Tuesday, June 10, 2008

GUIDING LIGHT ANNOUNCES NEW HEADWRITING TEAMS

Veteran Writers David Kreizman, Christopher Dunn, Lloyd “Lucky” Gold And Jill Lorie Hurst Will Comprise Headwriting Teams

Christopher Dunn, Lloyd “Lucky” Gold and Jill Lorie Hurst have been appointed Headwriters of broadcast history’s longest running program, Guiding Light, as announced today by the show’s Executive Producer Ellen Wheeler. Dunn, Gold and Lorie Hurst will join current Headwriter David Kreizman to create two new headwriting teams that will work together to bring their vision to the screen.

“I am thrilled about the new roles that David, Jill, Chris and Lucky will play on the headwriting teams at Guiding Light,” said Wheeler. “Since Guiding Light adopted its revolutionary new production model at the start of the year, we have made major changes to nearly every aspect of how we produce the show. I believe that appointing collaborative headwriting teams will help to expand the show’s vision and storytelling ability in this new model. Our new headwriting teams are made up of extraordinarily talented individuals who all respect the rich history of Guiding Light and are all very dedicated to mining that history for the future success of the show.”

Kreizman joined Guiding Light in 1995 as a Production Intern and during his time with the show he has worked as a Production Coordinator, an Associate Producer and began writing scripts and breakdowns for the show in 1997. Kreizman became Headwriter in 2004. Kreizman lives in New Jersey with his wife Natasha, who he met working at Guiding Light, and their two children.

Dunn joined Guiding Light in 1999 and was Co-Headwriter from 2001 – 2002. He began his daytime career as a breakdown writer on Santa Barbara and has also worked on the writing teams of Sunset Beach and General Hospital. Dunn has been married to Catherine Sedwick for 17 years. The Dunns live in California with their 11 year-old daughter Emma.

Gold began his writing career playwriting at Edward Albee’s summer workshop in Montauk. Gold’s plays have been produced at the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, the Seattle Rep and McCarter Theatre among others. He has written extensively for film and television including work on Marvin’s Room and Shakespeare in Love. Gold is co-creator of the PBS American Mystery Series, produced by Robert Redford and Rebecca Eaton. In daytime, he has written for One Life to Live, Another World and Guiding Light. He joined Guiding Light in 2001 and has been with the show ever since. Gold lives in New York City with his wife, daughters and their dog.

Jill Lorie Hurst joined Guiding Light in 1994 and spent her first five years as a writer’s assistant. During that time Lorie Hurst was partnered with then assistant producer David Kreizman to write a couple of sample scripts for the show. Jill decided to keep her assistant job and wrote part time, while David went on to write full-time. Shortly thereafter, Lorie Hurst was made a script editor, a job she’s held on and off depending on the needs of the writing team and executive producer. In May 2007 Lorie Hurst was named Story Producer when the writing team was reorganized. Lorie Hurst lives in New York City with her husband Tony Hurst, their dog Scout and cat Molly.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, if the term rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic ever applied. Hey, I know. Maybe if they switched from Dunkin' Donuts to Krispy Kreme at the craft services table that would fix everything!

Seriously though, they might finally be acknowledging that the writing is a problem but how is reshuffling the very people who are the problem fixing the problem?

And everyone whose being promoted has been on-staff for years.

They're keeping Kreizman who is hopelessly terrible.

Lloyd Gold has been GL's HW before and he was bad too. I personally don't consider Reva jumping through paintings and "falling in love" with slave-owning CivilWarJosh while CivilWarOlivia and CivilWarAlan mustache twirl in the background one of GL's golden ages. Same for Lorelei smacking gum while making out with Bill in front of Lizzie. Does they really think that going back to THAT is an answer to anything?

Christopher Dunn was Gold's co-HW during the time travel, San Cristobel, and Lorelei stories, so what are the odds he'll do better now, especially re-paired with Kreizman?

Hurst is basically a story editor so there's no way to know what impact she'll have.

I don't expect much to change, except that there will now probably be even more inconsistency from day-to-day and to cover that up, they'll probably just make scenes even more random and meaningless than they already are and add even more music videos and montages to fill time.

PGP isn't gonna spend money on a real writer to fix this mess and that's sad. But this isn't some revolutionary artistic decision. This is the acknowledgment that the "new production model" is an utter failure on every level, especially since it's shockingly over-budget. So, they're gonna start laying off writers now too. These few writers will probably be the only ones left in a few months time are being made HW's so they can make command decisions about the scripts they write because about 70% of the time, Wheeler will be out of the studio shooting a love scene in a public bathroom or a multi-national corporations yearly board meeting in front of a duck pond.

SuperSage said...

I have nothing to add. You said it perfectly, RVD.

Rita said...

I'm very happy of this new team! I loved Lucky Gold period, and I'm sure that from the cohoperation of all of them we'll have fantastic story :)

Rita

Unknown said...

Well, I have to disagree. Lucky Gold made a good job IMHO.
ok, maybe the time travel story was not the best, but Lorelei story was pretty good and Beth Chamberlin was superb. And what about Catalina's murder? The teens had excellent stories. Mel Boudreau has arrived with a very good actress (Yvonna Wright deserves to be used more). With Lucky Gold we had the end of San Cristobel... finally!!
And I don't think Kreizman made a bad job. By the way I am happy for this changes because it means a sort of fresh air for the stories. The "new" HW are people that work on GL since '90s and know the show history. I have noticed that on the boards (GLBUZZ first of all) nobody is objective. The "fans" (or so called) are only able to criticize. Give a chance to the show, and support it if you really love GL!!!

SuperSage said...

No one should be telling viewers to "give the show another chance," because for the past four years, we've given chance after chance for improvement and it hasn't happened.

I've watched for over thirty some years and I love the show. That doesn't mean I'm not going to tell it like it is.