Merboy

More pecs!

How will you have time to write the play/screenplay when you are busy launching a news channel?

LOL.... You're right. I seem to want the moon and the stars...

Reads a little like SOAP.

Yeah that and Soapdish I think too lol.

Best Actress Oscar nominee for Sounder, which I never saw but its on my list. I believe if I'm not mistaken she was the second black woman to be nominated for Best Actress after Dorothy Dandridge.

Hi everyone,

I'm writing a comedy. Might be a play or a movie, I'm not sure. It's a little tribute to the once very popular daytime soap opera, a genre that's dying out.

The premise is that a lonely, pathetic, overweight gay man (played by me of course ) who's life revolves around his favorite soap opera finds out it's being cancelled to his great dismay. Then he finds himself transported into the world of the soap, and its crazy little town of Shady Grove. He winds up being a part of every storyline. The plot thickens with the mysterious arrival of the Shady Grove Slayer, who kills off the beloved characters one by one. The identity of the Shady Grove Slayer is revealed in a plot twist - and the ending is surprisingly touching.

I sorta combined Soapdish, Pleasantville, and The Final Girls together.

Here are the main characters:

DANNY KATZ — A diehard soap fan in his early 40s with no life. He’s watched every single episode of his favorite soap. He’s transported into the show.

GRANDMA IRIS — Danny’s beloved grandmother, has been gone now for years. She hooked him on the soap since he was five. He came out to her first.

LITA LOVELACE — The long-suffering central heroine who’s been through the mill in many overly dramatic, hilarious storylines.

SABLE LaRUE — An Erica Kane type, a diva who started out in poverty and made herself into a Hollywood star. She’s been married 21 times.

BOLT BIGELOW — The town’s aging hunk who never keeps his shirt on.

CARRINGTON WALLINGFORD — The town’s richest man and its most villainous. Nobody in the town likes him because of all the terrible things he's done to them.

CHARLIE WALLINGFORD — Carrington’s kind, sweet twin brother who couldn’t be more different than his brother.

TRUDY — A funny, warm-hearted waitress who is really Sable’s mother.

KENT ROGAN — Lita’s dashing soulmate who keeps coming back from the dead. Lita and Kent are the town's famous supercouple.

DR. JIM HARTLEY — Shady Grove’s most trusted man, the town’s doctor, married to Vita.

VITA LOVELACE HARTLEY — “Everyone’s grandmother”, married to Jim, also mother of Lita. Jim and Vita have been on the soap since its first episode.

I'd like for it to star all of those soap actors that lost their jobs when their soaps were cancelled. Love to see some of these talented people return in comeback roles.

I'd love your feedback and advice on it. Any tips on how I can make it better would be appreciated. I'm also stuck on something - the name of the soap itself... all I have so far is Forever and a Day...

Do we know why?

Immigration issues from when Cheeto was President.

I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and for many years, I thought that it made me gay. My father was severely depressed, lazy, and, to be honest, not too bright. The result was, I grew up thinking he hated me. After he got on anti-depressants (when I was 21), our relationship improved, though it fell apart again after my parents divorce (partially because of how my mom handled the divorce and partially because my dad used me to get money to buy things for his trashy new girlfriend . . . at a time in my life when I was very bad off financially). Our relationship never fully recovered after that.

 

After his trashy girlfriend used him for everything she could get, my dad came back into the picture. It took me a while before I would see him, and our relationship was never the same.

 

My dad was homophobic and would talk about "fags" and didn't believe in gay rights (marriage, military), but when my sister was convinced that I would come out, she prepped him for it, and he actually had the conversation with me in my thirties that it would be okay if I was gay. Soon after that, he'd make homophobic comments, but I always knew that he would support me being gay. I knew he would would have a hard time with it, but ultimately, he would say he just wanted me to be happy

 

My dad would always puff himself up because he was proud of his kids, and I knew it was partly because it made him look good. The day we learned my dad was going on hospice, I sat in the hospital talking to him. For the first time, he acknowledged in strong language that he was a bad father. I couldn't bring myself to contradict him, just to say, "Well, we all turned out okay." But through his admission, I was able to get over some of the pain of the past. Although I had forgiven him, I hadn't allowed myself to get close to him because I didn't want to be close and because I didn't want to get hurt again. He would later explain that he didn't spend as much time with me as he did my siblings only because he had more in common with them. That never bothered me, to be honest, because I spent so much of my life not wanting to spend too much time with him.

 

When he was on hospice, I made some huge sacrifices for him. When we ultimately had to move him into a nursing home, I was the one visiting him 4-6 times a week and grieving that I couldn't have him at home with me (he couldn't be left alone). For much of that time, my siblings, who were much closer to him, were pretty much MIA. I came to love my dad, not how I would have wanted to love my dad, but with compassion and genuine love and concern for him. I'm not totally sure why.

 

I didn't come out to myself until years after both my parents (and one of my siblings) passed. I loved my dad, but it's my mom for whom I still grieve daily.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Eleanor might be hard to cast.

"As a _______" .... like "As a gay man, I think diapers on a man are hot". lol

more like a nation of sofa potatoes, complaining about staying home with internet, TV, Netflix, etc.

I was thinking that too. I think with all the restrictions on the gyms the bodybuilders of America are anxiously waiting to get back in.

Nice guy - he's unfortunately so far away, in the Middle East right now. He seems like a great person to sit down and talk to.

That's quite a .... everything! lol

It still makes me smile when I hear the golden girls theme song when watching reruns on hallmark channel (I am no longer a closeted hallmark channel viewer ?)

 

 

? ;)LOVE that theme song.... but then again TGG is on a loop here so i'm so used to hearing it all day and all night long!

Boston has changed a lot. I lived there summer 1998 and I remember going to this independent film theater near Kendall Square where I watched the movie Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss. I wasn't 21 yet and I didn't have a fake ID so instead during weekends I just went to the gay bookstore on Boylston st and was able to meet a few guys there who introduced me to other gay films like Beautiful Thing and Broadway Damage. The Boston gay pride march near Boston Common was the first pride march I ever attended and that was a really cool and eye opening experience for me.

I loved Calamus Bookstore... I spoke with the younger man that ran it after the older man died. Sadly it is no longer there... but while it was here in Boston, boy that was my favorite place to go in the whole city - and then I'd go to my second favorite place, Surf City Squeeze at South Station. ? I'm so grateful I was able to experience the gay bookstore -- Calamus and also Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia.

I enjoyed reading the history of the show as told in Michael Riedel's new book, Singular Sensation.

Will have to read that!

Theatrical genius? ?

Hi Guys -- Upcoming book about the history and culture of the gay bar - looks interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316458732/?coliid=I95NZO39D7EN4&colid=1OC6HGRPETRJS&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Just a few thoughts I had during my nearly ten year stay here:

• No spring - it goes right into summer - and the fall is getting shorter and shorter every year. The weather tends towards the extreme --- Pennsylvania, my home state, had much more moderate temperatures in my opinion.
  
• An old friend of mine once said that Boston was the city with the worst dressed people. I'll refrain from accusing it of that, but in the areas that I've lived, people are struggling to just make ends meet. The Bernie Sanders look is very popular here too.
  
• The general population is much more liberal and much more Democratic than in Pennsylvania, where I would say most of the older people are very conservative. I have met a good share of Republicans here though and they've been very vocal about expressing their views. (Might be because I don't limit who I talk to about politics with just people who share my views.)
  
• Parts of it are dominated by the colleges (of which the Boston area has possibly the most in the nation taken together)... lots of college students. I never went to college here so I really don't know what the atmosphere is like, but back in the early 2010s, long before COVID, there was a lot of activity at night.
  
• As far as the men are concerned, most I come into contact with are older and have a worn-out, exhausted look about them.
  
• There's a lot of people up here who speak in foreign languages and more immigrants than even Pennsylvania has. I think it's wonderful and adds to the diversity but it can be overwhelming for someone from a more rural, 90% white background.
  
• I would argue that Boston is not a "gay city" - but then again, what cities are anymore? Even the exalted San Francisco I have heard from a few men is beginning to lose a little of its gayness. Boston has a very good medical center for LGBTQ (Fenway Health) but it has no community center and the one gay bar I went inside was as dead as a doornail - I mean, even the bartender was asleep (j/k).
  
• Ironically very few Boston Markets in Boston.
  
• And lastly, no Sheetz. ?
  

What about your thoughts about where you live? How does it compare and contrast to other places you've lived?

You young'ns have no sense of pop culture history

 

https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/sheena-queen-of-the-jungle-has-died-for-sure-we-think.162254/

 

 

 

 

Not the original cast... saw it in London in 1977 where it was not a hit and closed after a short run. (In 1990 I saw the unbelievably overrated Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap and legendary actress Jerry Hall--mother of 4 of Mick Jagger's kids-- in a revival of Bus Stop [with legendary actor Shaun Cassidy], so I've had some disappointing theater experiences across the pond.)

I suppose now you're gonna ask who Shaun Cassidy is. :eek::eek:

Who's Shaun Cassidy? Nah, I know who that is. It's the teenage boy from The Partridge Family?

Certainly, Gypsy

In my opinion one of the best overtures of all time.

Did anyone here see the original cast of A Chorus Line?

In person Georgia Brown was a better singer than actress, still I am very glad I saw her.

I love her rendition of "Oom Pah Pah" and "It's a Fine Life"...

Original Broadway Cast of "Oliver" as excellent as "Ragtime" and Encore''s "House of Flowers" and "One Touch of Venus"

 

Flowers: Harold Arlen

Venus: Kurt Weill

Georgia Brown was wonderful on the cast recording!