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

[John]

Well The Labines had 18 months left on their ABC deal from GH so ABC probably hired them with zero intention of having them being HW for long. Then quickly started peeing on their trees.

[EricMontreal22]

Well I think it had more to do with hiring JFP.

[John]

The Labines began writing in Dec 96 there stuff started airing that March 1997. JFP was hired Dec 1997. Labimes material stopped airing April 1998 when Pam Long took over

[EricMontreal22]

Your point? JFP could have kept them.

[John]

My point is and Claire has said this that is was a fight from the get go at OLTL but she could have handled things better

[EricMontreal22]

...which I never disagreed with...

[John]

I know

[SFK]

Wait, Mel and Dorothy were real-life father and daughter? No way, how the hell could I have missed that.

At any rate, what a boring actor/character. I was surprised when she landed in primetime.

Robin seemed very excited when the Labines delved into the Cramer history but was unhappy with the end result. She didn't know that she'd be playing her own mother in flashbacks which she found difficult, and as much as she was honored to have Marian Seldes as her mother, she said if she had it her way the crazy lady in the attic would not be Dorian's real mother. She pitched the idea that the Cramer sisters weren't biological sisters but their mentally ill "mother" collected children.

[EricMontreal22]

I actually don't remember the end of the story--did the mother die?

And yes--real life daughter. Sheesh, didn't you read the book? First you don't watch the online soaps and now this? SMH so disappointed in you.

[Vee]

Yes, Sonya died.

I loved that story.

[EricMontreal22]

I did love what I saw of it--aside from shortlived stories like the kid Carlotta adopted with HIV (Elijah?) that seemed to disappear, it was the one major story of the Labines era I really felt added to OLTL. And no, I am not forgetting the brilliant Maggie wants to open a circus school storyline...

[antmunoz]

Elizabeth Rohm is not Stephen Markle's daughter in real life.

[Vee]

Sean Ringgold (Shaun Evans): I shot a scene with Donnie Wahlberg yesterday that took 10 hours. I was like, "Dude, I would have done two shows in the time it took for this." I don't feel nervous on set anymore. I'm just like, "Let's do this." I'm nervous when I'm doing auditions, but One Life to Live has prepped me for anything. I had more pressure when Frank Valentini was looking over my shoulder, getting ready to yell "Cut!"

Mark Derwin (Ben Davidson): On my last day, I had 50 pages, and I was on every page. Erika had 58. We stood there and did it all in a day. It was crazy. What kind of work can you do under those conditions?

Patricia Elliott (Renee Divine Buchanan): I remember a day early on when someone had 50 pages, and we all died - nobody thought that was even possible. But toward the end, people were doing 80 or 90 pages, and it showed on the screen. Nobody was taking chances anymore, because you didn't know what was going to be edited out, and the actors would have to meet in wardrobe just to figure out where their characters had been before any given scene. They couldn't keep track. The shows are crippled by a lack of time and an extremely high pressure to produce. Time is of the essence, and it's a different form - you're telling stories about characters over an extremely extended period of time, with a lot of intimate details woven in. It isn't like that on primetime.

Peter Miner: What finished me on One Life was when they cut the dry rehearsal by 45 minutes. I was wiped out in terms of what I could do as a director. When I saw Frank Valentini at the wake for Phil Carey's funeral, he said it perfectly. He said, "You know, what you did was great. But we don't have time to talk anymore." That was it - it was absolutely the case. Everything I cared about in terms of directing was wiped out bit by bit, because we didn't have time to talk anymore, and consequently, the director's ability to collaborate with the actors was lowered. I should have gotten out instantly, because I knew the day the dry rehearsal was cut, the best of what I could do was gone. [...] Phil Carey came to me at one point and said, "You shouldn't be helping these kids [the new directors], because they're just gonna push you out." And he was right! But I didn't care.

Erika Slezak: There was no room for directing. In the old days, you'd have a glorious whole day to rehearse - which other [non-daytime] actors would laugh at, because it wasn't six weeks, but we had a whole day. Directors could give notes, and talk to the actors. The only director who tried later on was Gary Donatelli, especially with the younger actors - he'd remind them that they couldn't just walk in and say their lines; they had to be making choices. Peter was so good that way, but later, there was no time. It became so technical.

Hillary B. Smith (Nora Buchanan): Peter Miner - what a lovely director. The last of the directors who actually sat down with an actor to work with them on a scene. He was so good - he brought performances out of people who were so new, so fresh. The shows were a learning ground for young actors, and in people like Peter, you had directors who would teach and nurture them. But that was when we had 22 items in a day - by the time we finished, we had something like 55 [items]. And they were short - maybe a page. They didn't make sense; they were hard to do. It was very rare that you could sit down to a scene and understand your intent, or the arc.

Thom Christopher (Carlo Hesser): Just look at Peter's cachet. I mean, his father, Worthington Miner. My God. This is a man who comes from theater. I loved Peter - my heart broke when he left the show. He was so wonderful to work with. Even if we only spoke for one or two minutes about a scene, it was exciting.

Peter Miner: It was like the Roman Empire. Everybody was cutting everybody else's throat [at the production level] - everyone wanted to be the executive producer, and I have to say that Frank Valentini, who ultimately ended up in the position, is the nicest of them all. He went through absolute hell to get there. I mean, he was Paul Rauch's assistant. [laughs]

Erika Slezak: The only head writer that I really found was not doing the show a service was Dena Higley. She started out as a house on fire, but after awhile, it was just explosion after rock slide after plane crash - all these disasters, and none of the characters were experiencing any lasting reactions to any of these massive events. [...] Anyway, I knew Frank was unhappy with Dena, because he could never get her to do a long-term story, and one of the questions [in my fan newsletter] was what I thought of her. I responded that the stories were just events, that nothing really happened, and she wasn't doing the show a service. I had no idea how it would spread. I thought it was only going out to my 300 fan club members, but the next thing I knew, I was getting comments from all sorts of people saying I wanted Dena fired. I didn't say that, but she was fired.

Jill Larson (Ursula Blackwell, AMC's Opal Cortlandt): At [AMC] we had writers who'd say, right to our faces, "Character isn't important, and your character is going to do things you don't think they ever would. It doesn't matter. Do it anyway." This one man told me a story about how he was directing a film he'd written, and an actress asked him why her character was doing something, and he said "I don't know." She said, "Never mind, I've got it," and she went ahead and did the scene. He asked her what she'd done to figure it out, and she told him about an acting teacher she'd had who told her that when you're lost like that in a scene, you should just act like you've smelled something really bad - and he said "That's what you guys are going to have to do." Can you imagine a head writer saying that to a group of actors?

Hillary B. Smith: Nora was Jewish, but she ended up with a big huge Christmas tree in her house. I looked at it and said, "Are you kidding me?" It was because they were selling ornaments on HSN or something.

Thom Christopher: By the end, Carlo was no longer Carlo. He became what I call a hinge character, and you have to set aside your ego for that. I knew, once Paul Rauch was no longer producing the show, that the character was going to be sort of bandied about. If a story needed to go in transition, they'd bring him back. But none of the changes made it less enjoyable to play Carlo - I'm too much of an egomaniac. [laughs] I was the Norma Desmond of daytime, always ready for my closeup. And everybody knew it!

Hillary B. Smith: There were definitely times when I didn't like Nora. I actually went to the [EP] and told her that, and she said, "Yeah, me neither." I had to go to the head of daytime and suggest that maybe it was time I moved along. There were times when they wrote her so stridently - I tried to change the lines, and that's when you get tagged as "difficult." So then I'd walk into rehearsal and say the lines verbatim, and people would say, "What? You actually have to say that?" [...] When they started twisting my character around to fit plot, it lost everything - it lost me. I didn't understand Nora anymore, and I guess I was probably branded as difficult, because I was trying to hang onto the integrity of a medium I had grown up with. That I loved. I kept fighting and fighting. I went to bat - I went to the head of daytime after I was given one storyline, and I said "You can't do this. This is something Nora would never do, and it's going to ruin the character. You're going to completely change the dynamic of this couple that's money in the bank for you." But they went ahead and did it [...] Later, they told me I was right. But you can't undo things like that, because the audience has a memory - which was another problem, the fact that they started rewriting history. There was a blatant disrespect, in my opinion, for the history of the show, and the characters, simply to push story along. I mean, I understand it, because you write characters into a corner and you have to do something with them. In defense of the writers, they're putting out the equivalent of three feature films every week. That's a lot. And you'll have some writers who get a character, and some who just don't.

Timothy D. Stickney (R.J. Gannon): I was very heavily involved, in a way that would probably be discouraged most places. I rewrote my dialogue heavily. [...] Eventually the network found out about it, and I became part of a writers' development program, and I wrote a lot. The bottom line for me was that it was a lot of money to write, but I didn't want to be working on the stuff we were doing at the time. My face was on it; that was enough. I didn't want to have my name on it too, and kind of really be responsible. And I started getting scripts that weren't finished, because they knew I'd take care of them. I got a little uncomfortable when I wasn't on contract. You're paying me for the day? You get a day's work. And my day's work is damn good. They tended to put me at the end of the day because they knew I'd get things done quickly.

Suzanne Flynn (writer, producer, etc.): Oh, Tim, he was an angel. He always knew his lines, and you knew you could tell him, "We're not rehearsing - let's go," and he'd be good to go. Unlike, say, Robin Strasser, who could not be rushed. [laughs] She was one of those actors who process - you knew she'd dig in her heels if you tried to move her along.

Erika Slezak: I rewrote an awful lot of stuff, but that wasn't for the first 15 years. As the years went by, I started changing things. I never changed a cue, because that isn't fair to the other actor. [...] When [Mark] Derwin came on the show, he'd knock on my door before rehearsal and say, "Can you give me my changes?" [laughs] [...] So I was given permission to make changes, but I didn't abuse it. I always took the framework of the scene, and I'd stay at home and rewrite it carefully. I'd rearrange the sentences a little bit. I think I was pretty good at it.

Jerry verDorn (Clint Buchanan): I can hear Derwin saying that. I never said that, but I would make sure I was sort of hanging out near the makeup room when Erika was there in the morning, and say, "So, what do you have here?" So I could sort of get my cuts. I'm telling you, they should have paid her a side fee as a writer or an editor, because she was golden. I think Frank Valentini had the wisdom to tap into that, because he knew he was getting more for his money.

Ilene Kristen (Roxy Balsom): I remember Michael Malone complimenting me about a scene - and it was a scene where I'd changed a lot of dialogue, because it just didn't have any edge. Not that he'd written it, but still. [i told him] and he said, "You changed the dialogue? You aren't supposed to do that." And I told him, "Michael, I wouldn't have a career if I didn't change the dialogue." I would have no career anywhere. [...] I sharpened up a lot of dialogue in my life. [...] They let me get away with a lot, because I could usually come up with just a tiny change of a word that made things more interesting. I really worked on this stuff. If the malaprop wasn't sharp enough, I'd change it.

Erika Slezak: Ilene had to rewrite things, because when she came on as crazy Roxanne, they weren't sure who the character was. All they told her was, "She's a drunk and she sleeps around." They never gave her any background. Her first scenes were with me, and she had to establish who Roxanne was. We all speak in our own ways, our own language, and they hadn't given her one. She had to create it herself, and she's very good at it.

Patricia Elliott: I drove people crazy by rewriting dialogue all the time, because head writers would come in that had no understanding of Renee. They'd write lines where she was shocked by someone having an affair or whatever, and I'd have to remind everybody that she'd been a madame. [...] I think that's why I stayed on the show for so long - I fought for that character every inch of the way. [...] Over the last 10 years, I'd learn lines and know they'd never make it on camera. They'd be cut for time or whatever. Unfortunately, it was always the most interesting stuff - the stuff that explained behavior. All you'd end up with was plot. By then, I was grateful I was getting my health insurance, but I had one foot out the door. I had never worked that way in my life. I still gave it my all when I was on the set, but in terms of making any emotional investment? I couldn't, because I couldn't trust that there would be anything to put the investment into. That was just sad. You do come to care about your character, and when they just ignored Renee, it was personally very painful.

Robert S. Woods: [The budget cuts] affected the writing sometimes. You'd say, "Why are we having this conversation on this set?" And they'd say, "Because it's up." A lot of scenes were done in the hospital snack bar or cafeteria or whatever it was. That always used to crack me up.

Roscoe Born (Mitch Laurence): Ryan's Hope had a kitchen behind the bar with real burners. When they cooked something, they really cooked it - you saw the steam. The bar had real kegs. There would be scenes when a guy would be washing the dishes. I mean...that's the stuff you learn as an actor. Actions say something about your character. And if you're not doing something, that says something too. All that got lost - there was no time for it. They didn't want to work it out, and after awhile, the actors didn't want to do it because it was just half-assed. It becomes an accident when something real happens. When it got to the point when we couldn't really rehearse anymore, I didn't want to rehearse at all, because one-sixteenth of rehearsal is so superficial that nothing can happen. I wanted to either be totally prepared or totally wing it. That's what I learned when I came back in 2002: Well, we don't have the time to do the work we used to do, and to pretend otherwise is just self-defeating.

Ilene Kristen: Yeah, maybe it should have been something different. I heard this a lot - oh, it's going downhill, nobody's watching. Yeah, yeah. You think nobody's watching? Really? You just act out there like nobody's watching. I'm going to act like millions of people are watching. The world is falling apart? We've still gotta dance.

Erika Slezak: But we had to do it that way, and this is the brilliance of Frank Valentini - it saved money. Frank was so good at that, because he wanted nothing more than to keep that show on the air. I know that what our budget was, and what Frank had to bring it down to, was phenomenal. I think he took it from $58 million to $40 million, and he said he could cut it even more - but it was still more expensive than doing a talk show about God knows whatever. I love that man so much; he's so talented.

Suzanne Flynn: Extra takes happened more often than anyone would like to admit. [laughs] But it would never happen because of one thing - you know, one take could get messed up because of [sound, lighting or a flubbed line]. Over time as the pace increased, there was definitely less time to correct things like that - but part of [Frank's] genius was that if he felt like a scene needed another take, he'd give it to you regardless of anything else. He'd still try different things - he'd be out there on the floor. That's why we tried to do so many first takes, so we could let production slow down if it had to. Frank loved that show, and everyone knew it - and if we were there late, he was right there with us. He grew up with [OLTL]; he came up under Paul Rauch, so he saw everything, and he remembered what he saw.

Erika Slezak: As the years went on, we'd rehearse earlier and earlier. Phil [Carey] would grumble, "God, it's Slezak time." He did not like getting up early.

Ilene Kristen: I loved Phil. He complained every [!@#$%^&*] day. Every day! There was no making Phil happy. We got along well, but Phil was a character. There was no pleasing him.

Erika Slezak: I remember Marcia Cross (Kate Sanders) being livid that I got to be up first [for taping]. I thought, "Jeez, lady, come on - you've been here for five minutes, I've been here for 20 years."

[DRW50]

Thanks. The comments about rewriting lines are very interesting, because the general idea is that actors don't do that. Clearly they do.

Pat Elliott's comments were what stood out for me most.

Pretty sure we know what story HBS is referring to.

[Vee]

Things had apparently altered considerably since the days of Ellen Holly. She told a story in her book about writing a bit for the show, or wanting to - I can't recall which - but I believe Doris Quinlan eventually told her that they'd have to pay her a second fee as a writer and they couldn't do that. That was likely back in the '70s.