On the Set of As the World Turns

Reflections on the day a New York–based soap opera comes to Silver Dollar City.

Photo Dylan Whitaker The cast and crew of As the World Turns poses outside of Silver Dollar City after a day of filming.

“Martha, why do we not have kids in that shot?” Silver Dollar City marketing rep Lisa Rau says matter-of-factly. She’s puzzled, but she’s not really asking. This is a great opportunity to promote the theme park’s family atmosphere. The soap opera As the World Turns is filming in front of SDC’s Thunderation rollercoaster, and no spotlight opportunity shall go unturned.

It was the second day of the on-location Branson shoot. For the crew, it was Silver Dollar City day. To some park-goers, it was exciting and to others, an inconvenience. For myself and photographer extraordinaire Dylan Whitaker, it was certainly not just another day at the office.

The shots, family-atmosphere-promoting and not, were filmed in and around Branson for three days early this June. In four episodes to air July 5, 6, 9 and 10 (each at 1 p.m. on KOLR), Andy Williams’s Moon River Theatre, Grand Country Square, Branson Police Department, Shepard of the Hills Fish Hatchery, Downtown Branson, Branson Scenic Railway and Silver Dollar City provide backdrop and absorb their 15 minutes of soap opera fame.

The day, well, was interesting. For me, question numero uno was how the heck did Branson swing this? Let’s investigate. My sources say it took a lot of persistence on the part of Ann Reinke, who repeatedly contacted the producers and lobbied the Branson Lakes Area Tourism Enhancement District for $30,000 some odd dollars to facilitate the process.

And with a little more persistence, she snagged the great soap opera fish.

SURREALISM

Soap operas are strange. They’re hokey. The acting is bad, the plots are outrageous, and people come back from the dead and have “twins” in bad wigs. But watching a soap in person while it’s filmed is something even more special. It’s just sitting out there exposed in real life, without the safety of being in the imaginary world that lives in the box in your living room. And in this instance, it’s now hanging out in Silver Dollar City. In person, the acting seems even more exaggerated, the wigs more fake, the plot all the more ridiculous—and the moment is priceless.

We walked up to see the tail end of filming at the rollercoaster. Anticipation spawns excitement, and at least for a little bit I, like everyone else, thought there would be grand activity. And this isn’t a knock on the show, but standing out on blacktop on an extraordinarily humid day while the same scene, with two actors, was shot over and over and over, just simply wasn’t glamorous. It was quite dull. That’s okay. I get it. That’s how TV is made. The amusement was really in the strangeness of the combination. I’d never been to Silver Dollar City (I know, I know… I’ve lived here for a year), and it was every bit as over-the-top Ozarks country as I’d expected. Transplanting a soap opera, in all its soap-operaness, into the park was too good to be true. I really think if you’re going to go for a surreal day, you should go for the gold.

SMELLING IT OUT

When animals of varying species are introduced for the first time, they apprehensively smell each other out. They’re jumpy, curious and have the classic, scrunched-faced animal look that says, “What is God’s name is this weird #@*&?” This is the best way I can describe the interaction between Bransonites and the cast and crew of As the World Turns as the show’s team of 35 spent time away from their skyscraper city.

If the New York–based cast and crew of As the World Turns came to Branson and found kitsch amusement, I’m not a good enough reporter to milk it out of this media-savvy group. In interviews, they all seemed taken aback by the friendliness they encountered. People said “hello” on the street and looked them in the eye… a shocking thing, indeed. The Bransonites involved in the venture seemed to be surprised that the crew didn’t storm in with a holier-than-thou attitude. Both sides seemed particularly eager to please each other. As eager-to-please is not any way scandalous or attention-grabbing, I began to pass the time by counting sightings of man-tanks and high-top Filas. (There were six and two, respectively.)

Now, the crowd, well, it was entertaining. I talked to quite a few SDC visitors while standing there, and none said they had come to the park to see As the World Turns. The ones that lingered the longest seemed to be the women who were older than the 51-year-old show. They had watched the show, “Oh, since way back when, when those two girls—oh what where their names? Phil, honey, what where their names?—were on the show.”

See, I don’t know anything about As the World Turns. I don’t know anything about soap operas. I’m particularly dim and have strategically planned it that way. So as people were asking me about characters/plots/basic soap information while I was interviewing them, I applied my dumb-blonde face. To some degree, secretly, I was trying to play the intellectual-elitist card as if I were above it, but at some point, talking to fans, I realized soaps really are the TV dramas of yesteryear. I’m pretty sure my generation’s equivalent is the reality stuff on MTV, in which case I’ve had my fair share of guilty pleasure. Perhaps my elitism need be spat on.

Another thing I learned from my time in soap-world is that Days of Our Lives is king of the mountain, the coolest kid in the class, the head honcho of the operas. Everyone that admits to watching soaps seems to talk about how Days is really their show. Janie Longhiber, who was one of the grandmotherly onlookers and is from the Lake of the Ozarks, leaned over to her husband and said, “We’ll go back and really get Mother. Tell her it’s Days of Our Lives.” Days deals out one big slap to competitors such as As the World Turns by simply existing. It was sort sad how here, while As the World Turns was being filmed right in front of them, Days was still ruling the roost. But that certainly didn’t keep people from gawking.

Photo Dylan Whitaker Jennifer Landon and Jesse Lee Soffer pose on Silver Dollar City's Thunderation ride.

The day Dylan and I were out there, only two of the six actors that came to Branson were at Silver Dollar City. All the same, we got to chit-chat with Jesse Lee Soffer (Will), who played Bobby Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie, and Jennifer Landon (Gwen), yes, the daughter of Michael Landon. Soffer is cute. Not dreamy, not intimidating, but he has an the Eddie Furlong, young Leo thing I can’t quite peg. He was, dare I say, cool. (Very Teen Beat of me, I know.) He didn’t have an air or superiority, answered the stock questions nicely and put up with my asking who his favorite Brady is. (Of course: Marsha.) When I asked him his dream gig, his hopeful next step, he honestly answered, “I’m still figuring that out.” I can respect that.

Landon seemed sweet, less off-the-cuff than Soffer—more poised to answer questions the right way. She got to sport the rockin’ wig that day. With or without the wig, she doesn’t look as much like her father as you might expect. She’s blonde, petite and spent downtime at the shoot, sketching in a small notebook.

One of my top-notch favorite moments of the day was near the end. The cast and crew had just finished taking group shots in front of the big SDC sign, and were headed toward the buses when the group of eight or nine New Yorkers rallied to save a lunar moth by taking it from the pavement and trying to hoist it toward a plant that sat in an island that was surrounded on all sides by pavement. The moth, it appeared, was on a suicide mission. Humanitarians, too, they yet may be.