Thursday, December 27, 2012

NEWS ROUNDUP: Did Indonesia Soap Shoot Contribute To Little Girl's Death? Bridget Dobson Revisits Her Start

Indonesia: Parents of a nine-year-old girl say a soap opera's hospital shoot contributed to their daughter's demise
Soap opera-crazed Indonesia is watching a tragically ironic drama play out in the death of a 9-year-old, whose parents blame a hit soap for playing a role in their daughter’s death.

LOVE IN PARIS is a romance starring a young starlet, actress Michelle Zudith, whose character suffers from leukemia and is expected to die before 20 — a plot device that affects her search for love.

Ayu Tria Desiani was a 9-year-old who suffered leukemia in real life. According to the Jakarta Globe, she frequently required treatment in hospitals. After experiencing a burst blood vessel, the Globe reports, she was rushed to an ICU ward yesterday.

Turns out the ward was filled with atypical guests: the perfectly healthy cast and crew shooting a scene for LOVE IN PARIS

Ayu didn’t survive. And her family, according to the Jakarta Post, now claim the soap opera crew contributed to her death by crowding the ward, disturbing her treatment and walking around without sterile clothing.

The hospital insists she received adequate treatment though the Post reports that Indonesia’s health minister insists that active ICU wards can never be used legally as filming locations.

Bridget Dobson on how her parents got hired by P&G (eventually leading to her working at GH)
"My parents (Frank and Doris Hursley) wrote for radio and then television. It was a feast or famine existence. Every time a show was cancelled, we became poor, my parents had no income and no work. Then they'd get another job, and we could hire a maid again. They were hired to write a soap opera, SEARCH FOR TOMORROW after my parents borrowed a fancy car, a Cadillac, from one of their “rich” friends, and placed the car in their garage so that the hiring agent (the head of Procter and Gamble productions) would see the car in the garage as he walked to the front door and, presumably, he would think: These writers must be very successful since they have a very expensive car in their garage. It worked."

"SEARCH led to GENERAL HOSPITAL and to one of their two daughters (me) wanting a job working from her parents."

Whiskey Helped Connie Britton Prepare for Singing on NASHVILLE
“Honestly I was really excited because I used to sing and dance when I first started out,” Britton tells Rachel Ray. “But I hadn’t done it in a lot of years. I mean, I hadn’t done it in a long time. So when this came along I just thought, this is an exciting opportunity and so amazing to play a country star. I was excited about the challenge to get back in my singing voice and all of that.”

Still, Britton admits she needed a confidence boost. She got help from two very different sources. “I’m getting a lot more comfortable thanks to my amazing voice teacher,” she explains. “They have taken me from where I was so terrified that the first time I recorded, they had to give me whiskey. I don’t even like whiskey! I was like, ‘hand it over.’ And now I really, genuinely have a blast.”

Ireland: Police release 999 call.....about a soap opera murder
Police released audio of an emergency call in the hope it will make people think twice before misusing 999 calls in the run up to New Year’s Eve.

On Indian TV, ‘I Do’ Means to Honor and Obey the Mother-in-Law
Mothers-in-law are not a joke on Indian TV.

They are the law.

Soap operas dominate prime time here and the mother-in-law reigns in almost all of them. However plucky the heroine or serpentine the plot, every love story seems to circle back to marriage and the many relatives who come with the words “I do.”

The extended family is still the bedrock of Indian society, where modernization meets its match. Soap operas here are outlandish — some so stylized and wildly melodramatic they verge on camp. But they are also oddly prosaic; expressions of duty, deference and parental obligation that inform everyday lives.

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