Bursting the Soaps’ Bubble : Television: As the industry gathers to hand out Daytime Emmys tonight, the talk will be about ‘One Life to Live’ breaking all the rules.

When the daytime soap world gathers at the Sheraton New York Hotel tonight for the 19th annual Daytime Emmy Awards, the main schmooze for once won’t be Susan Lucci’s 12-time failure to win the best actress statuette. The buzz instead will be about the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live,” whose new producer, Linda Gottlieb, has been making a controversial attempt to revolutionize the stagnant daytime soap opera form.

Gottlieb, who produced the hit film “Dirty Dancing,” had no prior daytime soap experience when she took the job last July. In the insular world of daytime television, which traditionally promotes and hires from within, her name may as well be Fletcher Christian.

‘ “One Life to Live’ is the anti-soap,” says Robert Rorke, senior editor of Soap Opera Digest. “Like a soap opera antihero, you never know what it’s going to do next.”

Soap audiences used to perfect-looking actors and actresses have tuned into such scenes as one in which a bald man (Paul Bartel) defended a psychotic woman for murder; the key clue to that murder may have been provided by an even balder man (Wallace Shawn). In a world where it’s de rigueur for soap hunks to be monosyllabic, “One Life to Live” characters quote Shakespeare and recite the poetry of Burns, Donne, Rossetti and Shelley. In a genre that spins on endless romances, fantasy and froth, one recent “OLTL” storyline hinged on a scene straight out of “The Snake Pit”--one character’s visit to the sanitarium where her sister grew up.

“I had hoped by the end of my stint that I would be able to do for the world of daytime what Steven Bochco did for nighttime TV,” says Gottlieb, referring to the writer-producer whose “Hill Street Blues” revolutionized the hour police drama. “He took a form that was mired in its own preconceptions and brought it into the modern world. He showed things that were rough and uneven, and that characters aren’t gorgeous all the time. And that’s what makes his shows seem alive. Look, I’ve hired a guy with a scar on his face (Mark Brettschneider, who plays teen rebel Jason Webb).”

That’s just one of her changes. Gottlieb, who admits she had never watched a daytime soap before agreeing to take the helm of “One Life to Live,” says, “It’s rare to have a chance to come in to something that you don’t know anything about. Either it means you are going to fall on your face or you’re free to rethink it.”

Soaps had never kept up with new technology, says Gottlieb, who has introduced film-like post-production techniques, including computerized music editing. Gottlieb envisions making music as intrinsic to the success of “One Life to Live” as it was to “Dirty Dancing.” She has already hired personal friends Judy Collins (to sing a love theme) and off-Broadway composer Elizabeth Swados (to score a location sequence). And she has also used such cult actors as Bartel (“Eating Raoul”) and Shawn (“My Dinner With Andre”) in guest roles.

“Why not get the best people working for this medium? We’re reaching a ton of people. It’s as if soaps in the past have been self-conscious adolescents saying, ‘We’re gawky; we’d better not go after the good-looking guys,’ ” she says in an interview in her office at “OLTL’s” West Side studio.

Gottlieb’s most valuable, if not radical, hire has been head writer Michael Malone, a former University of Pennsylvania professor and well-reviewed author of such complex novels as “Time’s Witness” and the recent “Foolscap.” Most head writers are veterans who hop from show to show, but Malone, like Gottlieb, had no soap experience.

Not everyone is sold on her approach. “There are tried-and-true rules that make a soap work,” says Freeman Gunter, a managing editor of Soap Opera Weekly. “Gottlieb wants to reinvent the wheel, but the wheel’s already been here for 40 years. Some think it’s working just fine.”

Indeed, in Gottlieb’s rush to innovate, she has cast aside the three crucial soap opera elements that have kept audiences addicted since the dawn of TV:

* Continuity: In an admirable attempt to pick up the slow pace of soaps, “One Life to Live” has done several short-term, close-ended storylines--on such subjects as wife-beating and prejudice--reminiscent to the arcs used on the prime-time drama “Wiseguy.” But these stories simply ended, leaving viewers free to zap to other soaps. “In soaps, continuity is the most important element in building ratings and audiences,” says Douglas Marland, head writer of CBS’ “As the World Turns.”

* Familiarity: “What makes a soap work for people is the familiarity they feel with characters--the predictability,” Gunter says. “They’re shocked when they tune in and see a character acting like they’re on a medication which doesn’t agree with them.” Under Gottlieb, the heroic Viki Buchanan (played by Erika Slezak), the show’s central focus for 23 years, was suddenly pushed to the back burner and was transformed from a kindly, liberal figure into a meddling mother-in-law.

* Likability: Soap audiences tune in every day to see characters they love or love to hate, no matter how stereotypical they seem. In an attempt to build more complex, lifelike characters, Malone’s creations are many shades of gray.

In her defense, Gottlieb says she’s not producing the show for the soap audience, but more from her own tastes and instincts.

As with any insurgent, there has been resistance toward Gottlieb in the soap industry. “She’s perceived as arrogant for saying she can reinvent something that everyone else has been doing for so long,” Gunter says.

Others, however, feel that soap operas, whose formats haven’t changed much in 40 years, desperately need a kick. “Soaps have never responded to the new competition presented by cable and video,” says Soap Opera Digest’s Rorke. “Soap audiences also now include substantial percentages of men and college students as well as the traditional audience of homemakers. If Gottlieb is being dynamic and shaking things up, then good for her.”

And there is evidence that Gottlieb’s gambles may be paying off, even if the soap was not nominated this year for an Emmy as best daytime serial. “One Life to Live” (seen weekdays at 1 p.m. on ABC, Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) ranked 10th (out of 11) in the ratings when Gottlieb arrived last year and is now fifth. Still, that’s not as high as it reached through most of the ‘80s, when it placed third or fourth.

Gottlieb says she’s aware of the negative industry talk about her attempts. She shrugs: “You’ve just got to keep pushing the envelope. The great thing about soaps is if you fail one day, you can pick yourself up and try something else the next.”