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OLTL: Michael Malone Interview


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I agree in theory. It was much more romantic to indulge his untold stories in between his two OLTL stints, when he would weave pictures out of thin air for various interviews. When he came back and tried to make some a reality, it was clear that without a strong EP and a solid writing staff that he often could not execute with a great degree of coherence.

In recent years, the rumor became that Roger Howarth opted out so fast that year because supposedly, Malone had intended to do the Todd/Blair "was it rape?" Rashomon story within months of his arrival in 2003 - the story where there's the court case over the question of marital rape or just rough sex. They did it with TSJ a year later and it was horribly executed, right down to Marty coming back to ask Blair if she was really sure she'd been raped. However any of us feel about any of those characters (and I adore Marty), she would never do that. On paper - like many of Malone's ideas - that story could be dynamite. Onscreen it was an abortion. That sums up much of his second run.

That being said, he truly loved OLTL and was largely responsible for my personal golden age with it. He had some clunkers near the end of his first stint, sure, but I loved Antonio and Andy, Angel Square, all of that. I just loved that couple, along with Patrick and Marty. I'd never seen anything like Kamar de los Reyes in his prime back then, let alone soaps. Yes, it was earnest, yes some of it might play cheesy today - so what? It was the '90s, everyone was excited about condoms and safe sex. The Carlo/Poseidon/Men of 21 story may have been wild and woolly and way over the top, but it was still a lot of fun and they were still drawing and creating full characters on the canvas.

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I recall one of his magazine interviews during AW and he said the show did him no favors cause they wouldn't give the money to produce some of his stories! the one I remember is when he wanted one of the female leads, I cant recall who, I think it was Felicia, to fall thru the sky scraper during a gala(disfiguring her face) and NBC and P&G wouldn't fund the money so it had to be scrapped or re-witten, I cant recall!! I would have most liked to see him on GL with Rauch's grand production values and think he would have succeeded! his second tenure on OLTL was not bad at all, but you could tell his stories were being micro managed by frons! day to day I enjoyed his second run on OLTL and would love to see him on Y&R!!

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Felicia did in fact fall through a skylight which tore up her face. That was written to coincide with Linda Dano's facelift. She said she didn't want to do a facelift story, that that was Jeanne Cooper's thing. Maybe they ended up not going all out with the production values.

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The effects for the disfigured story were fine. I don't think the problem with his AW was budget, it was P&G interference and his own lazy, recycled writing. There were a lot of things that just felt hamfisted and shoehorned into the canvas, like Toni's rape storyline, Amanda vindictively plotting against Carl with a bad wig, Shane's 15 personalities, the idiotic story about Grant being elected mayor (which worked, somewhat, with Alex on OLTL, because Alex had always been silly camp, but Grant had never just been camp, so having it as a haha where Bay City actually elected a man who gunned down a beloved police officer [his own brother no less] just did not work at all).

It was all very pseudo-gothic with nothing inside.

I did enjoy Lila, and Paulina's diet pill story wasn't bad, until the end anyway.

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I saw Felicia fall and SOD did a write up with pictures of the shoot, Linda's stunt double and all that. I really don't know how they could have improved upon what we saw. Woman falls through skylight. I think I got it.

Malone, Lemay, Slesar... what other head writers were authors/playwrights?

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Thanks. I found it on deviantart. It's the Fourth Doctor. I wanted something Christmas-related and got lucky.

There are some articles and writeups on FTR in its thread. I think one of the main writers was Leonard Stadd (?), who was also a playwright.

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