." But after awhile, as you keep seeing 'em go 'round to everybody but you, especially to people who never worked for it in the first place and don't treat it with the respect that it's due, you come to one basic understanding: it's all bullshit. The system is designed to include you out.

[EricMontreal22]

OK fair enough, I know you know better than that. Still you've bad mouthed everything about the online AMC down to the writer choice. *shrug*

OK fair enough, I know you know better than that. Still you've bad mouthed everything about the online AMC down to the writer choice. *shrug*

OK fair enough, I know you know better than that. Still you've bad mouthed everything about the online AMC down to the writer choice. *shrug*

[Ryan Chamberlain]

NuNuNuColby is really pretty. She looks alot like all the Colby's who have come before.

[John]

I wonder her casting will be announced?

[EricMontreal22]

I said in theory. Sheesh!

I said in theory. Sheesh!

[Khan]

Let's put it this way: when P&G sponsored a college writing contest, 1) it was an actual contest, and not a cherry on top of an already loaded cake; 2) they opened the contest to all students, not just finalists in a festival (it might not be an award, per se, but it sure as hell ain't a program the way Yale Drama School's or Juilliard's is); and 3) it was open to all students at all colleges and universities, and not just the one that the show's creator and "network" head happen to be alumni of.

If PP cared about innovation and diversity as much as they say they do, then why not start an initiative along those lines? Better yet, why not reach out to those fans of AMC and OLTL they say they brought back these shows for and see if one of them might be the next Agnes Nixon or Wisner Washam? It isn't as if they're still having issues with the WGA. They have agented, guild-repped scribes to get them through in the meantime.

Also, for the record: I do not begrudge those who have "won" this opportunity, even if writing for one of their mother's or grandmother's hoary old stories probably was the furthest thing from their minds. But I've been around enough to know generally who participates in college playwriting festivals, the kinds of plays they write, and in many cases, what drugs they were taking when they wrote that scene in Act 2 they thought was so, so profound.

[EricMontreal22]

TOtally agree. I only really paid attention with AMC for a while, and I did notice some days had better dialogue and stronger directing, but really it seems to amount to the team the HW and associates head up more than anything else--and by team I mean how well they seem to communicate together, the overall pacing, etc.

TOtally agree. I only really paid attention with AMC for a while, and I did notice some days had better dialogue and stronger directing, but really it seems to amount to the team the HW and associates head up more than anything else--and by team I mean how well they seem to communicate together, the overall pacing, etc.

[Khan]

Nothing. It has nothing to do with your assessment, thus far, of the revivals. I'm just saying you are someone who appears to be talented and has at least a few good, strong, creative ideas. So why shouldn't you, or someone like you, get their crack at bat? They cherry-pick among the college kids, who are frankly too young to write the kind of nuanced dialogue this medium requires; and they grab any hack who's too mediocre to say "no"; but those in the middle? They might as well be the three guys who accused Steve Rubell of never allowing them to pass the velvet curtain into Studio 54.