Hogan Sheffer dies at 61

[ChitHappens]

 

Oh, I saw it in your list.  NA was my very first Daytime super fave!  

[Contessa Donatella]

Awwww. She was a very talented lady.

[P.J.]

 

 

I don't blame Colleen for appreciating the opportunity to drive story. Barbara got stuck in a rut for at least five years before Hogan came aboard. Getting knocked up by 'ol  Johnny Dixon wasn't exactly a barnburner.

 

It's not even that I hated Sheffer's stuff. (How could I, when I got some awesome CarJack from him?) I just grew more and more frustrated by his choices.

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, first & foremost, we have to remember that she (Passanante) wasn't really at ATWT very long. She hadn't written for any soap for a good while when she was made HW at AW. Goutman was made EP at AW & didn't want Laiman but was stuck with her. That leadership - MADD, Goutman, Laiman, Passanante - was at AW from October 1998 through May 25, 1999. Goutman came immediately from AW to
ATWT. A month later Passanante & Eplin joined Goutman, over from AW. While Laiman went to AMC for a time.

[Much crew & staff & set pieces & costume pieces were also transferred to ATWT rather than to GL or to be gotten rid of. Later ATWT moved into AW's Brooklyn studio.] Meanwhile Goutman was with MADD searching for a new HW & Hogan Sheffer was a potential golden boy she was after. As fans we were very exciting at the idea of a Writer who had not been recycled to death. As fans we were already leery of writers being used over & over again.

 

It was in all of the soap press as well as all of the scuttle-butt & rumors that they were hot on the trail of someone to be ATWT's new HW with them seriously looking & thinking about someone who would be New Blood.

 

When ATWT suddenly had buzz & a presence at the Emmys again & won an Emmy, Laiman was a part of the writing team, literally, for being at the right place at the right time: ... She proceeded to get thoroughly drunk & wrap herself around her Emmy at the party.

 

There was one thing I respected Laiman for: But, she dug in & stuck to her guns that there was NO way Holden wouldn't have known the difference between Lily & Rose while having sex with her.

 

That is such an overdone soap trope. But they went forward with it, anyway!

 

But the fact that Hogan found out from a message board 6 months in as a writer for ATWT that John was Margo's father, well, that proved that Leah had peeps too separated - writers from actors, writers from history and writers from characterization!

 

But, one of the biggest problems today is that we don't let the storytellers do their jobs. We don't let the creative people do what they do. And, by the storytellers, the creative people, I mean more than just the writers and HWs. I mean the whole creative team. It's true that largely fans think of the history of the show & the integrity of the characters as primary assets, while some HWs & MADD & some others in the industry actually think of that as constraints that keep them from doing what they want to do.

 

There you have that conflict in today's daytime drama business between economic aesthetics and creative aesthetics.

 

We could sum that up by calling micromanaging the primary fault.

Harking back to the 3 writers listed above, I don't think Reilly
is a good storyteller because he's lazy & doing things a cheap repetitive way is always going to be there as a vehicle for him to use as long as he's given complete control. Guza can be a good storyteller but only with someone else having control of boundaries. Same true of Hogan.

 

I would suggest that soap fans do not have a 'blanket upset' at rewrites - just at bad rewrites. If it weren't for rewrites would there be a Snyder family on ATWT? For example, when Jack was telling JJ about spending time out at the farm with Holden, riding horses, etc. is that the same myth that couldn't have happened since Jack & his family lived in Chicago & didn't come to Oakdale?

 

Speaking of Leah Laiman, while I am, she was the whole deal, part & parcel, behind AW's Lumina storyline complete with magic & mystery & David Andrew MacDonald playing 2 parts where one was wealthy classy David Halliday & the other was badly disfigured (Think Phantom of the Opera) Jordan Stark who was after both Rachel & her daughter Amanda.

That isn't even the tip of the iceberg! Rose "paying" for her small sin of
leading Paul and Dusty along by being murdered ...

 

The Dusty thing KILLED me. I could NOT believe I actually heard him
utter the words that he hadn't been to college. What???!! He went to
London to study abroad, with the hopes of going into medicine

 

It was definitely going to be a more of that for awhile, but they were
eventually going to deal with the Holden/Molly redux and then more Dusty and Lily as she tried to grieve through singing. The Lily part of the story I agree was hard to take, but there was more to it, and that I
miss.

 

But, Lily DID do things in bed she'd not done before. And, we don't know that she 'agreed to' in the sense that Holden asked & she agreed to. I presumed it was likely that she volunteered by beginning to do so! Why would someone separate that from it? It's all one issue.

 

"Once Chris took off the training wheels, we were set up for a train wreck."

 

Only we didn't get a train wreck: we got a roller coaster ride. Great highs, awful lows, very little in between. If we'd gotten a train wreck, plain & simple, we wouldn't be discussing this after this much time.

 

"The whole family was very specific about his visits and
he talked of his crush on Molly when he was 14 and she and Holden
were 16.  That's why I don't consider it a rewrite, more of a
revealing of his back story.  Like I let them get away with Sabrina
being alive. That sort of thing is okay.  It's when they come up
with things like Iva having twins and not remembering it, no matter
how plausible they try to make it I ain't buying."

 

Now, I didn't have any trouble with Iva not remembering having had twins. To me it was just yet another soap opera retcon. But, I wasn't watching when Jack's supposed past was changed & paraded around, so, of course, I found it dubious.

 

Because I have read many times here that stories (although rarely are any details given) were unceremoniously dumped when higher-ups perceived that they would not  be well-received. 

 

" I'll admit, when I heard the story was scrapped, I was partly relieved.
I could NOT stand the Lily part of the story, and hearing how long it
was going to drag on scared the living daylights out of me. However,
dumping the part where Holden and Molly got some backbone, story, and romance (and we lost Lesli) _really_ upset me. "

 

 

 

What choices? I mean, which ones?

[BetterForgotten]

The thing that annoys me most about people like Sheffer and Casiello (other than the fact they clearly didn’t give a sh!t about the backstory for each character) is that they used and continue to use the fact the characters like Craig and Barbara did some shady things in their past as a justification for making them complete monsters for plot purposes. They refused to accept that characters are more complex than that and if you’re going to reinvent  them, it needs to be gradual and the motivations can’t be paper thin.

 

It was was a cheap route to go into that direction with these characters, and irritating that they failed to see why a vocal segment of fans were put off by this.

[teplin]

Deadline posted a (short!) article on Sheffer's death yesterday:

 

https://deadline.com/2019/10/hogan-sheffer-dead-at-61-1202749875/

[Khan]

 

Craig underwent a TREMENDOUS amount of growth during his romance with Sierra.  And viewers ate up every moment of that [!@#$%^&*] like candy, too.  Even Y&R's Lauralee Bell (Christine) has gone on record saying how much she enjoyed watching those two BITD. 

 

To see it all undone, and Craig revert to his old ways (and worse) with little or no justification, was just a(nother) slap in the face to longtime fans.

[DRW50]

 

What always got me were the fans who insisted that that was the "real Craig" and went on and on about how anything after that was just wrong. 

 

The amount of time that was spent by fans and soap magazines trying to pass off Hunt Block smacking his lips, mewling, and looking bored out of his mind as brilliant soap was one of the reasons I quit watching with zero regret. 

 

I still remember when the hacks at the soap magazines praised the show's "humor" for having Craig make fun of Jack being sexually assaulted. This is what soaps became, and it is why they are now dead.

[BetterForgotten]

I'd really love to know what MADD saw in him when she handed ATWT over to him almost untested. If I remember correctly, Sheffer mentioned that P&G gave him the option of which show he wanted to write for (ATWT or GL). He obviously said he didn't care for either show, but said he found ATWT boring as hell and the male characters completely neutered, so he chose it as he felt he could mix it up. 

[Contessa Donatella]

If I remember correctly that is when Cady McClain was dating Hunt & she praised him to the sky & back, called him an iconoclast, etc. I liked Cady before when she was paired with Michael E. Knight & playing Dixie, instead of when she was playing Rosanna. I like her now for her memoir, for her work as a Director and for being married to Jon Lindstrom.

[Khan]

 

IIRC, too, he said ATWT was more realistic at that point than GL, which was split between the Santos mob and the San Cristobel group.

[Contessa Donatella]

Part of it was that they wanted to pair him with Goutman & Goutman was being moved from AW to ATWT.

[BetterForgotten]

Goutman had already been at ATWT for about a year and AW was long canceled.

 

Leah Laiman (who did come over with Goutman from AW) was atrocious, so I can't say I blame them for wanting her gone like yesterday. Oddly, I think the small period when FMB was fired and Goutman overlapped with Lorraine Broderick (it was about a month) did show some promise in the summer of 1999. 

[Mitch]

From that Cassilo (sp?) guy it was the network that forced Hogan on the show. I thought his first year, as others did was good, as ATWT was such a snooze fest that he work it up, but what I really hated was that the soap industry and the soap press were flipping out that a failed screen writer from GASP Hollywood was joining the show! The soaps had become such a creative backwater that they acted like the AV Club had suddenly got the Quaterback to join. I think his Hollywood cred drove the soap "press" to over praise.

 

Hogan's sense of humor would have been a better fit for GL which was always less uptight then ATWT..maybe he would have canned San Crud and the Mob!

[victoria foxton]

Since Hogan's passing. I rewatched some his ATWT online. There's a lot HB's Craig. He is so hard to take. HB's Craig was a completely different entity. Hunt Block would never ever do this. https://youtu.be/nRM84dxzdy0    

Please register in order to view this content