Llanview In The Afternoon: An Oral History of One Life to Live, by Jeff Giles out today

[Darn]

Jesus Christ, was Thom Christopher sucking Rauch's dick behind the sets?

[cassadine1991]

MIchael Fairman ‏@MichaelFairman5m

Thanks @jefito for chat today! #OLTL fans more on #LlanviewInTheAfternoonTheOralHistoryOfOLTL! Next week!

[Vee]

I want to stress that these are a bunch of selections I'm throwing up, and they're not always in sequence one after another. Specifically, the first two here.

David Fumero (Cristian Vega): Oh, man. I got chewed up, spit out - I got the works. It was very tough, in all honesty. I had done commercials and things like that, and I could do a scene in a play - I thought I knew how to act. But my first day was a bunch of pages with me in my underwear. I was supposed to be the love interest of Erin Torpey, who was 17 at the time, and that was uncomfortable. I was in great shape at the time, and I think that's what kept me on screen - not what was coming out of my mouth.

Erin Torpey (Jessica Buchanan): [...] The actors coming on to play my boyfriends would say, "I just want to be here for two years." I'd look at them and say, "This is your first job. You can't even pay your rent, you're coming from Kansas, and you're already saying this isn't good enough for you - and you're not good." Take the gift - this is an acting class you're being paid for. I couldn't understand that. They'd bring in these new boyfriends for me and say, "Erin, you go teach them." They were these green, green actors. Erika, I could do scenes with her all day - but that isn't what I was doing. That's when I realized I wasn't growing as an actor - or as a person.

Timothy D. Stickney (R.J. Gannon): If you hire someone to be pretty and they don't have a craft to draw on, then all you can get is pretty. You can't hire non-actors and expect to keep getting away with it. It got to the point where it was unfortunately an age issue, because none of the younger actors had done it before. Whether they could or not wasn't really the primary issue - they simply hadn't. They had nothing to fall back on, and couldn't get through their set.

Peter Miner: The people on soaps looked more like people in the earlier years - and there were more theater actors. Later, you started seeing models who had no acting experience, and the shows would throw them in and destroy them. They were expendable for a summer story, and if they survived, they survived; if they didn't, they'd just be thrown overboard. But they came in with no experience, and you didn't do that in the early days.

Timothy D. Stickney: David Fumero - I taught that boy how to act. I taught him how to approach a script. And he really wanted to do the work - he was honest. He understood what he didn't know how to do, so it was easy to say, "Try this." He walked into this as a grown, grown man, and all they wanted him to do was be hot, but he put that on his shoulders.

Kassie DePaiva (Blair Cramer): I always thought David was under-utilized. What a sexy, charming sweetheart of a man. He really did great work when he was given the chance.

David Fumero: I worked hard. [...] I was overwhelmed for a long time; it took me awhile. My first year or two on the show, that's literally all I did: Read, ask questions and come in to work every day thinking I was going to get fired. Terror. It was horrible. And then you have to watch it - you're like "Oh God, that's going on the air."

Thom Christopher (Carlo Hesser): David Fumero! Someone who looks like that, and has those emotional cojones, it's beyond me why he isn't a movie star. He's beautiful inside - I love him. Later on, when Frank Valentini was running the show, we did this storyline where Carlo brainwashed Cristian in prison, and Frank - being the bold producer that he is - allowed me to introduce a homoerotic subtext.

Frank called and explained the story to me, about how Carlo had taken over Cristian's mind on the ship. It was so un-Carlo, but they needed to get Cristian back on the show, and this was how they needed to do it. So I immediately asked if we could explore the idea that when you explore someone's mind, it's erotic. You don't control their mind a la Bela Lugosi, you're doing it because it's a subliminally sexual thing. [...] He said "Go for it," and I only know of one time when I was told that things got a little animated in the control room - it was during the prison sequence when I had my hands on David's shoulders and I'm surrounded by my coterie of men. I had my arms draped over his shoulders as I did this speech, and the beautiful thing about working with him is that he gave me carte blanche to go as far as I needed. It was also perfect because Larry Carpenter directed it, and he was really the mastermind behind that whole sequence - it was his baby. It was just brilliant.

David Fumero: Thom Christopher is a riot. I had a blast with him, because I never knew what to expect. He always came up with crazy stuff, and I'd just roll with the punches. Every day, we'd laugh.

Thom Christopher: I had planned as the speech went on, and as I was doing these gyrations with his brain, to move closer and closer to David's face - and I'm told that Frank was sitting in the producer's chair, muttering, "Thom, don't kiss him...don't kiss him..." I was literally a hairline from David's lips. He was just this rock. I knew if I went any further, he was just going to groin me with his knee, and that's the type of tension I wanted to feel. To allow that was so courageous on Frank's part. Larry only did one in-camera cut, and I think that was when I had David on the floor and I was doing push-ups over him. [laughs]

Hillary B. Smith (Nora Buchanan): [...] I worked with an actor who just didn't seem to want to learn his lines. [...] He'd rip out his lines and leave them wherever the director told him he'd be standing - he was reading, just reading. I got mad, because when I'm in those scenes, I want to be having a conversation with someone, so during notes, I'd go around and sweep up all his lines. [laughs] You could see the panic in his eyes, and I'd just smile at him.

Mark Derwin (Ben Davidson): [...] You learn to listen. I mean, I've worked with actors who just sit and wait for the cue line with their eyes glazed over - as soon as you say, "umbrella," they know it's time for them to speak, and they leap into action. I used to mess with this one guy and refuse to say the word. I'd bust him every time.

Jerry verDorn (Clint Buchanan): There are all sorts of ducks in the cage, and you do come across actors who aren't really interested in doing the scene or telling a story. There are those who are only interested in what we call "winning the scene," where they come away in the position of power. Looking better, or whatever their concern is. Those aren't pleasant people to work with, and they don't usually last long. I remember Mark [Derwin] doing that to a couple of people. [laughs] "Oh, I didn't say that? Sorry."

Hillary B. Smith: I think Mark and I worked with the same guy. [laughs]

[cassadine1991]

Interesting and so funny about the Cristian/Carlo stuff, and I wonder who Erin was speaking of, very interesting.. I also wonder who Mark and Hillary are speaking of

[John]

Could Hilary & Mark be talking about either Sam Rappaport

[SFK]

I'm really annoyed by "actors" (paid ones at that) who have no knowledge of acting technique nor any desire to attain any... no "respect for acting" as Uta would say. It just reeks of vanity and greed. A pretty face to distract from your crap story or to underplay your great one, or a fine actor to elevate your crap story and knock your great one out of the park?

[Darn]

Brandon Routh. Iowa, Kansas, same diff (or maybe it was a dig at his Superman role, I don't know).

BTW I need to get out of this thread, I'm still in the early 90s. Gottlieb is a character.

[cassadine1991]

More about Gottlieb??

[SFK]

How about her $10.75 million co-op?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576600742670226666.html#

[CBRVA83]

Can anyone who has the book put some quotes up about what the actors said about the Cartini era of OLTL, please?

[Darn]

They all loved it, you don't even need quotes, not one actor had anything bad to say about their team. Their only complaint was about the taping schedule, which was really out of Valentini's hands.

[All My Shadows]

There are some interesting passages about Michael Storm's unceremonious firing. Here's what he has to say himself:

Michael Storm: I don’t think I had a major storyline in the last 10 years . I was just sort of an extra character. I really can’t think of a thing that Larry was emotionally involved in over the last few years. I was very angry with how the character lost his stature on the show. He became just a safety valve -- something dire happened to a character, that character ended up in the hospital, and I’d make a gratuitous appearance. There was no personality to Larry anymore; he was just “the doctor.” It absolutely bothered me, but I have the greatest touchstone in the world -- my wife. She’d listen to me vent , and then she’d remind me that this was just the way things were, and remind me that I could quit. That we’d get by. She kept me grounded. Ultimately, it was a slippery slope, because the work just vanished. They just didn’t call. Larry was still mentioned by characters, but I never made another appearance. I don’t want to sound petulant, but I do think a goodbye should have been in order. [...]The last 10 years of my career, I had been living in California, and I’d commute to do the show -- which was wonderful. I didn’t mind. Then one day I flew in to do the show, and after taping, I said “See you all later.” Little did I know that they’d never call back. After awhile, people might have asked whatever happened to Dr. Larry, but no one ever called. It was not the way I would have wanted to say goodbye. It was unspeakable to not be given any closure. I mean, there were babies being born, people dying... you’ve earned a right to be part of that. It just never got done for me. It’s tough.

[cassadine1991]

Can't believe it..

[Chris B]

Linda Gottieb had a really annoying quote about how this was the hardest thing she ever did, to produce such garbage.

This one had me LOLing, because I DID notice all of this:

Brandon Buddy (Cole Thornhart, 2006-10): The first time I saw myself, I just picked myself apart like crazy. I couldn’t even understand what I was saying, because I was mumbling so much. A lot of actors won’t watch themselves because they don’t think it’s healthy, but I think it’s a good way to fix obvious problems. For me, it was things like speaking clearly and compensating for my low voice enough to be heard, but it’s also really easy to be critical of things like your looks. After awhile, it got easier, and I learned camera awareness a lot more -- knowing that if I look too far down, my eyes go off, or if I look too far up , I look stupid. Things a lot of people don’t notice, but if you tweak them, they make the overall performance better.

My problem was never his looks (I don't need a six pack), but dayum was his acting rough lol!

ETA:

LOLOLOL! After hearing how they all praise Carlivati, I thought the 00 stuff would be dull, but it's still great. EVERYBODY seemed completely confused about the filming technique, which would have them filming things 30 episodes apart. I honestly don't know how they did it. It's no surprise that a young actress like Kelly Missel was so forgettable on the ABC soap,but with more rehersal and less of a workload, she was really strong on PP's version. They had no time to think or prepare and most importantly--nobody knew what they were doing because they didn't have a script.

Brian Kerwin: It really did start getting grossly out of sequence -- there were things you’d be shooting back-to-back that were a month apart. It was kind of crazy. I kept track of it all by asking Erika. As far as managing it as an actor? That’s just your job. You do what you’re supposed to do. You figure out, if you can, the circumstances going into the scene, and you play that appropriately. That’s what all that training is for -- for pulling it off. One day I show up to shoot, and it’s for a funeral. I have a black suit and very little to say -- it was basically whether Charlie was going to fall off the wagon because he’d just lost his son, and this funeral would remind him of that. I’m there rehearsing, getting ready to shoot, and all of a sudden it dawns on me that I don’t know who’s dead - - I have no idea. And at this point, I can’t ask anyone, but I realized it didn’t matter; your behavior at a funeral is pretty much the same no matter what, so I just put on a long face and nodded my head. To this day, I have no idea whose funeral that was.

[CBRVA83]

Thanks Darn and (and you Chris B. for those two actors' quotes about the Cartini era of OLTL)!!!