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

[will81]

Yeah I also love Broadway, the doco Broadway: The Golden Age was fantastic and I can't wait for the sequel. I do wish they would do something similar for soaps. They were a cultural phenomenon. They could easily split it into eras.

[EricMontreal22]

Wasn;'t a documentary film project on soaps in the works?

[allmc2008]

Yes. It is called "Soap Life". They keep putting off the release date.

[~bl~]

The SoapLife documentary was finished a long time ago. People who donated money to kickstarter received their DVDs, but it was never released to the public.

[allmc2008]

I just looked. There will be a screening in florida plus the world-wide release will be around febuary/march.

[EricMontreal22]

I've been so busy with school crap, and actually having a social life, that I've been reading this book thoroughly in small chunks (also, as I didn't want it to end.) As I and others have said, it's absolutely incredible, and the kind of soap book I've craved for a long time. Of course it helps that it's about one of my two personal fave soaps, but I would read a book like this about any soap.

So first, the things I was disappointed by

Format wise, yes it's self published. The paperback looks nice, but it's disappointing to have no page numbers, no table of contents, and a few printing errors (I believe it's Jill Larsen who they print the same paragraph from twice in different parts, etc.) Who cares--I doubt we'd get a copy otherwise.

This is me admitting to being *lame* but I would have liked a few appendixes. It would be great to actually have, for the first time, a sort of official list of who was EP and who was HW at what years. We do see that Don Wallace was essentially EP from 1968-1971 or 2, for instance, which Wiki and other links don't mention. But I know these details can be hard to come by. (One actor, and now I forget who, mentions that at some time in the early 80s a couple were headwriting and they seemed to have no idea who he was--I assume this was the less than a year the Corrigtons wrote--so I would have loved if they had touched on that.)

And more so, and this is probably justme, it would be nice to have a list at the back that has all the names of the interviewed people, with what role or job they did and what years. They print them when their voice first pops in the book, but seriously a number of the names, even of actors, I really had never heard before, and I had to keep on flipping desperately back to find where it says who they are.

Speaking of--there were some details I always wondered about that I would have like dealt with. Like why there was that odd turn around pre Rauch with Henry Slesar joining on then co-HW with Sam Hall, then the Corringtons, then Hall returning all within a year or a year and a half. I also would have loved more than a small paragraph about the mess of quick HW and EPs after Malone left in 1996. Yes, stuff like this really depends on who Giles was able to interview and what they were willing to talk about, so I can't really blame him, but it would be nice to finally have Malone talk a bit about his return in 2003 or whenever and what happened there--and he did get some great Malone quotes about the other eras. I got the sense that aside from talking about the devestating cancelation, and how ririduclously quick and out of order they had to start filming to keep under budget, and Erika mentioning how bad Higley was (it sounds like she wa the only HW whose work she truly hated,) the actors were loathe to criticize the last ten years' EPs and HWs and what went on there. Part of this though maybe makes sense--everyone seemed to realize how, aprticularly under Frons, it became increasingly a miracle that the show was being made at all and maintaining some srt of quality, so maybe they don't have much blame on the creative staff.

Oh and in the final section about the problem with minorities (which was great) I really felt there should have been SOME mention of "Kish." I wonder if Giles, who to his credit admits he hasn't been a regular viewer in a long time so maybe didn't think to, asked Brad or Scott for interviews, as both seem like they'd be willing to talk.

That's pretty much it--and I feel bad for even complaining, but when we get such great detail about so many of the eras, I guess I want to know it all. Oh, the final 4 page section about the PP online version--I would have loved, for example, if Susan, who speaks a lot in the book, said why she left the show so quickly. But, I know for a fact Giles added that brief section at the very last minute because it happened while he was finishing the book and had probably already done all his major interviews, even if she had been willing to talk about it. I'm glad it's there because, even if the online version doesn't come back, it does end the book on some hope after the bitter chapter about the online deal falling through (which is why they followed it with the original happier last chapter about the show being a family.)

There's so much to talk about in this book, and much of it has been discussed. But I love how it shows that many rumours we've accepted mostly as true are probably just rumours. The actor whoplayed Herb mentions he had heard they wanted him and Judith Light to return at the end as a married couple but she must have said no--then Judith says she was never approached! Linda Gottlieb says that the execs told her Agnes Nixon HATED the gang rape story and tried to stop it, and Agnes said that never happened and they must have wielded her name without her knowledge (which makes sense--if Agnes could handle a sex trafficking story, I'm sure gang rape would be fine.) But then Susan says how they spoke to Agnes about the Vicki DID story and Agnes replies that she never agreed and for personal reasons involving her own father who never sexually abused her but did mentally abuse her she was against it, etc, etc. (and of course the much spoken about here ridiculous thing about Agnes not wanting those "black bitches" front and center at the anniversary party.)

Others on here seemed to think Joe Stuart came off as sounding awful, but compared to Rauch and the way some view Gottlieb he seemed fine from how I read it. Hillary Smith I think says it best about Gottlieb--she loved her but said she should simplyhave never spoken directly to the cast. She sounds blunt to a fault (I wonder what her idea for a whole new kind of soap mentioned actually is...) And Sam Hall came off as a hysterical curmudgeon who, I suspect, enjoyed his job a lot more than he lets on--I loved how one of the last sections ended with a quote from him, something like "I just wrote a play. But I think I hate it. [to interviewer] Why are you laughing!"

I was also surprised at how enjoyable and thoughtful the thoughts from some actors I either never cared for or barely paid attention to were. Like Chris (Michael 2,)( even Brandon Buddy, or Fumero admitting that he sucked as an actor the first year and a half (and Erin Torpey complaining about all the bad actors she was romantically paired with...)

[John]

I believe ET was talking about Brandon Routh (Seth Anderson #1)

[EricMontreal22]

She mentioned several, so I think she could have meant nuChristian as well when he first joined. Routh was pretty awful (he has improved a lot recently though maybe he just works better in the slower paced primetime/movie world.) Did they ever flirt with her and Teddy Sears' as Chad who came on around the same time and was pretty poor as well (and has since had a lot of success in primetime--most recently on Masters of Sex.)

[EricMontreal22]

Also a bit surprised that Claire Labine and her son (Matthew?) weren't interviewed, as she seems pretty forthcoming.

[cassadine1991]

Is it true she didn't have a good time writing OLTL and GL?

[Khan]

IA, Eric. Given her penchant for provocative issues, Agnes Nixon probably didn't object (or wouldn't have objected) to the gang-rape story. And if she did have reservations about Viki's story, then whatever endorsement she gave to Michael Malone and Susan Bedsow Horgan probably had less to do with her assessment of that story and more to do with simply allowing them their vision since, after all, it wasn't as if she had power to stop them from doing it.

[EricMontreal22]

Her and her son HW OLTL but too much interference--though I'm not sure her style would have worked.

[John]

I loved Labine's Todd/Tea and Mel/Dorian. Loved Helen Gallagher as mel's Mama the sex therapist but hated Dorthy Rohm as Mel's daughter

[EricMontreal22]

The gothic story into Dorian's familial past showed a lot of promise, but was cut short I believe. Todd and his parrot (the Labines love their cutesy animal sidekicks) went on too much.

I remember the week they started, I made sure to watch, and the show suddenly had energy again--and humour (though some was kinda odd--Carlotta's sex fantasy sequences over Hank.) But within a month or so you could start to see that various factors were hampering their writing (mainly JFP coming on as an EP sometime then--and I'm sure she hated their style--but I think they are to blame too and didn't feel the show. They also were disappointed that ABC hadn't picked up their original show.)

Wasn't it Elizabeth Rohm--who was the actor's reallife daughter?

[John]

right. Dorthy was the charater