very early RDA quotes

[lolmac]

Instead of actually writing today (so far), I have wasted vast swathes of time reading old, old items in the archives at rdanderson.com.  I ended up saving some truly delicious snippets from the early days, when he was on General Hospital.  He didn't like the character and left after his 5-year contract was over.

The Soap Opera press loved him,

Comments

[magnavox_23]

These are fantastic! I've never seen General Hospital, but soapie characters are a dime a dozen, I can imagine him being quite frustrated in that environment.

[dieastra]

You can find lots of clips with RDA on youtube if you do a little search. It's interesting to see him young and cute, but the character is indeed a little boring. I don't use to watch soap operas otherwise and what did most grind with me was that they repeated everything three or four times, and I was like: "Yeah, I got it, move on with the story!" But I guess when housewives do housework while watching, you have to do it that way so everyone gets why he can't love that woman ;)

Sometimes a bit of the later RDA comes through, though. Like one scene when he is at home and quickly juggled a few plates in the kitchen.

[idlewild_]

Ooh! Just the burst of inspiration I needed to go blow up some vehicles.

Also please ma'am, may I have an icon? I still don't have a Mac icon, and I was trying to screen cap that part in the opening credits where he's eating ice-cream but I couldn't get a good frame. Do you happen to have anything?

[lolmac]

Woot! Whaddya want?

The icon galleries are here: http://pics.livejournal.com/lolmac/gallery/0000za09

Would you like a custom icon? If so, what scene, and what text if any? *bounces with glee*

I can do the ice-cream scene quite handily, in either flavour (S1 with traffic signal or S5 with clock).

I'm in an icon-making mood. I really need one with an explosion!

[idlewild_]

Um. Well, I feel bad that I'm taking you away from writing, but yes, I would really, really like ice-cream cone/traffic signal Mac at icon size. If you feel inspired to put text on it, I trust your funny... hard to resist something about licking.

[sidlj]

Oh, he was constantly in the soap magazines! Until I met Jack O'Neill, I never liked RDA. I could not figure out what the big deal was. "Him again?"

And, yes, Jeff Webber was a doofus. :-D

[lolmac]

Pre-MacGyver, he obviously didn't like any of his characters either!

[sg_wonderland]

I actually loved RDA's character, Jeff Webber, just because he was such a good guy. A kind, loving husband, a compassionate doctor, RDA could wring the emotion out of any scene.

I suppose part of the reason I liked Jeff was that most of the girls I knew were swooning over Luke, whose character I hated. He raped teen-age Laura but when the writers saw the spark between the two actors, they backpedaled and suddenly Laura realizes (WTF?) that it wasn't rape, she consented and had been blocking it out. Give me a break! No thank you, I'll just stick to Jeff.

[campylobacter]

D:

WTF are they teaching screenwriters in film school?

[sg_wonderland]

Some of the fans called them on it but the majority were so swept up in the Luke-Laura tragic love story that they didn't have a problem with the rape/nonrape. I drifted out of the General Hospital fandom shortly thereafter. So when Mac came along, I was like 'oh, yeah, I remember this guy!'

Alot of actors who started in soaps say it was like getting paid to go to acting school because they learned as they went along.

[campylobacter]

One can only hope that the General Hospital writers "learned as they went along", but I doubt it made them more enlightened.

[pitry]

<3 RDA.

Poor man, sounds like acting left him quite frustrated before MacGyver!