Thank you Mr. Jackson...that's Jonathan if you're Nasty!

After the hoopla that was James Franco's stunt casted appearance on General Hospital...and make no mistake, I was on board that train and rode it all the way into the station!...the smoke has cleared and the show has settled back into it's planned storylines.

The central one involves Lucky/Elizabeth/Nicholas. If you don't watch the show, this has become a love triangle between Lucky, his childhood sweetheart and his brother. Jonathan Jackson was signed to reprise the role of Lucky, which he originated as a boy. Jackson won many Daytime Emmys for this role and went on to have a primetime and movie career. He was succeeded by two other actors. Greg Vaughan played Lucky for 7 years and did a fine job...and no disrespect to him, but IMHO he couldn't have played the layers that Jonathan Jackson is unpeeling at the moment. His portrayal is mezmerizing. It's informed with the history of all that has gone on before between these three characters. Watching Lucky's decent into the dark rabbit hole of heartbreak, disbelief, rage and reckless behavior, his raw vulnerability with his dad - the iconic Luke (Anthony Geary), has me spellbound and weeping...yes I am not afraid to say, unabashedly, I have been watching these episodes with tears streaming down my face.

Make no mistake about it, GH has a (for the most part) superb troupe of actors...and they have risen to the challenge of Jackson's performance. We saw the kick they got out of acting with Franco, but frankly his performance was a showy little turn of middling substance...which I enjoyed the hell out of!...but it can't hold a candle to what Jackson is doing. For all of you who are quick to poo poo "soap opera acting" - I'd put Jackson's work up against anything anybody on prime time TV is doing right now. AND, he's doing it with little if any rehearsal...pages and pages of dialogue that they get the night before. No movie or primetime actor could handle that workload with the skill and presence he's demonstrating.

So, while the movie star, Franco arrived with great fanfare, Jackson slid quietly back into a character he had not inhabited in 10 years and is bringing it!

So, thank you Mr. Jackson. Just, thank you!

It DOESN'T have to become a Movie!

Ever experienced a bad bad boyfriend? Been in a relationship where you always came second? Been disappointed, lied to to, cheated on or worst of all battered and abused? Well, that's been my relationship with Hollywood. Hollywood is the man that you just know is bad for you but is so charming and suave that, time and time again, you forgive them and believe that this time will be different.

Our microcosm of society (in this town) is so out of whack that we, as artists, have come to believe that our art has no validity unless someone wants to make a movie out of it. I've been guilty of that myself for a couple of decades. Every anecdote related to me starts the wheels in my brain turning..."That could be a (adjective here) movie!

We don't create anything just for the sake of it's creation. We create it in hopes of a movie deal.

What is wrong with this picture? Imagine for a moment, if Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh were creating their masterpieces with a three picture deal in mind? The Hollywood prism has invalidated artistry for the sake of art. In this desolate, treacherous, now all but dead world, your art doesn't mean shit if it doesn't get made.

I, for one, am no longer agreeing to this poisonous, one sided, upside down, sick relationship . I am breaking up with Hollywood. It has taken the joy out of my creating for the last time. I will no longer write anything that I think might be "commercial" enough or that 'so-and-so' might respond to. In the plainest parlance I have...FUCK THAT.

I'll be writing stories that I want to read...Exploring the worlds that play on endless loops in my imagination...painting pictures with words that satisfy my soul and make my heart skip. Now...will I be disappointed if no one else cares about these stories? I can't lie. I'm an artist who has always been motivated to sell. It's a step by step process. I can't give everything up at once. But I've taken the first step in walking away from a relationship I've been addicted to for waaaaay too long.