Another 'Guiding Light' Set Visit Photo

When I toured the Guiding Light studio back in December, there was one set up that I didn't understand, but was told that all would be revealed in January. Now it's January, and all has been revealed on screen. Lara Fasano was Shayne's former lover who died and Reva threw a memorial service for her. And now Edmund has showed up claiming to be Lara's father. How did that happen? By the way, this set also doubles as Ellen Wheeler's office at the CBS Studios in Manhattan.

IN PICTURES: 'Guiding Light' Set Tour

On Tuesday, December 9th, I had a chance to tour Peapack, New Jersey with some fellow bloggers. The following day, we toured Guiding Light's sets at the CBS Studios in Manhattan. Here are some of my photos from those two days.

In Peapack, Lou Grieci, Director, Production Services, drove us around town showing us various outdoor sets. If something hasn't been used as an exterior, there's a good chance it will be in the future. It seems like Guiding Light has become part of the town and are just considered another business there now. Some of the local businesses are used as multiple locations with the front exterior as one set while the back is used for another.

The central location for cast and crew is the showhouse which is set on a huge property in the middle of Peapack. The show uses an entrance that is least intrusive on the town. Inside the showhouse are a number of different sets (upstairs and downstairs), a hair and make-up room (which looked similar to the one I saw at As the World Turns' Brooklyn studios in July) and a break room where the cast and crew can have lunch.

Possibly the largest set, and my favorite, was Cross Creek, where Reva and Jeffrey live. It looks very authentic and I loved how "Reva + Josh" was carved into the mantle. I also liked the Spaulding dining room set a lot. Upstairs, the rooms that were used as sets were all decorated very differently and sometimes were quite small, but there's no question Guiding Light has maximized the space of this house as effectively as possible.

With Apologies To John Driscoll

When I toured the GUIDING LIGHT studios at CBS on Wednesday I had the opportunity to meet John Driscoll (Coop) and he seemed like a great guy.

At one point on set during a scene involving Coop, Beth and Lizzie, I had the chance to talk him to about the Beth and Coop storyline and the upcoming return of Phillip Spaulding. But we kept getting interrupted.

I asked if Coop would be worried Phillip was going to kick his you-know-what when he found out about Beth and Coop's relationship. He gave me a hilarious look and nodded like it was a possibility. But then the director came over to talk to us so he couldn't finish his response. When the director walked away, he started to answer again and then I got pulled away to watch the scene from a different location. We just gave each other a look like "this conversation is doomed."

So I never got my question answered or got to say goodbye, but I definitely look forward to seeing how things develop between Coop and Beth and how Phillip might play a role in that.

Lunch With A 'Guiding Light' Head Writer And Producer

The first big agenda item during the two days I spent at GUIDING LIGHT with some of my fellow bloggers was a Tuesday lunch at the Gladstone Tavern (aka Company, at least from the outside) with Co-Head Writer Jill Lorie Hurst and Producer Alexandra Johnson-Gamsey.

Sara A. Bibel has written a wonderful blog about this experience already and I will try not to duplicate her effort.

I first have to say that you can't not like Hurst. There is a charm about her that reminds me a bit of a young Pamela Long. She went from being a waitress to receptionist in the same building as GUIDING LIGHT and then worked her way up through the GL ranks to become one of the head writers. If my film ever sells and I can work on another one, I'm going to produce the Jill Lorie Hurst movie of the week.

Johnson-Gamsey also worked her way from intern to producer. As that day's producer she had a lot of responsibility to ensure all the logistical issues were worked out keeping the tight ship running smoothly.

Hurst talked about some of the advantages of the new production model for the show: "I had a very brief stint as a producer in the control room in the old style until December and Main Street was sort of the bain of our existence because you would try to stage a car crash or something like that and it was really hard to do. I find this [new production model] freeing actually."

Johnson-Gamsey added, "It is very freeing. There were a lot of times when we needed, for story purposes, to do something like somebody getting hit by a car, and to bring that into the studio, which is what our option was before, it just doesn't work. No matter how well you try and do it, it just doesn't work. And now we can come out here [to Peapack] and do something real with a car in a parking lot and it looks real."

When I asked about the recent WGA nominations, Hurst said that the GUIDING LIGHT writers did not submit themselves this year.

I asked Hurst who she thought her audience was and received an interesting answer.

Lunch And More With The Spaulding Family of 'Guiding Light' - Part 1

What a treat it was to meet GUIDING LIGHT's Ron Raines (Alan) yesterday and ride over to Puttanesca for lunch with the other actors in the show's Spaulding family.

Soon after we arrived, Grant Aleksander showed up, and looks exactly the same as when he left the show as Phillip four years ago. Marcy Rylan (Lizzie) arrived as stunning as ever and Marj Dusay (Alexandra) made a fashionably late entrance and lit up the room.

Having these four "Spauldings" all together and sometimes talking at the same time was really fascinating and entertaining. What was nice was that not everyone had seen Aleksander in a while so we were witnessing their reunions in person.

Aleksander will be returning to the airwaves in early February. He begins taping next week and there is a lot of excitement on set about his return and this group was especially thrilled. Aleksander told us that he spoke with one of the head writers, Jill Lorie Hurst, several months ago about the possibility of returning but didn't want the information to be "out there" in case it didn't happen.

We all tried to get spoilers out of him and the publicists, but no such luck. Aleksander said, "I'm not allowed to say anything. Aside from some early conversations about general things, I really wanted to stay out of that part of it. Once we talked and I had the sense of, in general, what they were looking for, I thought, 'this will be okay,' so there's a lot more I have to find out."

Kim Zimmer Interview: You'll Always Be My Giants Fan

Yesterday at the CBS studios in Manhattan, some of my fellow bloggers and I were able to sit down with GUIDING LIGHT star Kim Zimmer in a green room to talk about the show. As a fan, I have read numerous interviews with Zimmer over the years, sometimes with a controversial sound byte or two being used to "sell" the story.

My take on Zimmer is she is an interviewer's dream and a public relation person's nightmare. She tells it like it is and doesn't hold back.

When she arrived I mentioned that I had "met" her once before, six years ago sitting behind her and her family at a New York Giants football game. Zimmer is a diehard Jets fans but was at the Giants game that day because of her sons. I joked with her that we were jawing back and forth at the game as I am a lifelong Falcons fan myself. We quickly derailed the conversation for about five minutes talking about Brett Favre and who was going to play in the Super Bowl before making our way back to the subject at hand, GUIDING LIGHT.

The first topic of conversation was the show's new production model. Zimmer had spoken out previously about wanting to wear a mic in the outdoor scenes and that got spun into some type of mini-controversy, but she believes the audio on those scenes has improved over time. "It's still a problem for me but I think the sound has gotten a little bit better on the outdoor stuff. But I still think we have problems on the interiors."

With smaller sets being used these days, Zimmer explained how this has impacted her performance.
LISTEN

When we spoke to Grant Aleksander later, he had not yet taped his first scenes, but was looking forward to the change. Yes, he was comfortable with the old production model, but as an actor, felt the change was going to be good to shake things up and a challenge he was looking forward to taking on. Then it hit me. Yes, Kim Zimmer is one of the biggest stars in daytime and one of my favorites. And yes, she is one of more vocal actors in the press. But while her words get so much play at times, when you put it in perspective, it's one actor's opinion, not necessarily the "voice" of the entire GUIDING LIGHT community. I spent time with Marj Dusay, Ron Raines, Tina Sloan and others and they all had different takes on the new model and the state of the show.

Meeting Ellen Wheeler, Part 2

In Part 1 of Tuesday's sit down with Ellen Wheeler, she talked about how necessity has forced Guiding Light to change and how that has lead to new creative freedoms and challenges in economic times that are tough for everyone, including the entire television industry.

"If you go look at the pictures of shooting television from 1952 when we started on television, and then look at the pictures of us shooting television three years ago, they're almost identical," Wheeler pointed out. "It's the same crew, it's the same cameras, it's the same basic set up. By the time people were walking around with their television on their iPods, we were still shooting it the same way. That's not a good idea."

She realizes that while trying to find the perfect solution there will be hits and misses. "It doesn't mean we'll hit the right thing, we knew that when we changed. We knew we might make tons of mistakes along the way. But we weren't scared of that. We knew we had fans that would say 'okay, they're going to make mistakes along the way.' The show has made a lot in 70 years."

Meeting Ellen Wheeler, Part 1

With all the interesting events of the past two days, I almost feel bad singling out a favorite, but the blogger's conversation with executive producer Ellen Wheeler had to be the highlight. After wrapping up a long day in Peapack, most people would be tired, but Ellen Wheeler spoke to us at length in such a passionate way that you couldn’t help but be moved. I literally had to hold back tears more than once and so did she.

But before I get to that, let me tell you about some of the outdoor scenes we saw being taped. Thankfully the weather cooperated and it was warmer than expected (still a bit chilly) with clear skies. In one scene, Bill (Daniel Cosgrove) was in a wooded area looking for some mysterious person. For one take he had to run across a clearing and stop to look around. At one point Ellen Wheeler did the same run (the woman is tireless). Later, I gave him a hard time about her being a lot faster than he is. He couldn’t deny it. If you have ever met Cosgrove you will instantly know he’s quite a character. He had everyone laughing on set the entire time we were there.

In addition to watching live, we were able to views the scenes playing out on monitors which showed the perspective that each of the four handheld cameras were taping. What amazed me was the speed of the whole production. When I visited the As the World Turns studio in Brooklyn back in July I thought things moved quickly. But the Guiding Light model is even faster. The shot is set up and it is recorded in what seems like an instant. Wheeler was directing and always knew exactly what she wanted from each shot.

P&G Silencing The Bloggers?

Actually it was quite the opposite on my set visit at GUIDING LIGHT. But when we saw the county jail set at the CBS studio we thought it would be a fun idea for a picture (that's me on the left).

Everyone I spoke to from writers, producers, actors and public relations seemed to genuinely be interested in what we had to say about the show. It may not always feel like anyone at our favorite soaps is listening but in this case, GUIDING LIGHT went above and beyond to open the lines of communication and share their feelings and listen to ours.

I want to say a special thank you to Alan Locher and everyone in the publicity department at various levels of Telenext Media for arranging this two day event (Cristin, Jeannie, Lisa, the sweet intern whose name evades me now – sorry if I forgot anyone, it was not intentional). I think it was a brilliant idea and very foreward thinking. More and more people are getting their news and reviews online (I certainly do) and reaching out to other forms of media who are covering the show is something more shows should consider.

Finding My Light

As you may have read from some of my fellow bloggers, Guiding Light invited five us to visit the show on Tuesday and Wednesday to see the new production model up close and personal to help gain some perspective on how and why things have changed, and where they are going. For me personally, it was an fascinating experience which provided insights I never could have gained otherwise.

The other bloggers were flown in from various locations. Living nearby I was local, but we all stayed in a nice hotel not too far from the CBS studios in Manhattan. It was a real pleasure to finally meet some of the other people who write about soaps online and bond over our shared love for the genre.