Nelson Aspen Interviews Veteran soap scribe, Janet Iacobuzio

[John]

Its funny Days got the good SW from OLTL (Janet & Melissa) but GH got the worst OLTL SW (Stickles, Flynn, who was a producer at OLTL and many more)

[LeClerc]

So did I. Even when I saw the definition I figured she must have mistakenly meant it as an insult too lol. It does seem though that, despite their other issues, Guza and Pratt were very good to their staff writers. I was surprised when Kate Hall said Pratt was her favorite headwriter at AMC HW to work for. Also this was 1998, before Guza really became completely full of himself and started dressing like Elton John.

I take it you didn't see Janet's co-headwriting stint at GH.

[John]

I didnt think the 96-97 GH was bad. It was darker I do remember Tony Geary had fights with the cullitons. I dont know how he felt about Chris & Janet's gig as HW

[KMan101]

Very true. I'm grateful DAYS has some (very) talented script writers because I think with less talented script writers, DAYS wouldn't be as entertaining on a daily basis, TBH. The scripts often really seem to save the day as the storylines themselves aren't always, IMO, the most interesting.

It's obvious the poor writing talent at GH. I've been screaming they have poor SWs for a while now. Most need to be replaced. The dialogue is atrocious at times and it's obvious when a weaker SW has scripted the episode.

[cassadine1991]

from what I have seen the Cullitons, Salmons and even Janet are very good SWs and BWs and AHWs

[cassadine1991]

aren't several of these horrible HWs work a whole lot better as breakdown writers, script writers and associate head writers?

[John]

Jean is best as a BW i have found

[KMan101]

Some writers just aren't meant to be head writers, IMO. Some work very well as script writers, and break down writers.

[sungrey]

Agreed. Days is a mess in a lot of areas, but it does have very good script writers. It's similar to Santa Barbara in its golden years; I could always tell when Patrick Mulcahey wrote a script within five minutes.

[John]

Part 3

http://www.welovesoaps.net/2014/07/catching-up-with-janet-iacobuzio-part-3.html

[LeClerc]

Oh I enjoyed Culliton's run at GH (well, minus dumping the Stefan/Barbara pairing for Stefan/Kat, which I assume he was forced to do) . I've never understood why his tenure so was poorly received and what was so bad about it that Geary was driven to violence. Maurice Benard was also quite public in his dislike of Culliton's writing.

But Iacobuzio and Whitesell's stuff was pretty bad IMO. They were left a great set-up in the Pierce Dorman murder mystery and they made the killer some random henchman with a passion for origami. They seemed to be setting up an interesting story with an Aztec doll Maxie found in Texas and a mystery man who wanted the doll for himself following Felicia and the girls back to PC. Turned out he was just a nice guy who wanted the doll and everything was smoothed over when Felicia had him stay for dinner. Then there was Mac's doppelganger. Endless filler sequences of Dara singing at the Outback. Lucky and Nikolas reduced to bland teen stories about planted test answers and condoms with Sarah and Liz. They made Stefan's master plan an unspecific generic plot to achieve "world domination" from his laptop....

I'll cut them a bit of slack as I imagine interim regimes are hard to do.

[cassadine1991]

What about Culliton's time at AMC?

[EricMontreal22]

Culliton's time at AMC was an improvement on Passanante's and had a LOT of great setup and character work. But storylines were confusing (Proteus--though I guess he inherited some of that) and there was a TON of dropped stories and characters (like Timmy's return only for him never to be mentioned again.) Of course that probably was not entirely his fault, but...

LOL for realz?

[John]

I loved Sam Page as AMC's trey and Frons mandated that the new HW after Cullinton dump him . I wish they would have brought that character back down he line

[SouthOfSoap]

Quite surprised by all the love for Iacobuzio - she isn't terrible, but she is quite easily the worst SW at DAYS imo.

In quality terms, she can't compete with Salmons, The Cullitons, Ford or even the highly variable Cherrill.