Jill Farren Phelps Interview

[prefab1]

 

I totally agree with you, Mitch. Ideally a soap should have a balance of suspense--the factor that keeps you tuning in tomorrow to see what happens next--and character-based scenes, the factor that keeps you tuning in each day to see the more mundane interactions between your favorite characters. 

 

All in all, I think GL did a pretty good job of balancing the two modes of soap opera during JFP's run. I started watching GL during the later part of her run, which I know a lot of viewers hated. It was actually the Matt and Vanessa story in the summer of 1994 that got me hooked, and I remember loving later outlandish suspense plots like Brent/Marian, but I also loved watching the everyday interactions between complex characters like Holly, Roger, Jenna, Dinah, Bridget, and Vanessa. 

[KMan101]

 

And that's when we lose interest. It's tedious seeing weekly shootings, explosions, stabbings, kidnappings, etc. We know they aren't going anywhere. 

 

Soaps used to build up to these events and create stakes and make us care.

 

This. Agreed with Mitch too.

 

Balance would be nice. I CRAVE the mundane interactions at this point.

[prefab1]

This reminds me--I came across this clip from the JFP-era of GL a few days ago, and I thought it was absolutely riveting, even though it deals with fairly minor plot points (e.g. I couldn't care less whether Alex attended Nick and Mindy's wedding). You don't see many scenes like this one on soaps today, because only a few of them bother to write their characters with this degree of complexity; you really get to see a ton of facets of Vanessa's character in this four-minute scene, and Maeve Kincaid plays it for all it's worth. 

 

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[Mitch]

Great scene, and proves that JFP's GL had life after Mo's death...(if only it was Bev and Maeve in those scenes.) Also, it makes me again think why they didn't cast Van in the Alex role later on when they let Marj go. By that time Alex was so tainted with the Nick/Mindy crap and Marj's schreeching...Van was a much needed grey character who could play the game as well as anyone if she had to and could threaten without raising her voice.

 

And yes, a mundane thing like a wedding reception is tied into the bigger plot (the battle for Spaulding) with reminders of family and community connections.

[KMan101]

 

This.

 

They totally declawed Vanessa and drove Maeve out. I imagine better writers would have gone in that direction (if allowed, mind you).

 

This.

 

It's a good scene. Time just isn't taken on a regular basis to really deepen a character. Every so often we get bones thrown our way ... Maeve says a lot with her eyes. I feel like so many actors just don't bother, they're playing themselves and reading lines.

 

Even Marj is checked in and good. I argue she could have played Alex more 'in character' and better than she gave. She just has a different energy to her as an actress and it clashes with who Alexandra is.

 

Jill Phelps needs great writers who are allowed to write so she can produce the hell out of it. I agree with others, I think she gets that and it's why she keeps saying the GL writers were the best she worked with. They were and she produced the hell out of it.

 

But then 'focus groups' and interference ...

 

I wouldn't be surprised if she looks at GH with mixed feelings. It was a hot mess and she has to know that. Guza had control. Frons had control. I doubt she had as much control as we thought. I do wonder if under different writers what GH would have been, but she'd probably still make the same calls. I believe most of it was Frons. "You fire her or you get fired" is probably how a lot of his conversations started LMAO

Edited June 29, 2021 by KMan101

[Liberty City]

 

Damn. Marj Dusay and Maeve Kincaid were marvelous; it's a shame embodied actors, like as these two, were merely wall props in the final years of Guiding Light.

 

 

Brian Frons was overall bad at ABC Daytime. Angela Shapiro leaving ABC Daytime for ABC Family was such a poor decision, but, she made the right one for herself.

[titan1978]

I have such a hard time seeing Marj as Alex.  I loved her on AMC.  It’s just hard for me as a viewer to go from BM to what Alex became.

 

Maeve Kincaid really was given the chance to shine during Curlee’s era on the show.  She got to be an accomplished woman with deep relationships.  And sometimes (especially with Billy and Nadine), you would get to see some of that nasty side.  She played calculating well too.

 

There are times that I think that era of GL was almost perfect soap opera, the Calhoun period into JFP’s  The Blackout.

[Mitch]

I agree...I think that it WAS perfect..or as perfect as it could be..during that time. Then the wheels came off..fast.

 

Maeve was one of those performers that none of the soap mags was going to rave on as she did not chew scenery.  Van was declawed when she married Billy under Long and  I have a feeling it was to allow Alex to be the rich sophisticated and at times lethal woman in town. With Bev gone Maeve was the natural replacement especially as she was in a position with feet in both Spaulding and Lewis. I would have loved for her when she came back post resurrection..instead of wanting to have a baby to reenergize her professional life and break away from Lewis Oil, where the boys ruled supreme and gone to Spaulding to take on Alan and Annie and then...secretely while pitting Spaulding vs. Lewis, mange to force a merger where she had majority control. So much better then her sighing away and have Matt going after hoochie woman Beth who called Van "old" At least that would NEVER have happened during JFP.

[titan1978]

I never thought any soap would kind of ascend above how I felt about Labine’s GH- but my last year or so watching almost all of Curlee/Demorest/Reilly/Broderick’s run, it might be my favorite soap period.  Not only was the major cast almost perfect, but there was a real balance of types of stories and characters.  Multigenerational, rich, middle class, poor, strong women and a real sense of community that makes sense- it’s all I really want in a soap.  I even like Dylan, who may not be the strongest actor but he fits into that mold of a character I think a soap needs to have.  Beth stories of that time might be the only ones I just don’t care for.

 

Nothing broke my heart like Labine’s GH- and that’s okay.  Because with that version of GL I had heartbreak and triumph and flat out entertainment.  For how much I loved Laura, Monica, Robin, Lucy, Brenda, and Lois, I equally now love KS’s Mindy, Vanessa, Bridget, Nadine, Gilly, Bev’s Alexandra, Harley, Maureen, Jenna, Holly, Eleni and especially Sherry’s Blake.  So many great female characters.

[Faulkner]

That’s exactly how I feel. If it somehow managed to have LGBT characters (not necessary but would have been great), it would be my idea of soap perfection.

[kalbir]

I didn't watch GL for very long, Spring 1989 to Summer 1992, but I'm so glad I was able to see that era live as much as school would allow and then online years later.

[MichaelGL]

Can you imagine how much greatness we would’ve witnessed had someone like Lorraine Broderick (and Wisner Washam who once worked on the writing team) was there to take the reigns from Curlee/Demorest. So disappointing.

[Liberty City]

 

I feel like Lorraine Broderick is over-looked as a writer. I mean, her final months of All My Children were very paced and felt great, and felt like her stories could've gone on had the soap not ended. Up until the gunshot rang, she kept a pace at that soap that was brilliant and overdue.

[wonderwoman1951]

my favorite moments are two people in any gender combination, just talking. so many examples, but three that come immediately to mind:

 

gl:

ross and ed talking the morning of ross and blake’s wedding

 

and two from ryan’s hope:

maeve talking with siobhan as siobhan realizes that her husband, joe, is in the mob.

 

and a conversation between jack and matthew pearse about pearse’s daughter, rose.

[Paul Raven]

The only bomb that would need to go off at the baby shower would be something along the lines of a reveal that the mommy to be had been screwing around and lying about the paternity or she's faking a pregnancy etc...