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Форум » Информационный раздел » Информация, интервью » Happy anniversary, ‘Santa Barbara’! Перевод Джой (Интервью Патрика Малкэхи по случаю двадцатипятилетия СБ.)
Happy anniversary, ‘Santa Barbara’! Перевод Джой
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:09 | Сообщение # 1
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By Nelson Branco

2009-08-06

Fasten your soap belts: Emmy winner Patrick Mulcahey remembers penning one of the most beloved soap operas of our time! Plus: His thoughts on the soap world today



He’s been called the William Shakespeare of soap opera.

No pressure or anything.

Mr. Patrick Mulcahey, who is currently penning scripts for the very lucky The Bold and the Beautiful, became a boldface name after “scribbling” the trials and tribulations of some of the most dysfunctional characters in daytime history on shows such as Texas, Loving, Guiding Light, and General Hospital.



But it’s the four-time Emmy and three-time Writers’ Guild Award winner’s work during Santa Barbara’s unrivaled heyday that prompted fans to stand up and take notice of the poetic, lyrical writer.

Thanks to Mulcahey’s incomparable prose, passion for subtext and irony, sinful — and deeply sick — sense of humour, keen ability of understanding the human condition despite our immense flaws, Mulcahey has transcended the medium and been able to connect with his audience like no one has before. Consequently, he’s been able to elevate the level of serial writing to new artistic heights that will probably never be achieved again.

But what is Mulcahey’s greatest contribution to the soap opera art form? That’s easy — it’s the artist’s refusal to pander to the lowest common denominator, and his unwavering and irreverent love of and loyalty to the human soul. These unbelievable accomplishments in an industry built to destroy those ideals have inarguably qualified him for the most revered status as the greatest writer in soap opera history. Saints or Sinners, his ass! Anyone who has been lucky to witness his beautiful monologues and/or dialogues knows that the aforementioned is not hyperbole. If CBS really cared about soaps, they would employ Mulcahey to teach head writers how to, um, write for starters.
So who the hell is this talented bastard? Born in Oswego, N.Y. — “right across the lake from Toronto in the second largest port in that area; we thought Canada was the Promised Land” — the Pisces left for Yale University to pursue the life of a tortured writer. From there, the former National Spelling Bee contestant accidentally found his way to the wacky world of soap opera. Alas, it’s a fate that has haunted him every since! And so here we are.

TV Guide Canada opted to connect with our greatest writing idol, Mulcahey, who earned the first annual TV Guide Canada’s Irna Phillips Soap Opera Spirit Award for outstanding contribution to the soap opera art form, to help celebrate Santa Barbara’s bittersweet 25th anniversary (the NBC soap debuted on July 30, 1984 before signing off the sudsy airwaves on Jan. 15, 1993) and honour its iconic legacy. The beloved soap opera, which aired in over 40 countries and won 24 Daytime Emmy Awards and 18 Soap Opera Digest Awards, celebrated its 25th anniversary this past week. We also dished about how he became an accidental soap writer, why he is not necessarily mourning the cancellation of GL, his thoughts on the industry’s impending death, and why working with Marcy Walker (ex-Eden, SB) may just be one of the most intensely rewarding connections he has ever experienced in the soap hemisphere.

TVGuide.ca: It’s been 25 years since those kooky Capwells and Lockridges entertained us on a daily basis. Does it feel like forever since Santa Barbara last aired?

Patrick Mulcahey: [sighs] To me, sometimes it feels long, and other times, it feels like it was just yesterday. It’s a funny story of how I was first introduced to Santa Barbara. I had such a bad experience when I left GL the first time to write Loving with Douglas Marland — along with this awful, awful show we did for Showtime called A Day in Eden — that I swore off soaps forever. I was planning to move to San Francisco, which I finally did and where I currently reside, but I was still in Connecticut where I found myself one night at a reading of a play I wrote. Clearly, I hadn’t gotten the memo that you can’t earn a living as a playwright at the time! That night, I met a pretty blond woman who acted as our audience. Afterwards, I walked her home because we were headed in the same direction.



TVG: [laughs] Sounds like a likely story …

PM: [Acknowledging the irony] Exactly! She told me she was moving to California to take a part on a new show called Santa Barbara, which I didn’t know anything about. Even though I was connected to soaps, my head was focused on moving to California to write plays and screenplays, make a few million dollars and receive world adulation. As we were walking down the street, these cars began slowing down near us. Finally, one driver rolls down her window and screams, “Die Liza, you bitch!” [Laughs hysterically] So that was my introduction to the famous Marcy Walker, whom I didn’t know was famous at that point. Clearly, she was very hated as Liza on All My Children. She finally moved to L.A. to take the SB job just as I moved to San Francisco to take a relationship, which almost immediately went down the toilet. I was going to wait tables because that’s the only other thing I knew how to do other than write. Unfortunately, as I get to San Fran, I learned there was a restaurant strike. I refused to cross the picket line, so luckily, I got a call from someone named Bridget Dobson asking me to write for a new show called Santa Barbara. I was desperate because I was self-employed and I couldn’t rent an apartment. I finally found a seedy place on 16 and Mission in the worst neighbourhood imaginable. I had to give five years of tax returns to be able to rent this crappy apartment where people were being shot on a daily basis! So I told Bridget, I would take the job. After figuring out how much I would be paid, I started immediately.

VG: And the rest is history. Let me get this straight: we have your bad accounting and a restaurant strike to thank for your unforgettable contributions to Santa Barbara!

PM: Yes, I’m afraid.



TVG: Do you think Santa Barbara was ahead of its time? How do you think the show would be received today?

PM: It’s so hard to imagine Santa Barbara still being on the air today. They would never let us do now what we got away with then. We had a 16-share back then in the Nielsens — a number executives would kill to have today — but throughout our run we were always in the ratings basement. Soaps were still a cash cow back then so NBC kept us on the air. We tried anything to get our numbers up, and because Bridget and Jerome Dobson were nuts, we did do everything! They were adventurous writers and amazing to work with. Don’t dare them to try anything because they really will!

You see, Douglas Marland and Bill Bell wrote a show for viewers who watched every day. Their narratives were very dense in texture. One of the hallmarks of their style was that a line of dialogue had to include three or four names in it! Somehow, the audience would follow all of that. The audience wasn’t poetic, so they were drawn in [in the literal sense]. Viewers got their payoff because they could understand what lies were being told that day, and what the movements were of the characters off camera because the writing was so detailed. [Conversely], if you watched Santa Barbara every day, it was incomprehensible! But I’ll tell you, twice a week we soared …

TVG: Why do you think Santa Barbara didn’t attract a more loyal following? One of the soap’s first reviews opined, “it’s the worst show on television … maybe ever.”

PM: Remember when Augusta cooked her daughter Laken’s homing pigeon for her daughter’s dinner? [Laughs] That was Bridget and Jerry for you. When people saw that, they immediately made up their minds that the show would never last. From the beginning, we didn’t inspire a loyal following. Also, our original cast was pretty terrible. We had to weed them all out. We had all these terrible identical blonds on our show, which our producer at the time, wanted to keep. So one of the first things we did was write in a serial killer who killed blond women! [Laughs] Needless to say, after that our cast vastly improved.

TVG: I bet the Santa Barbara writing room was a fun place to work.

PM: We had a blast but I wrote scripts from home. Back then I had to FedEx scripts to the Dobsons. But regardless, immediately Bridget, Jerry and I fell in love. Man, when you had their trust — that really counted for something, you know? I would get assigned outlines scotched by the network, whole pages crossed out, with comments like, “Patrick, write something else,” in the margins. God, I’ll never get that kind of liberty ever again. As a writer to have the luxury of writing one hour of television where you could write whatever you damn well wanted, well … After a bit, they asked me if I wanted to write outlines with Chuck Pratt Jr. Once a week, I would fly down to the Dobsons’ beautiful home in Bel Air, California, to thrash out a week’s worth of shows with Jerry and Chuck. We were a good team. Chuck was the idea machine and I was the “yes-or-no man.” Later, I started editing scripts before New World locked out Bridget and Jerry from their own show. Let me tell you, editing the show made a lot of writers pissed off at me!

TVG: I bet. When you left Santa Barbara in 1990, Guiding Light hired you as a co-head writer, right?

PM: Yes. It remains the most creatively consistent, fulfilling soap opera writing experience of my entire career. Alas, when my partners-in-crime Stephen Demorest and Nancy Curlee were canned as my co-head writers, then it became an awful experience. I don’t even want to talk about that time ...

TVG: Why does it seem like a soap opera can only sustain a creative high for only two years?

PM: You’re right. The answer is: daytime is just hard. It takes a lot of energy and hours. We work very hard. And sometimes you’ll work very hard and still produce a really bad show. Chemistry is a fleeting thing. You can see it between actors. You can take [a super-couple like] Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans and pair them on another show in different roles — and it doesn’t work. The same thing happens with writers. Nancy, Stephen and I had chemistry. We wrote all the outlines together for GL. And Nancy was a wonderful, wonderful poetic and natural storyteller. She was a terrific person to work with. I think she just burned out, which unfortunately happens a lot in this little business of ours. It’s a good observation, really: the confluence of energies that makes for a really good show is impermanent and will only last for around two years without a serious drop in quality.

TVG: GL never recovered after you, Nancy, Jim Reilly, and Stephen left. Ever.

PM: The time with Nancy, Stephen and myself was the most artistically satisfying time in my career — and the most rewarding for the viewer every day. Santa Barbara was just getting going when Bridget and Jerry were locked out — that was our heyday. Afterwards, we were given a succession of head writers who didn’t understand the show. Consequently, huge power struggles ensued. At that time, I was editing the show. We, as the old writing team, Bridget’s and Jerry’s, basically decided that never mind the clueless head writer, we’d write the show the way we saw fit, because we were there before them — and we’d be there long after they were fired! [Laughs] I can’t believe we had the audacity to usurp the head writers’ power, but we did it so well that they let us! The head writers tore their hair out, but we happily did it anyway! At that time, Santa Barbara was still experiencing epic highs. I remember one show where I wrote the entire episode in iambic pentameter. Is that crazy or what? I wrote some rhymed couplets because I knew some actors would get it. I didn’t want it to sound like Shakespeare; I wanted it to sound like speech and that’s what happened. That was the episode called “The Capwell Zone” when Greg conks out and has a dream where everyone is an alien.



TVG: Remember that! Brilliance! Santa Barbara was Shakespeare on crack!
PM: And remember Mason and Julia’s wedding? Those heights were easy to achieve because we had such a great cast and directors. Our stories were better forgotten, but our individual episodes were standouts.

TVG: What was your favourite storyline on Santa Barbara?
PM: Eden and Cruz’s first romance when Eden believed it was she who had pulled the plug on her father’s life support — but it was actually Gina! And Eden marrying Kirk, the preppy villain, because he pretended he knew her “secret.” Marcy and A Martinez [Cruz] always knocked our socks off. The first leg of their romance was very magical, even though they stayed together for most of the show’s run. Eden and Cruz’s epic romance was the best thing about the show. Oh, and Carrington Garland as Kelly was fun to write for as well.

TVG: Santa Barbara was hugely popular in Canada — and the entire world. Why do you think the soap resonated with everyone except America?
PM: [pauses for a long time] There was this kind of oscillation between twin poles of, God, isn’t that crazy, the “C” in the Capwell Hotel sign falling down and killing Mary, or Brian Frons playing God in heaven, or the gangster in drag, and the anchoring of honest, grounded acting. At the time, there were no better actors than A and Marcy. As an actress, Marcy had this relentless, honest machinery that was unrivaled. She would cut her heart out for you every freakin’ day. She was the greatest army general that ever lived, going out into battle every day, battle-scarred as she was, but still fighting the good fight. I was in awe of her, really. That kind of sacrifice we got from our cast was so rare. They never said, “Oh, it’s only a soap.” They gave it everything they had. And so did we.

TVG: It sounds like a perfect marriage. I remember being shocked that a soap opera’s main romantic lead was from Native American, Spanish and Mexican descent.
PM: Right! Physically, A and Marcy were beautiful together — with her lightness and his darkness. I guess oscillation isn’t the best word to describe Santa Barbara; dialectic is more fitting. The space in between the reality and the insanity, where the characters and actors lived, was what Santa Barbara was about. Remember when Mason, the urbane lawyer, was hit on the head and then turned into Sonny, a country-western singer? Robin Mattson was absolutely wonderful as Gina. Wow. And Louise Sorel as Augusta — she had the chops for anything. Nicolas Coster as Lionel was superb as well.
TVG: [Joking] We now know whom to blame for giving Brian Frons a God complex! [Laughs] Thanks a lot, Patrick!
PM: [Laughs] Yep, we wrote him as God! Blame us! When I wrote GL with Douglas, Brian was our CBS boss, too. He was a toddler at that point.

TVG: In many circles, critics and fans believe Santa Barbara is the greatest soap opera that has ever aired. Would you agree with that assertion?
PM: [pauses] It pains me to say this … Let me start off by saying that Santa Barbara was the most important job I have ever had as a writer, and where I found myself as a writer. However, I don’t think it was the greatest soap that has ever aired. When I wrote GL, first with Douglas and then later with Stephen and Nancy, both times that show was, in my opinion, the greatest soap opera ever.





Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:09 | Сообщение # 2
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TVG: Were you upset when CBS cancelled GL?
PM: No. I hadn’t watched the show in forever so I didn’t mourn as a viewer. Many of the actors, who I so admired, were either off the show or sidelined like Jerry ver Dorn [ex-Ross], Justin Deas [Buzz], Maureen Garrett [Holly], and Michael Zaslow [ex-Roger]. It wasn’t the same show. I’m sad that my friends lost their jobs but, for me, GL had died a long time ago.

TVG: I agree.
PM: In many ways, GL used to be about community. The daytime canvas isn’t anymore. That’s sad because that’s what keeps us all connected as creators and viewers. Back then, every economic class was represented. We had those big events like Founder’s Day, and Memorial Day, the July 4th weekend. Heck, we married Eleni and Frank on Fifth Street! You got a sense that the show — and life — was about knowing your neighbour, which people desperately need to see.

TVG: Soap fans are somewhat disenfranchised from society which is why I think we watch for community — not necessarily for the romance portion. GL hasn’t connected to any kind of truth in a bitch’s age. Personally, I’d rather GL leave the airwaves than witness this once beautiful show made a mockery of.
PM: I agree. That kind of happened to me with Santa Barbara, too. I was there for six years. I left in 1990. After the Dobson mess, Jill Farren Phelps became an executive producer. And Jill was a wonderful producer. We’d all hang out, we all talked on the phone — the music guy, set director, writer, and directors. We all liked each other and shared the same vision. Except for the head writer at the moment, of course! But everyone else worked as a team as best we could. Bringing in Jackie Smith as our chief was a fatal blow for us. She hated Santa Barbara. She never understood the show nor cared to. She brought in John Conboy as the executive producer, which was a disaster. Jim Reilly told me hilarious stories about Conboy, by the way. Conboy was told to make nice with me. He was a very tall bastard. Everything about him was fake. And I mean everything! He told me his plan to have Cruz start playing polo, and that was the fat lady singing for me. So I quit. Having worked with Jackie, I have to assume that the magic at GH was all Gloria Monty’s doing, not Jackie’s. Sadly, she ended up dying from a brain tumour not too long after that. You had to be [dense] not to know there was something wrong with her mind. She was crazy. It was no fun, and as much as I loved the show, I had to leave.

TVG: In your Wikipedia page it states that you said Gloria Monty “decimated” GH. Is that true?
PM: No, that was is an interpretation of something I said about GH, which I believe to be true — and that was that GH is very difficult to write because the generational structure of the show, with the exception of the Quartermaines, was decimated. By the time I got to GH, the Baldwins and all the rest of the families were gone. At least our families are still intact on The Bold and the Beautiful. But you know, Nelson, soaps are not about romance — they are about families. If two people fall in love, murder each other, or rob a bank, no one cares if no one is connected to those characters [and creates a fuss]. To me, that was something Monty didn’t care about, but at the same time, I wouldn’t say she destroyed the show in any sense. Obviously she gave it new life.

TVG: Monty was a visionary in many ways, à la the weather machine, which has more weight now thanks to global warming, though I blame her for influencing networks to make their shows more plot-driven.
PM: Back then, we also had more money to film those fantastical, outlandish storylines. The action-adventure style Gloria was known for is just not affordable anymore. But back to character: who really was Anna Devane? Where did she come from? All these people like Holly drifted in from everywhere, leaving a little bit of DNA in their wake, so it was hard to assemble a show from all those [fragments]. That’s why we relied a lot on the Quartermaines because they were the only family left intact. They were our pit bulls!
TVG: Do you think the pursuit of the younger demographic killed soaps? Or was it the executives insistence that soaps become dumb and dumber?
PM: Back then, writers had clout. When a head writer was fired, everyone on the writing team was fired. When networks began hiring us as individual cogs in some writing machine, that’s when soaps started its descent. So it became impossible to tell coherent storylines because not everyone shared the same vision. Also, remember when soaps were edgy? Soaps used to be like, “Oh, my God — they’re doing an abortion, breast cancer, and rape storyline.” Stories you’d never have seen before on TV. Now we’re quaint. Today, we have Maury Povich opposite us doing transvestite sons of alcoholic women who are in jail with their lesbian lovers. It’s clear that our audience doesn’t share our assumed “values”. And that’s a huge problem. Maybe that was a part of the success of Santa Barbara. We essentially believed that while we knew our audience didn’t believe in all this hogwash, at the same time, we had fun with the material but we still gave them hope through our romances, humour and love of life.

TVG: Without getting yourself in trouble, do you think network interference played a part in the destruction of soap?
PM: I’m beyond trouble. No one cares what I think.

TVG: The fans do.
PM: Well, thank you. No one wants to be a head writer anymore. Unless you’re Brad [Bell] and you own the show and there’s a limit to how much you get bossed around. You can’t afford to spend all this time rewriting weeks you’ve already written because the network disagrees with everything and will demand rewrites from page 1 to the last page. So you just write what the executives want because you’ll end up with a team of dead writers — or have to hospitalize them. Even back on GH, when I worked with Bob Guza as co-head writer, the network changed stuff but at least they left the story intact, which is probably why the show remained successful as long as it did.

TVG: Are you happy with this influx of gay characters on soaps? I’d love to see you pen a gay romance.
PM: I’d love to! I used to sneak in a gay character here or there back in the day. I ended up frustrated with doing that because they were always a recurring role with no ties to the canvas, so you couldn’t explore the character. You have to make a core character gay. All My Children did it brilliantly with Bianca. Soaps aren’t about romances. Harding [Lemay] calls them generational stories — but I call them family stories. I don’t see a gay triangle coming up anytime soon. I would like to see that happen on B&B, but we have such a small cast, so I don’t see that happening.

TVG: Did you watch soaps as a kid?
PM: Oh, God no. I was in Yale writing plays. I was going to be a literary writer. I had things published. One of my professors thought I was going to be the next William Faulkner, even though I frankly didn’t like Faulkner very much! I quit Yale because I hated it. I moved to New Orleans and ended up living there for six years. I ran a little art gallery there. These kids from Louisiana State came in one night and asked to do a play in my gallery. Because I was a writer, they asked me to write the play so they didn’t have to pay royalties. And that’s how I started working with this group of actors. And we did great. Later, when we did Hamlet, I had to act, which let me know right away that I was a terrible actor! [Laughs] I love actors. Actors taught me more about writing than any writer ever did. Actors are really smart because they ask “Why do I …?” questions. And, as a writer, you have to have an answer for them, whether you’re Shakespeare or Neil Simon. [Laughs] It’s not their job to make sense of a script.

Anyway, I got a call out of the blue from a woman who had seen my plays and asked me if I wanted to write scripts for a show called Search For Tomorrow. Of course, I didn’t have a television so I didn’t know what it was. Very earnestly, she told me I had to learn the voices of the characters so I had to watch the show for a month. Luckily, I found a TV set in the school where I was teaching at. After watching the show, I thought, “what’s the big deal? These characters all sound exactly like they look.” Ultimately, I wrote a script and they liked it enough to hire me. My first gig? A few fun months on Search for Tomorrow — Mary Stuart was such a trip — then the spinoff Texas, from Another World, starring Beverlee McKinsey, which was great, and produced by Paul Rauch, which was not so great. That didn’t last too long, because at that time, you worked for the head writer and if they were fired, so was the whole team. But P&G liked me and picked me up and offered me a job with GL, where I worked with Douglas Marland. My real education began with Douglas. We gathered in his Connecticut kitchen every morning at 8 a.m. and over coffee we’d hammer out an episode together.

TVG: Did Mr. Marland regale you with stories of Irna Phillips?
PM: He did, but I’ve forgotten all of them! He told me stories about everybody. Douglas was immensely entertaining. I don’t know how much of a personal connection Doug had with Irna. Agnes Nixon, Pete Lemay, and William Bell were more Irna’s whipping boys and/or scapegoats. I have to confess: I don't have any idea what Irna Phillips would think of me today. I suspect she would kick my butt around the block. I am not very good at following directions, and she was a very directive writer by reputation. But I do revere the medium she created and the impulse in her that gave it life, such a long durable life.

TVG: I’ve noticed that the best soap writers always seemed to have started off as actors or worked as one at one point like Douglas and Harding.
PM: I never wanted to be an actor. Having said that, it’s very important to understand what an actor needs. One of the roles I played on Santa Barbara, and later on Guiding Light, was the go-to guy for the actors. If they had a problem, Jill would send them to me. As a writer you have to be there for the actors. I remember a long conversation I had with Justin Deas because he was having a problem understanding Buzz Cooper. I was very proud of the Jenna/Buzz/Nadine storyline, but Jill Farren Phelps asked me to have dinner with him because Justin had issues. And during that dinner, Justin didn’t look at me once the whole time! He looked down at his plate and revealed that he felt there was a gap in the character’s past and he needed Buzz’s past filled. He didn’t care if Buzz’s actions would be forgiven but he needed to know the character’s back story. So I did a whole episode on it. And of course he was wonderful in that show.
TVG: That’s interesting because I know Claire Labine would meet with her actors for their input. Recently, one actor walked out in the middle of his contract because of a reported objection to the morality of the tale and another actress was fired because her personal beliefs interfered with the story.
PM: That’s new. Santa Barbara was the right time and place for me — along with GL — because actors just got the job done. When I joined GH, the lunatics were running the asylum. The actors decided what they would act or not. That was an attitude I never encountered before. On SB, we had an incredible cast. Looking back now, that cast never squawked; they just did it. Well, Nancy Lee Grahn [ex-Julia] would complain, but then again, we called her Nancy Groan. But she’d talk to me and we’d figure it all out because we are dear friends. Let me tell you that Nancy was really funny back then. The phone would ring and it would be Nancy saying, “Well, you may as well hire that hit man now because I just ruined five beautiful scenes of yours today.” Sure enough, I’d check out the scenes on the air, and that's exactly what she'd done! [Laughs] God bless her!

TVG: [Laughs] That’s hilarious! Wow. I feel sorry that she’s on such a stupid show now like GH. But back on topic: I think writers should take an actor’s concerns on a case-by-case basis.
PM: For sure. I could handle Nancy because she’s a dear friend of mine and was, for me, at least easy to work with. But you’d have to gauge what was important to explain and work out. As a writer you can’t just say, “just do it,” because that doesn’t solve anything. The rule of thumb is if the actor thinks there’s a problem, there’s a problem. Duh.
TVG: You are one of the few out gay soap writers in the business. Was your sexuality ever a problem for the idiots-in-charge?
PM: No, it wasn’t. If there were things said behind my back, I never heard about them. There was one producer working with Lifetime who wanted me in on some development deal she had, but when she found out I was gay she told me very bluntly, “I don't hire gay writers. They don't understand romance and they can’t write action.” Of course, if you can’t write sex and violence, what’s left in TV to do, The Apprentice? I didn’t like the project anyway. Lifetime is too sappy. But I will admit, back in the ‘80s, the shows were scared of gay writers, because they thought we were all going to die.

TVG: Why haven’t soaps mentored new writing talent?
PM: Soaps have a strange hate/hate relationship with their writers. They recognize the show can't get off the ground without us, and resent it, too. We don't cost very much (except for head writers; consequently you have to beat back the hacks fighting tooth and nail for those jobs), so strangely enough, it begins to seem that what we do isn't very hard and we're not working very hard at it. Or wouldn’t we come with a bigger price tag? We get blamed for everything that goes wrong, even for actors who can’t act (“You should write to her strengths!”) —

TVG: Amen, sister!
PM: — and since nobody can demonstrate a direct, immediate cause-and-effect relationship between what's on the air and the ratings, it can always be argued, no matter how good the show seems, that we’re doing it all wrong.

We aren’t considered trustworthy at all — or rather, the kind of talent a writer has isn’t. If we write something good, that the actors and audience like, it may well have been an accident: protections against us still need to be taken, the show’s guard can never be relaxed. Every idea must be scrutinized with extreme care. Walls must be erected to ensure our ideas do not stray out of the realm of the acceptable into, oh, the world of vampire love stories. It’s not enough that everything we write must have some executive’s approval. First we must write a little document that explains what we are planning to write but haven’t written yet, to keep our imaginations from running off on some tangent. And really, it’s best if before that, we can also produce a document explaining what we are planning to plan to write, in general terms. What they want is the TV Guide synopsis now, before the thing synopsized exists. And then of course, even if your story does get a green light, the executives may change their minds and make you drop it, or may keep you rewriting last week for so long that the next week of the story can't get written or is so slapdash it embarrasses even you.

So, a long answer to your question: Do I think daytime should've mined new writing talent instead of recycling, oh, people like me?

Sure, and some stabs were made in that direction, by P&G, by the networks. At the same time they were making the writing of soaps so unpleasant, unrewarding, sometimes even impossible, that no writer in his or her right mind would want to do it. So think about it, who writes soaps? Just the hacks and the old-timers — those of us who remember what a thrill writing for daytime used to be. And we still have a jones for that thrill, even if it only comes three or four times a year.

Now you also know why I prefer to work for another writer.

TVG: Would you accept a co-head-writing gig if a soap offered you one?
PM: Well that would depend on who I was working with. Bob Guza, Michele Val Jean, Elizabeth Korte and I were a good team at GH. [Unfortunately that writing team] wasn’t sustainable because Bob and [former executive producer] Wendy [Riche] were oil and water. I don’t know of any other situation like that waiting for me.

TVG: That’s the real soap opera cliffhanger.

Tune in to Part Two of this interview in the Aug. 14 edition of Suds Report.

SIDEBAR: MULCAHEY’S FORMER FAVOURITE MUSES!
Beverlee McKinsey (ex-Alex, GL)
A Martinez (ex-Cruz, SB)
Justin Deas (Buzz, GL)
Nancy Grahn (ex-Julia, SB; Alexis, GH)
Lisa Brown (ex-Nola, GL)
Michael Zaslow (ex-Roger, GL)
Sarah Brown (ex-Carly, GH)
Stuart Damon (ex-Alan, GH)
Jonathan Jackson (ex-Lucky, GH)
Louise Sorel (ex-Augusta, SB)
Lane Davies (ex-Mason, SB)
Brad Maule (ex-Tony, GH)
Rachel Miner (ex-Michelle, GL)


Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:10 | Сообщение # 3
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Интервью Патрика Малкэхи по случаю двадцатипятилетия СБ

Репортер- 25 лет назал закончилась СБ. Вам не кажется ,что прошла вечность?
М( вздыхает)-Иногда мне кажется,что прошло много времени, а иногда- что это было вчера. Кстати история о том, как я попал в СБ довольно забавна. У меня был такой ужасный опыт тех пор, как я покинул GL в первый раз ,чтобы написать совместно с Дугласом Марландом " Любящий"-одновременно с тем ужасным шоу " День в раю"-что я поклялся больше не иметь дела с мыльными операми. Я планировал переехать в Сан-Франциско,-что я в конце концов и сделал, и сейчас проживаю там,- но я все еще был в Коннектикуте,когда однажды вечером я очутился на репетиции одной своих пьес. В тот вечер я встретил красивую блондинку ,которая исполняла роль нашей аудитории. Я проводил ее домой, так как нам было по пути.
РЕпортер- Так я вам и поверил.
М -Ну да.. Она сказала,что переезжает в Калифорнию,чтобы приняться за роль в новом шоу по названию " Санта-Барбара", о котором я ничего не знал. Хотя я имел отношение к мыльным операм, я был зациклен на идее поселиться в Калифорнии, писать пьесы и сценарии , заработать несколько миллионов долларов и мировую славу. Когда мы шли по улице,одна из машин остановилась,водитель опустила стекло и выкрикнула" Лиза,стерва!" Таким было мое знакомство с Марси Уолкер.В то время я не знал, что она знаменитость. Ее Лизу в " Все мои дети" явно терпеть не могли. В конце концов она уехала в Лос-Анджелес,чтобы принять участие в СБ, как раз когда я переехал в САн-Франциско чтобы принять участие в контракте, который почти сразу кончился\ ничем. Я уже собирался стать официантом, потому что обслуживать столы- единственное что я умею, помимо написания сценариев..К несчастью я выяснил, что в СФ в это время была забастовка ресторанов. Я не отважился пересечь пикетную черту.И в этот момент мне позвонила некая Бриджит Добсон и предложила писать для нового шоу под названием СБ.Я был в отчаянии- мне даже не на что было снять жилье.В конце концов я нашел затхлую квартиру....
В общем я сказал Бриджит,что возьмусь за это.Выяснив, сколько я буду получать, я немедленно приступил к работе.
Репортер- Остальное стало достоянием истории. Так давайте уточним,-именно благодаря вашим финансовым проблемам и забастовке в СФ мы получили ваш незыбываемый вклад в СБ?
М- Боюсь, что да.
Репортер-Вы считаете, что СБ опередила свое время? Как бы это шоу приняли сейчас?
П- Трудно представить себе СБ, транслируемую сегодня.Сейчас нам не позволили бы того, что сходило нам с рук тогда.В то время мыльные оперы еще были дойной коровой и NBC продолжала держать нас в эфире. Мы пробовали все,чтобы поднять наши рейтинги , а поскольку Бриджит и ДЖером классные ребята , мы действительно делали все. Они были писателями- авантюристами. С ними было здорово работать! Им нельзя было бросать вызов сделать что-нибудь, потому что они тут же шли на это.
Репортер- Как вы думаете, почему СБ не привлекла более благоприятного внимания? В одном из первых отзывов было сказано" Это возможно самое худшее шоу всех времен"
М- Помните как Авгутста приготовила голубя своей дочери Лейкен той на обед? ( Смеется) Именно это и делали Бриджит и Джером. Когда аудитория увидела это, она тут же решила, что это шоу долго не протянет. С самого начала мы не вызвали энтузиазма. К тому же изначальный кастинг был ужасен. Их всех пришлось выжить. Там были эти ужасные идентичные блондинки, которых наш продюсер непременно хотел оставить.Поэтому одной из первых наших идей было появление маньяка, охотившегося за блондинками( смеется) Не нужно говорить, что после этого состав актеров улучшился.


Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:10 | Сообщение # 4
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..М- Бриджит,Джером и я сразу поладили. Знаете ,их доверие- оно многого стоило. Мне давали наброски с вычеркнутыми страницами и пометками на полях " Патрик,напиши что-нибудь отличное от этого". Да, такой свободы мне больше нигде не видать.Опять же, для сценариста роскошь писать для ежедневной одночасовой серии все , что угодно.. Вскоре они спросили, не хочу ли я писать наброски с Чаком Праттом Младшим. И вот каждую неделю я прилетал в очаровательный дом Доббсонов в Бел Ере, Калифорния, чтобы сварганить сценарий на неделю с Джерри и Чаком. Мы были хорошей командой.Чак был автоматом по выпуску идей , а мне принадлежала "Да или Нет " функция.Позже я начал редактировать сценарии .Это было перед тем как Нью Уорлд закрыл перед Бриджит и ДЖерри двери их собственного шоу.

---я помню ,однажды я написал целую сцену пятистопным ямбом.Это безумие или нет? Я написал несколько рифмующихся куплетов , потому что знал, что некоторые актеры справятся с этим. Я не хотел, чтобы это звучало как Шекспир, я хотел, чтобы это звучало обыденной речью ,и так и случилось. Это была сцена, под названием "Зона Кепвелов", когда Грегу снится сон, в котором все кажутся ему чужаками.
Ре- Помню ! Это было великолепно/! СБ была шоу Шекспира!

М- А помните свадьбу Джулии и Мейсона? Тех высот было легко достичь. потому что у нас был великолепный актерский состав и режиссеры. Наши сюжетные линии легко забыть, но отдельные эпизоды резко выделялись.
Ре- Какая ваша любимая сюжетная линия в СБ?
М- Иден и Круз- в тот период,когда Иден считала, что это она отключила систему жизнеобеспучения отца, а в действительности это была ДЖина! И как Иден вышла замуж за Керка, этого негодяя из привилегированного общества,потому что считала, что он знает ее " секрет". Марси и Эй всегда приводили нас в восторг. Первая часть их романа была волшебной, хотя они и оставались вместе большую часть сериала. Эпический роман Иден и Круза- самое лучшее из всего, что было в СБ. Да, писать для Кэррингтон Гарланд в роли Келли было так же здорово.


Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:10 | Сообщение # 5
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Ре- СБ была необыкновенно популярна в Канаде, да и в целом мире. Как вы считаете, почему она получила такой резонанс везде,кроме Америки?
М-( После долгой паузы)-Было что-то вроде колебания между двумя полюсами,-безумным падением буквы С на Мэри и так далее ,и качественным актерским мастерством. В то время не было актеров лучше Марси и Эя. Марси готова была каждый день вырывать свое сердце. Она -величайший генерал, идущий в битву каждый день, хотя еще не зажили раны от предыдущих сражений, и прекрасно сражающийся. Я восхищался ей. Наши актеры отдавали СБ все, -это редкость.Они не говорили " А ,ладно, -это всего лишь мыльная опера". ОНи давали нам все .Как и мы.
РЕ- Похоже на идеальный брак. Помню, меня удивило. что основная романтическая пара сериала- это северная американка и мексиканец.
М- Верно. Марси и Эй прекрасно смотрелись вместе,-она блондинка, он брюнет. Вообще-то колебание- не то слово.СБ больше подходит термин "диалектика". Пространство между реальностью и безумием, в котором жили герои,-вот о чем СБ. Помните как Мейсон, цивилизованный адвокат, получил удар по голове и превратился в Санни,- исполнителя в стиле кантри? И великолепная Джина Робин Мэттсон. Вау. Луиза Сорель в роли Августы и Николас Костер в роли Лайонела были так же потрясающи.
Ре- Многие считают, что СБ-величайшая мыльная опера. Вы согласились бы с этим?
М-( После паузы)- Мне больно говорит это...Позвольте я начну с того, что скажу, что СБ - мой самый главный проект как сценариста.Там я нашел себя как писатель. Но все же я не считаю СБ величайшей мыльной оперой..


Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
Иден_ПарризиДата: Вторник, 31.01.2012, 00:11 | Сообщение # 6
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М-СБ подходила мне,потому что актеры просто выполняли свою работу. Когда я перешел в GL, там царил бедлам. Актеры решали,что они будут играть и что -нет. С такой позицией я раньше не сталкивался. В СБ был невероятный актерский состав. Актеры никогда не скулили,- они просто работали. Ну, Нэнси Ли Гран( Джулия) частенько жаловалась, но мы так и называли ее " жалующаяся Гран".Но она рассказывала мне о своих проблемах и мы сообща искали решение-мы ведь друзья. Знаете, Нэнси тогда была действительно забавной. Звонит телефон и Нэнси сообщает " Ну, в общем, можешь нанять киллера- сегодня я загубила 5 твоих отличных сцен." Я пересматривал сцены в эфире и убеждался, что именно это она и сделала! ( смеется).

Самая наивная сиренка в больших сиреневых очках и большом сиреневом пузыре
 
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