Found this wonderful Michael Malone interview at SZ............ -- The Book Club

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Date Posted: 02:27:17 02/16/03 Sun
Author: ladyday
Subject: Found this wonderful Michael Malone interview at SZ............

It's really looooong, but fascinating. It is an interview with MM in January Magazine. He is asked mostly about all his novels, the process of writing, etc., but soaps and OLTL are also discussed.

http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/mmalone.html

I'll C&P the soapy related stuff, but you should really go read it in it's entirety.

There was a decade-long span between the publication of Foolscap in 1991 and the appearance of First Lady. During those years, you did something unexpected: you took a job as head writer on One Life to Live. What motivated your career detour into TV soaps?

My love of the theater drew me to the repertory company of a daytime serial. As a child I was always forcing my poor younger siblings to perform in the dozens of lengthy, elaborate plays and musicals I wrote. As a teenager I worked in summer stock; I would sweep any floor, scrub any toilet, just to be near a stage. As a fairly extroverted person, I like the collaborative and performative nature of theater. As a novelist, I write from characters and dialogue, and move the story from scene to scene like a play. For all these reasons I welcome any chance to write a play, a screenplay or a teleplay, and ran off to One Life like a boy to the circus.

Had you been a fan of soap operas before joining One Life?

No, I never had watched daytime television. But as a child, I'd heard the radio serials at my grandmother's house and was fascinated by their emotional impact on the listeners. My view of soap opera as television actually came from watching Masterpiece Theatre in the early 70s -- The Forsythe Saga, The Golden Bowl, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and so forth. It was from these extraordinary productions that I got my excitement about how narrative could be dramatized in an extended serial form, allowing a richer development of characters. Significantly, prime-time has now adopted soap opera techniques -- carrying over story and relational characters. ER, NYPD Blue, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under -- they're all soap operas.

Some people look down their noses at the soaps. But I understand you valued your experience as a TV writer. What was it that you found most enjoyable and/or rewarding about that experience?

As head writer, I had a wonderful opportunity for (literally) endless storytelling and for the creation of a wide and various cast of characters. (My writing team produced five hours of interlaced narrative -- that's two and a half movies -- every single week.) I loved working with the highly skilled theatrical professionals -- directors, producers, actors, costumers, set designers and so on -- who put together a daytime show. It's an original American genre and one of the few machines made in the USA that still works.

How long was your original stint with One Life to Live? And didn't you do some more TV writing after that?

I was head writer for OLTL from 1991 to 1996. Then Josh Griffith (with whom I'd worked on the series) and I created a show for Fox. Then briefly I head-wrote Another World.

Do you think that your experience with TV writing changed your novel writing?

I think, yes. First Lady is more linear, and the plot is more driving, than its predecessors. And that's where I borrowed from television. You know, my chapters used to close out very quietly; now, they may end with, "Get out of the car! There's a bomb in the car!" It's the hook trick that I learned from television. Not a bad lesson to learn, either.

Can you see yourself leaving books again to go back to full-time TV writing?

No, I did what I wanted to do in television, and learned what I wanted to learn. Besides, my impression is that there is even more network interference now (as ratings have spiraled downward with shifts in economic and cultural patterns) than there was five years ago -- and believe me, there was too much then.

Yet you've recently agreed to rejoin One Life, this time as creative consultant. What drew you back?

I used to say that I wasn't interested in going back, that I'd only be interested in being a creative consultant, and only if Josh Griffith were the head writer. I never thought (a) that they'd say, "Great," or (b) that [Griffith] would say, "Great." And they both did, so there I was -- stuck doing this again.

Only this time, I take it that your role is fairly minimal.

I'm going to be like Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's my job to say, "Don't go to the dark side." I'm not going to be writing the show; I'm just going to be advising. I'm responsible for the big overviews.

Again, this to me is a kind of storytelling that I don't want to exclude from my life. [Television] has an enormous impact on its audience, and it has a huge audience. There's no sense kidding myself that 5,000 people are going to read my novels in a week's time -- they're not. But I can reach them through television. I've often said that Dickens would have been willing to tackle soap operas, were he around, and I mean that.

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Replies:

[> Nice interview! I love Malone's enthusiasm for the soap genre. -- Lafaux, 01:06:25 02/20/03 Thu

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[> Great MM quote from "First Lady" -- ladyday, 01:13:00 02/22/03 Sat

It spoke to me as a T&B'er, esecially in light of this past week. In this quote they are talking about a very suave, debonair politician.

"Like always, the light shimmered around him until he took on a glow---like one of the old pagan gods come down to earth to find a mortal girl and convince her that one moment of love with a swan or a bull or a shower of gold was worth a lifetime of regret."

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[> [> I love this quote! Have you read First Lady, or are you reading it now? -- Lafaux, 19:46:36 02/22/03 Sat

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[> [> [> About halfway done with it. -- ladyday, 19:26:41 02/24/03 Mon

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