Sunrise, Sunset

"Sunset Beach" is one of the happiest sets I've ever worked on," Gordon Thompson (A.J.) concurs. "It's wonderful being back at the same studio with the same show initials, same dressing room, same crew for the most part (Thompson played Santa Barbara's Mason Capwell). The show itself has a wonderfully optimistic quality. So much so I think of it as The Little Engine that Could."

It's about 10 a.m., as the show's publicist, Jonathan Zaleski, guides this SOAP OPERA WEEKLY reporter through the hallways leading to the soundstage. A man in a hurry, Clive Robertson (Ben/ex-Derek Evans), with script in hand, sprints toward us heading to the set. "Hello," he says with a smile. Is he a good twin or a bad twin at the moment? "I'm not sure!" he jokes.

In the directors' team office, Barbara Roche, who shares stage manager duties with Shannon Mason, is hard at work. Roche arrived at the studio at about 6:15 on this particular day. "Shannon and I take turns with the early morning shift," Roche says. "We have to be in prior to the first makeup call. There are dressing rooms to be opened, prep work for that day's scripts, marking cues and checking things."

Around 7:30, the director (today it's Peter Brinckerhoff) "walks the stage" with the stage manager and members of other key departments. Dry blocking (when the specific camera moves for the actors are set) begins at 8.

"The stage managers share the day, relieving each other at certain points," Roche explains. "There are some scenes we can do on our own. That way, we're leapfrogging each other all day. If it's a scene at the disco or the hospital involving a lot of people, then we'll both probably be on the floor."

Tomorrow is a location day at Seal Beach, which doubles for Sunset Beach. "Because this show does so many remotes, we shoot simultaneously here in the studio," Roche adds. "Shannon will be down at the beach with another stage manager, and I'll be here with another person to work with me."

Stopping off in the hair and makeup department, I chat with head makeup artist Gail Katz, who's already been on the job for several hours. "We generally lose our actors between 8 and 9, so we pretty much have to have them ready by 8. Once they start dry blocking, the director has the option of keeping them there on the stage until they're set to tape at 9."

Sherri Saum (Vanessa) was the first customer of the day, which meant applying those hideous Martin's Syndrome lesions over half of her face as well as her arm. "Yeah, you missed 'lumpy-bumpy,' as we affectionately call her," Katz says with a laugh. "We had an early morning call - 6:45 - for Sherri to be camera-ready, including dry blocking. We had to schedule in that extra 45 minutes for the bumps - in additional to her regular makeup and hair - to give us some lead time."

Katz credits Academy Award-winning special effects artist Matthew Mungle with sculpting the actual prosthetics used to create the Martin's Syndrome look for Vanessa and her mother, Lena. "He's a fabulous artist, absolutely brilliant," she raves, "and a delightful man to work with."

Later, Saum tells us how it feels to be in that chair while the "bumps" are being applied to her face. "Usually, I try not to look in the mirror," she says. "But it's getting so commonplace, because I have to deal with it, every single day that I'm here. I try not to concentrate on it, though. I just like the time to go as quickly as possible."

What are the challenges this particular day for hairstylist Kimberly Spiteri? "Being interviewed," she teases. Spiteri's daily duties include "every-thing from cutting to coloring. We take care of all our actors' hair-care services. For us, it works out much better, because that way we can keep track of the continuity of their hair, as opposed to having them go out to a salon and coming back with something that might not be right for what we're working on at the time."

Most of the women spend about 45 minutes in Spiteri's chair. Sam Behrens (Gregory), though, doesn't even bother sitting down. "He actually takes care of his own hair," she notes. "He comes in and we hand him a brush and the products he likes right now - one is Bumble & Bumble Styling Creme, the other is a vanilla-scented hair spray by Cinema Secrets."

While Spiteri combs out the tresses of Cristi Ellen Harris (Emily), the young actress tells us she's a good friend of Richard Biggs (ex-Marcus Hunter, Days of Our Lives), whom she met while he was teaching acting classes. "He always told me that the one thing I needed was to get a soap," she says, "that it was the best training anybody could ever have." Did she call Biggs and tell him she got the job on Sunset? "The same day," she says. "He told me to be honest, be real, just do the work and have fun with it."

"My favorite part of the day is hair and makeup, because I love having my hair and face worked on," Shawn Batten (Sara) shares. "It relaxes me. I could sit there all day long!"

Batten had an 8 a.m. fitting with Sunset's costume designer Chic Gennarelli. "We're doing a change of look for Sara," he explains. "It's her character's transition from Washington to Sunset Beach, so the new emphasis will be on casual outfits."

According to Gennarelli, the show's costumes need to be "very colorful, sexy, featuring a lot of bareness. It's an Aaron Spelling show combined with a place called Sunset Beach, where the sun always shines and it never gets cold. We're doing a lot of beachy stuff now that El Nino's over and the warm weather is here."

Polaroids are taken of the 10 outfits Batten tries on and then presented to supervising producer Lisa Hesser in her second-floor office. "Out of those 10, we picked two because of the color considerations," Gennarelli says. "You have to look at what the other characters are wearing as well as the set decorations. So Lisa made a decision as to which outfits she liked best. Then I accessorize them for today's show and put Shawn into hair and makeup. The other eight outfits will be utilized for future episodes."

In an upstairs office, David Levinson, assistant to the executive producer, tacks an SPW clipping of Kathleen Noone's (Bette) Applause, Applause to the show's bulletin board. In an inner office, John Fritz, who doubles as assistant to associate producer Debbie Bachtell-O'Sullivan and director of Sunset's fan club, finishes up the club's first newsletter (to be issued quarterly).

Back downstairs, we pay a visit to "the clubhouse" - the dressing room of on- and offscreen best buds Timothy Adams and Jason George (Casey and Michael). Their highly publicized wall collage (featuring everything from pictures of themselves to a photo of Raquel Welch) is growing in size, thanks to contributions from viewers - mostly women. "It's very cool," says George. "It's about time we sent out another call to the fans for pictures, because we intend to fill this entire wall."

It's nonstop banter between these two. "We screw around a lot on the set, but our focus is always there when taping begins," George says. "We can be in the middle of a laugh and when the countdown starts, we'll go right into the scene."

Earlier, Adams had been razzing George about his impromptu tap dance to Shuffle Off to Buffalo on the set. "Actually, I prefer when he does the number in his construction boots," Adams quips. "The aesthetics of that are just incomparable."

Out in the hall, John Martin and Carol Potter (Hank and Joan) are winding their way toward the stage. They certainly are youthful-looking parents of grown children. "My dad watches the show, and he called me and asked, 'How did you get two such beautiful daughters?'" Martin explains with a laugh. "I don't know, but I'm also tempted to ad-lib a line to the girls like 'kiss Daddy."

Taping is proceeding at a steady clip under Brinckerhoff's direction. "It looks like we'll wrap at 6:30, which is an ideal time for us," reports stage manager Roche. "We like to have about a 12-hour day in the house."

Just another day at the Beach.