This interview was aired new on February 14, 2006. David Kreizman has been headwriter of Guiding Light for 2 years, one of the youngest headwriters ever in Daytime Drama, being 29 years old when he was hired as headwriter.


He began as a Guiding Light intern while in college, where he watched Days of Our Lives (there were rabbit ears and only one station) When production coordinator for GL, he kept writing sample stories and leaving them on peoples desks. He said it was a long while, but they finally noticed. He found that watching a soap was a good way to meet girls, who love to talk about their soaps and gave him a common interest with them.

He explained the writing system of a soap: The headwriter comes up with 3-6 months of story idea. It is layed out week by week, which is called a "thrust" and then it goes to 5 (in this case) breakdown writers who write the episode outlines, and then the scriptwriters write the dialogue.

He said, in response to a question, that his number one priority when hired was family and love stories. He defined love stories as any love, whether it be romantic or mother/daughter, brothers, etc.

This, of course, led to a discussion of Jonathan and Tammy, who are romantic and cousins both. He said, more or less, that this was completely accidental. When they saw what they had during the revenge story, they discussed long and hard what to do about it. They decided to go slowly and get the audience on board first, as much as possible, and go with it.

Discussing Tom Pelphrey (Jonathan) he said Kim Zimmer (Reva) originally objected to this dark character, and said he was "dead behind the eyes." Kreizman said if it didn't work, they would just kill Jonathan. One week later, Kim was back, praising Tom to the skies, and wanting Jonathan to stay.

Linda Dano (ex-Lena) was a substitute host and there was some kidding about Kreizman killing her. She said she was at a party recently and some woman kept saying she wanted Lena back. Linda kept trying to tell her she was dead. Finally she told her she had to come to grips with it, and accept it.... "I'm DEAD!!"

This brought them to Phillip Spaulding. He said they always knew he was alive, but no one else did. (Note: Might have been smart to tell Grant Aleksander!!) She asked if he was coming back and he said "we'll see." Well, won't we just?


He met his wife in the production department of Guiding Light.


They have 7-month-old twins, a boy and a girl. The names of the twins (and his wife) were not mentioned, but it was amusing that he said of the twins, "We haven't figured out which one is the evil one, yet."


Linda then said they had had a "bloodbath" at GL and he said you have to write for who is there. Sometimes a leaner cast is better, because they all get airtime. He said they had 30 characters before and now there were 19 contract players.

He was asked about Michelle and Danny and he said they had been reunited "a thousand times" and they needed to be happy, and leave.

So, what about Gus and Harley then? He said they are fun together, sparky and funny. So they are staying.


He said that Ellen Wheeler, Executive Producer, got the idea for the new Wednesday format from seeing the movie "Everything is Illuminated." They had a big meeting about how it would work, work in, not interfere, and which day. He said it's fun to do, and a creative challenge.

He was asked about the new taping location and said it was "different. Before we were in kind of an isolated studio, just us, and now we're part of the CBS machine." Doesn't sound that thrilled does he? Kreizman is friendly and unassuming, and quite likable. But he never said who's idea it was that got us into the Phillip Spaulding/Grant Aleksander quandry.



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