Marj Dusay

[Khan]

 

Same here, @DRW50 (and @Vee).  Passanante started Proteus (and again, to me, it felt like she started it w/o knowing who Proteus was or how it all would be revealed...or anything) and then it was left up to Richard Culliton (and Agnes) to figure out how to tie all the strands together and then bring the story to a climax.

 

It's what the late Hogan Sheffer would have called "a black glove story" -- the kind of mess that often gets lampooned in movies and primetime shows -- and while I, as a viewer, disagreed often and strongly with him, one thing he DID say that I DID agree with was that those stories are often terrible to watch.

 

 

At its' best, AMC was a purely character-driven show; and character-driven storytelling is definitely within Culliton's wheelhouse.  At the same time, however, Culliton struggles to come up with what I would call "watercooler stories" -- the kind of headline-grabbing stuff that other HW's (Agnes, Bill Bell, Doug Marland, even JER to some extent) can dream up to drive viewers' conversations.  Even the stuff he wrote for ATWT, like Lisa's malpractice suit against John, was good, but really lacked the fire that someone like Marland would have brought to it.

 

Culliton can make characters sound and behave like themselves...but that's really about it.  And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't ask him (or his wife) to come up with a gimmicky, Megan McTavish-styled plot, because they're just gonna end up making themselves and their show(s) look like damn fools.

[Vee]

I think when Culliton had good tools and good collaborators (Agnes, above all, who I'd heard was no mere consultant in that period but very involved) he could do very good work. I think much of his AMC proved that. Steering alone we got his GH. But he's not untalented.

 

 

Robin again:

 

 

More from VI:

 

 

[Cat]

This AMC talk makes me wish I had watched during Culliton's era and before that. I got to know AMC primarily via Megan McTavish's second run, aka Babe and the baby switch SL, not to mention Brian Frons' brainchild, the 'Fantastic' Four. Make of that what you will, lol. I felt like I was being force-fed the 'good' characters I 'should' like, so I am curious to know if Nixon and Culliton wrote more shades of grey/leave it up to the audience.

 

Staying with the theme of this thread, Marj seems to have been absolutely beloved by her peers. It is lovely to see all the tributes.

[Vee]

You missed the best.

[Cat]

 

I sensed that back then. 

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[DRW50]

 

I think that McTavish did sort of write some shades of grey (mainly through Kendall), but she also had huge blind spots and was a wrecking ball. Culliton's last run did try for more nuance - Kendall, and also characters like Brooke, who were put in impossible situations and allowed to be flawed. I can't really argue with @Khan that Culliton's writing never had the "pow" factor that AMC may have needed at that point, but it was satisfying for me as a viewer, considering  I'd been just about unable to get through since somewhere around that godawful story where Dixie was essentially shamed and berated by the Martins into having a miscarriage.

[Cat]

 

Thanks! And yikes to the bolded.

 

I liked some of Culliton's work that I have seen on YT re: GL and AW, so I am bummed to have missed his stint here. I think maintaining day-to-day viewer satisfaction as a soap writer must be incredibly difficult, perhaps even more difficult than planning out an umbrella story which culminates in November sweeps. You suggest that this seems to have been a forte of Culliton's on AMC.

[Khan]

 

I would say so, @Cat.  Richard Culliton isn't an unintelligent writer (or person), and his general respect for character and history goes a long way with folks like me.  If I were head-writing a soap, I'd definitely want him and his wife on my staff as associate/breakdown writers.  However, I can't recall a single instance where he, on his own, was able to match that solid, day-to-day writing with a banner storyline the way Nancy Curlee could at GL.  Whenever he's swung for those fences, we ended up watching crap like Embers in the Snow (AW) and the stuff @Vee alluded to about GH.  (Was Culliton responsible for the b.s. about Stefan and the faberge egg, or was that the handiwork of Janet Iacobuzio and Christopher Whitesell?)

[Cat]

 

May be he is too subtle and grounded a writer? Focused on the detail and the characters, which is of course such an asset if you are a breakdown writer. But perhaps didn't have time amid all that detail to take a step back, view the canvas dispassionately and go for some bombast with an umbrella SL and a fancy Sweeps pay-off.

 

Stefan and the egg was early spring 1997 (I looked it up) and Richard Culliton/Karen Harris were co-HWs at that time.

[titan1978]

Culliton was the faberge egg.  Although I think Nikolas gave it to Lulu when it was still either Guza’s team, or when Culliton first arrived and was still using Guza’s projections.  What a disappointing time on GH.  Levinson had done some strong stuff under Riche, then Labine and the first Guza stint (which bleeds into Culliton’s first 6 months).  Then it was just kind of awful or boring or both a lot of the time for a year or so until Guza came back.

 

I think the Cullitons are fantastic script writers.  I also think Carolyn is great at being part of the HW team.  Richard’s time on AMC was entertaining, but as everyone else has stated, he was not a great idea person.  He could wrap it up and clean it up, but not bring the big idea to the table.

 

Vanessa as Proteus might be the best plot driven story he ever did, largely thanks to Marj.

[Khan]

 

Probably.  There are plenty of scribes who are like that; and perhaps, in "simpler times," that would have been enough.  Unfortunately, soaps evolved to a point where you needed the big umbrella storyline -- or, at least, a story that can get even casual fans and the uninitiated buzzing about the show -- in order to compete with everything else; and that's where writers like the Cullitons come up short.

 

Frankly, I think only a handful of writers could deliver on both fronts (the big ideas as well as the day-to-day work).  That's why Nancy Curlee's time on GL was so meaningful for so many.  Not only was she the last of the great scribes to work in daytime, but that work oftentimes seemed to be a synthesis of so many other, terrific HWs: Agnes Nixon, Bill Bell, Claire Labine, Harding Lemay, Henry Slesar, Doug Marland, Pam Long, Pat Falken Smith, Sam Hall/Gordon Russell/Peggy O'Shea, the Dobsons, even Irna Phillips herself.  At her peak, Curlee was scarily good.

 

Otherwise, you have HWs who, like Culliton, are deficient when it comes to big storylines that can excite and engage the audience; or HWs who can be counted on to dream up drum-beating plots, but whose day-to-day writing requires extreme patience on the part of viewers.  (Yes, Jim Reilly and Eileen and Robert Mason Pollock, I'm looking at you.)

[Khan]

 

When the best idea your HWing team (again, Iacobuzio and Whitesell) can come up with is a henchman whose "hobby" is making origami structures from chewing gum wrappers, you KNOW your show is f**ked; and really, I don't think GH has ever come back from that period, either, not even after Guza returned from SUNSET BEACH.

 

You know, I can't even bring myself to call Proteus an actual story, because, until they decided on Vanessa as the mastermind and tied all the threads together, it felt more like a bunch of random b.s. that the show was throwing at itself in the hopes that something would bloom into an actual plot.  Say whatever you will about GL's Fishing Trip Mystery, which Culliton co-wrote with Pam Long -- yeah, it was revisionist to say that, once upon a time, the patriarchs of the Bauer, Chamberlain, Lewis, Reardon and Spaulding families all knew each other and that they participated in the cover-up of Annabelle's mother's death -- but at least that was a story that went somewhere!

[Vee]

Again, I don't think we can discount how heavily involved Agnes Nixon allegedly was as co-head in late '01 through '02. The Vanessa/Hayward family gothic permutations were pure her IMO, and as Khan mentioned, she'd pulled a Proteus reveal before with the Cobra story.

 

And yes to many skilled writers not being cut out for HW. Jean Passanante was one of AMC's worst heads ever (among other shows in her CV), but countless actors and personnel have praised her decades of work on both breakdowns and scripts. That merits some thought when we pigeonhole people. Even Jim Reilly worked at GL in the Curlee golden age.

[Faulkner]

Such a good summing-up of her brilliance. To me, her GL was everything I had ever wanted in a soap. At times, it was quite nearly perfect.

[Khan]

 

Nancy Curlee wasn't just someone who lucked her way into writing soaps and had no idea what they were or how they were written, like Hogan Sheffer or Harding Lemay.  You could tell from her work that she had followed this genre and genuinely loved being a part of it.  It's just a shame that, when she finally made HW, she had to butt heads against a network and sponsor that thought they knew better.

 

 

I definitely believe Agnes Nixon was involved in Vanessa's introduction.  Agnes wasn't officially HW'ing AMC when Jane Elliot and Stephen Caffrey were on as Cynthia and Andrew Preston, respectively.  Yet, as I watched the dynamics unfold between Vanessa and David -- and later, between her and Leo -- I couldn't help but feel I was watching a repeat of that earlier, dysfunctional mother/son relationship, right down to the mother's new marriage to Palmer Cortlandt for reasons of social status and financial security.  (That isn't a knock on Agnes' storytelling abilities, by the way.  She had her pet storylines and character archetypes, because she knew what worked best with viewers.). The circumstances weren't exactly the same -- IIRC, Cynthia was Ross's ex-wife; Palmer never adopted David or Leo; and although Andrew went to prison for killing Alex Hunter, Cynthia wasn't carted off to jail or the loony bin for drug smuggling -- but there still was a sense of deja vu about the whole thing.

 

To me, Agnes' greatest gift was being able to take a show that was in trouble, look at and fix what's wrong with its' canvas and augment it perfectly with her own creations.  I think that's why AW fans still remember her fondly, and why AMC and LOVING always seemed to improve whenever she was its' official HW again.