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

[Vee]

No, I don't think we need to put the man up in that pantheon by any measure of the imagination; I think that's borderline sacrilegious and offensive. I don't think there's any comparison, beyond just being unpleasant and difficult to deal with. Jeff Kwatinetz is a far cry from many of those people and I think that's an idiotic parallel. It's obvious that he didn't understand anything about how to produce soap opera long-term. He was an incompetent businessman. But to bring the man's allegedly awful personality into it in any way is to exercise willful naiveté, IMO, when we know what it takes to make soap opera 365 days a year.

[allmc2008]

That was the understatement of the century! LOL!!

[Juliajms]

Obviously, Hollywood is notorious for being full of dickish behavior. I'm not saying JK even did anything outlandish. People who have the power to hire and fire often make people wait and lord that power over others, even outside of LA.

All I'm saying is that it's unfair to just blame TC for the incident when there is no proof that he went into the interview in bad faith. I couldn't tell you one thing TC has ever written or anything about him. I just don't think he deserves to be accused of bad behavior out of nowhere.

As for the online soap "press", present company excluded, I find if pretty laughable. The arrogance of some of these people is incredible.

[Vee]

I don't blame Tom Casiello for it, personally. Kwatinetz has a wild history. I just don't care about Tom Casiello, either.

[John]

O dont blame TC either but they make irt sound like someone taking no sit & no prisoners is foriegn in daytime drama

And dont get me started on how hypicritical Jillian & Jamey sounded

[Juliajms]

I think the answer to this is that people who want or need work can't always choose their employer. That goes for soap people just as much as the rest of us. Sometimes you just have to hold your nose, hope for the best and collect that paycheck.

[Vee]

That goes double for soap people, I suspect.

[allmc2008]

Is it possible that with this Lawsute there could also be a Gag-Order of somekind on PP as well?

[John]

Very well so.

[GregNYC]

Just shows anyone off the street can become an executive.

[cassadine1991]

He's tame compared so many other executive producers

[EnglishTea]

To name a few more (including HW)

Felicia Behr

Ed Scott

Irna Phillips

James Reilly

Megan McTavish

Bob Guza

Christophe Goutman

[Vee]

We have absolutely no way of knowing that, and that's a dumb thing to say. Kwatinetz's bad rep long precedes him. The only thing I credit him with is my bottom line, which was getting the shows on the air and presenting them well, treating people right at the outset. Unfortunately he couldn't sustain it and IMO after funding fell through he and the company have treated the cast and crew unacceptably in both attempts. I'd forgive that if they were able to get the shows back up and running, but as of now that appears unlikely. I can also be very grateful for what PP accomplished and appreciate the shows they produced while still finding major fault with their failures at the higher level of management.

To cite a similar example, I know some of you like to think of Frank Valentini as the Great Satan; he's not. Frank is about the bottom line, hard and brutal. I don't agree with every choice he's made - at all - but the fact is he has kept his soap alive by any means necessary. He's ruthless but he's also beloved, much like many men and women in his position before him, and he can produce results under extremely adverse conditions. I don't necessarily agree with every trade-off he's made or every aesthetic choice, but I can understand them. I have always greatly admired FV's skill.

People want there to be villains here, and teams; there are not teams, except for in the minds of some of the fans and the online "press," and perhaps among a few overly invested people behind the scenes at these various shows. In the everyone is doing whatever they have to, day to day. This was the same with the teams at the PP soaps, putting aside the incompetence of the executive management. You may not agree with everything Smith, Pepperman, Racina/Horgan/Klein, McPherson/Snyder/etc. did, but they and their casts and crews worked themselves to death and achieved a result. The only people I fault in this are the higher management at PP, the two men in question, and that is relatively removed from the two shows.

I enjoy GH and I respect and admire Frank's efforts, even as I despise other elements of the show and profoundly disagree with his other choices. I could quote chapter and verse as many issues I have with his approach as I can his boons. I think it's a fun show that loves its history, but I also think it's often a stupid show that's too in love with itself. I can't take it seriously much anymore, and I often hate something in any given episode as I absolutely love something else. Now, a lot of people would say that this kind of ratio is no different from the general audience experience of any soap opera, at any time, in any era and under any creative regime - and they'd be absolutely right. That is completely correct.

The crucial difference between the past and today, the daytime landscape is such that there is now only a handful of viable such experiences left. GH is a crazy mess of good, bad and terrible; DAYS is, well, DAYS, B&B is B&B and Y&R is on a slow train to oblivion. The only show currently critically and popularly embraced, warts and all, by a large cross-section of soap fans, as I see it, is GH. But the problem with that is it's the only one left. It's being accepted as "the new normal". And that's a problem. Because there are big problems with GH, problems that grew and metastasized over Frank and Ron's years at OLTL. They're not untalented, IMO; they get a lot right. But there's no checks and balances left beyond them; there's no co-HW, no really active network people that I can see, putting aside a micromanager like Brian Frons. And there's no one in the press who legitimately challenges them for longer than five minutes at a time on social media. Their show is outsize, broad, fun, inappropriate, lazy and loving, ridiculous and sublime all at once. And that's a perfectly fun, valid experience. But to say it's the only experience a soap opera can and should offer today is plain wrong.

There can be a show that focuses more on character, that isn't just speeding to the next big beat in a 6-12 month bible and letting the breakdowns fall where they may. That really invests in character over plot. That was the key to juxtaposing, say, Paul Rauch's OLTL with AMC, or Linda Gottlieb's with Claire Labine's GH; the shows were different. There was a variety of types of soaps, types of tones and focuses and rhythms and choices. To say there can be only one and I should be fine with just that is simply wrong. And that's why the PP soaps worked for me - the bipolar executive management situation was irrelevant. It was the shows that counted, because they were different. They had different paces, tones, and priorities. And they made my watching GH everyday better as a result of that, because I could allow it to be what it is as opposed to being told that I have to accept it as all things and the future of all soap opera. And I'm just very tired of hearing that.

[DRW50]

What an embarrassment this Jillian Bowe is. I also saw her trying to stir the pot with Ron Carlivati and John Stamos. I'm not sure why she thinks she is so very precious and adorable, when even Giddens was being relatively low-key in those comments. It's clear she also didn't watch OLTL, which isn't a surprise, as that would mean doing something besides type like a Belieber.

This is the biggest failure of our soap "press." It's all about them. Everything. There is endless, endless pity parties in the comments section for Giddens or for Casiello (not that I'm saying what PP did to him is right - although frankly I have no idea why anyone would want to hire him as a writer, based on his grade school scripts on Y&R), and little to no interest in fans, or the industry, or actors, or writers, or crew out of work.

You get SPILL THAT TEA!!! and Bowe being all HEE HA HEE HA like Frances the Talking Mule.

Get over yourselves. You aren't special. You aren't cute. You aren't talented. Yelling and cackling doesn't make you a star. It just makes you a headache.

[marceline]

That string reads like something out of middle school. All that's missing are the threats to beat someone up at the dance. That's just embarrassing. These people really don't have an ounce of professionalism and are incredibly short-sighted. You don't put that kind of thing out in public. If you want to talk trash do it by email or the way we used to back in the old days: go to the corner bar. I have no doubt about Casiello's experience in the interview given what we've heard about Jeff K. and the insane timeline but again, you don't broadcast that kind of thing. You don't make it easy for the next person who may want to hire you to see you trashing the last person who wanted to hire you.

Do all these people have trust funds or something? Do they not need to work? And how old are they?

Between this craziness and Carlivati going after Shatner and Stamos, I'm beginning to wonder whether all these folks have some sort of brain infection. We're they all in the same room recently? Maybe someone should call the CDC because a little time in an isolation tent with little thorazine to calm them down would do them all wonders and these bitches clearly need a CAT scan.