Monday, August 10, 1998
Soap opera hopes disaster will bring in new audience
COLUMN: Cruise liner sinking, earthquake may rescue struggling
series
By Carol Bidwell
Los Angeles Daily News
George Becket’s orders were clear and concise: Create a major
earthquake that will cause mayhem and trap people in
life-threatening situations. Devise a resulting tsunami that
overturns a cruise ship packed with beautiful people. And build the
interior of a "Poseidon"-like capsized ship, from which the
panicked people must try to escape.
Piece of cake, said Becket, a West Hills resident and production
director for the NBC soap opera "Sunset Beach. For the past month
he has been organizing the on-screen disaster in pursuit of new
summer viewers.
The story line, which the "SB" powers that be have dubbed "Shock
Wave," is the show’s answer to strong network hints that one of
NBC’s daytime dramas will likely have to ride off into the
cancellation sunset to make way for a new series under development
– unless the ratings begin to climb substantially.
Faced with that possibility, executive producer Gary Tomlin came
up with daytime’s ultimate disaster story line.
Tomlin, who shares executive-producer credits with TV icon Aaron
Spelling, hopes the doom-and-disaster story line – which airs into
mid-August and sends other story-line complexities spinning for
months more – will pump up the popularity of the 18-month-old soap.
"SB" consistently ranks No. 11 among the 11 daytime soaps, with
about 1.8 million viewers daily – most of them females age 12 to
34.
"A lot of people don’t even know we’re on the air," said co-head
writer Christopher Whitesell, who with Meg Bennett penned the
disaster epic. "You need something to make ’em stand up and take
notice. This is it."
So far, it’s working. Even before the disaster-at-sea scenes
began airing July 31, the earthquake sequences had grabbed an
additional 300,000 viewers nationwide, giving "SB" its highest
ratings yet, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Tomlin said he had originally planned to hit the fictional town
of Sunset Beach, Calif., with an earthquake, and envisioned sending
the soap’s younger cast members off on a charity cruise as a
lighter counterpoint to the disaster story line. Then somebody said
"tsunami."
"We decided to pull out all the stops and do both," Tomlin said.
"The network said, ‘Can you really do that?’ And I said,
‘Sure."’
He was bluffing … just a bit.
"When I came up with this idea, I never thought we’d be able to
execute it," Tomlin admits.
That’s where Becket – a veteran of action movies and the TV show
"JAG" – came in. While the earthquake scenes involved mostly
falling objects, falling-apart sets and trapped people, making a
few sections of scenery in a tank of water look like a capsized
cruise ship was more difficult. Construction, lighting and
sound-effects crews under Becket’s direction had to manufacture
explosions, steam and the force of rushing water strong enough to
knock actors off their feet, plus build interior sections of a
luxury cruise liner twice — once right-side up and once
upside-down.
"It really wasn’t very difficult," Becket said modestly. "I told
them it would be no problem. There’s nothing new. It’s all been
done before. Just not on a soap."
The closest thing seen on film recently was 1997’s Oscar winner
for Best Picture, "Titanic," which took more than a year to produce
and film at an estimated cost of $200 million. "SB" is admittedly
no "Titanic," but its summer story line has many of the same
elements going for it: on-screen death and destruction, treachery
and betrayal, heroics, peril at sea, young love fighting life’s
odds.
One of the characters is even eaten alive on screen by a shark
(OK, it’s animatronic) – "Titanic" didn’t have that.
"It only took us 28 days to do it all," said Becket, who worked
with actors, directors, special-effects and stunt people, wardrobe,
makeup, construction and lighting people to pull the whole thing
together. "We filmed 40 to 48 scenes a day, 12-hour days, to get 48
minutes on air a day – not the minute or two of film you’d get if
you were working on a feature film."
Nobody will say how much executing the ambitious story line
cost, but Becket says the additional cost – paid by "SB" creator
Spelling and the network – is "many, many, many" times the cost of
the soap’s usual episodes.
The action began in the closing seconds of the show’s July 17
episode, when – with a special attachment shaking cameras and
specially built sets collapsing – a major earthquake hit Sunset
Beach. When the show opened July 20, viewers saw characters trapped
under rubble in a mansion, in a hospital, at a construction site.
And, soaps being what they are, everybody seemed to be trapped with
somebody they hate.
Then a second quake hit, sending ceilings splitting, trees
falling, floors breaking open and characters screaming as they were
buried under a new wave of rubble.
The two quakes buried Lesley-Anne Down, who plays doyenne Olivia
Richards, beneath pieces of walls and shards of timber in the foyer
of her character’s mansion. But, with kneepads under her costume to
make the hard floor not quite so hard, Down showed how the crew had
actually made her a little cave that she could wiggle in and out
of.
"I never have 100 percent confidence in any stunt," Down said,
examining her unpadded, scraped elbows and fluffing plaster dust
out of her eyelashes. Her hair was grimy with dust and debris, her
makeup smudged with "blood" and dirt. "But you have to go into it
thinking that (safety) people are totally trustworthy and are going
to protect you.
"But," she added, gazing into the mansion’s as a prop chandelier
was dropped onto her stunt double, "I’m glad I’m not involved in
that."
Actors in the cruise-ship scenes spent their days soaked to the
skin in a 30-foot-diameter tank into which a dozen or more
upside-down sets were lowered for different scenes. Actors got
safety instructions for the underwater scenes, and a safety
coordinator and a half-dozen divers hovered just out of camera
range ready to lend a hand if something went wrong.
Actor Bernie Kopell, who played Doc on Spelling’s ’70s TV hit
"The Love Boat," plays the captain of the SS Neptune, the cruise
ship that capsizes, but he is seen only briefly. Capt. Nelson is on
the bridge when the tidal wave hits and, like the captain of the
Titanic, he goes down with the ship.
Most of the young actors had a ball splashing around in between
scenes.
"It’s fun to do stunts like this," Randy Spelling, who plays
heartthrob Sean Richards, said as he treaded 85-degree water in the
1,000-gallon tank. He was waiting to have another go at a
minute-long scene in which he and Christi Ellen Harris, who plays
ingenue Emily Davis, dove underwater, swam through an air shaft and
emerged in another, drier part of what on screen appears to be a
full-size, submerged ship.
The two weren’t dressed for swimming: Spelling was wearing a
tuxedo minus the jacket, and Harris wore an evening gown, garnet
necklace and earrings – and high heels.
"We were in the ballroom on the boat, arguing, dancing,
whatever, and then all of a sudden, the boat flips over," Spelling
said.
"People were flying and falling," said Harris. "We got to fall
down an 80-degree-incline wall into the water. It was so exciting,
so much fun."
"And from then on, everything was upside down," Spelling said.
"It was real disorienting."
Cheryl Klein