Hunter Tylo Biography In this third part of the look at the year 2004 in the life of Hunter Tylo I would like to share an unfortunate experience that I had but first I would like to set up the background. The experience that I encountered in the last half of 2004 came from a controversy stemming from a fan club newsletter column that I wrote. Over the years I had noticed in the fan club newsletters that a certain “attitude” towards Hunter’s previous employers seemed to be condoned. I am not suggesting that it actually was but it certainly may have seemed that way to some. I also once recall reading a forum message from Hunter and also a magazine interview with her in which she stated in both that she did not think all that much of ‘The Maharajah’s Daughter’ (because of the limitations of the character that she played or something to that effect). So it seems that complaints from her and representatives about her previous work had become quite common over the years. However, you probably would not expect to see that in an official publication of Hunter’s such as a fan club newsletter. Yet, for years, there it all was with people “at the top” badmouthing Bold mostly. Does that set a good example for the people who wrote a column in the newsletter? You can be the judge while we look at what I said in my last column in the fan club newsletter around the middle of 2004. In that newsletter column I had always mentioned what news I had about what Hunter had been doing in the previous months since the last newsletter. In early 2004, in one newsletter, Hunter had sent in a short letter to fans to be published in the newsletter at the time. In it she mentioned her location shoot for ‘Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy’. In the next newsletter I responded to that with a slightly controversial comment. I said that the film’s plotline was typical of the sort of rubbish that Hollywood churns out sometimes. This is because I had hoped that Hunter would obtain a better role next time that would be widely seen around the world. So I thought that it was all perfectly innocent because I was trying to show my support but it turned out that it was not very supportive at all. Hunter did not like it and told me so in an email. She had a very good reason for her opinion and I apologized because I had not thought of the reason that she gave me. The column was accepted and published unedited and it was only when Hunter and others complained that people suddenly realized that some better judgment could have been used. I acknowledge that that is the case where I was concerned but others were not prepared to do so at all it seems. The end result is that those "at the bottom" (or specifically, just me) are punished as is always the case in today's society? Before Hunter emailed me about it, I had an opportunity to email her directly so I was able to bypass all of the usual irritating fan-filtering that celebrities like her require. I just said hello, provided a compliment and asked if she would be interested in doing a little Question and Answer interview (Q&A) for HunterNet and the fan club. Despite saying that she would work on the Q&A and that someone from the fan club would be in touch concerning the newsletter (which I also asked about) she had no intention of allowing me to write for the fan club newsletter again. In fact it seems that a directive went out to her people to never communicate with me again. So no Q&A answers and since then I have never heard from any of the people connected to the situation. There was not even a personal apology for ending my fan club membership early (and keeping the remaining money paid for membership) or anything for that matter. Since then I contacted Michael a few times in late 2005 and early 2006 (when this was published), just to say hello like I used to, but to no avail. This is partially because one email address, on his official site which opened in late 2005, is filtered, despite potentially misleading claims that “he personally reads and responds to emails”. The other email address I had previously used is no longer used by him I suspect. So the newsletter column combined with the mere fact that I dared to contact Hunter, despite being given a sanctioned opportunity to do so, saw some of her people freak out, including her. There was even some talk of me being a stalker which I will get too shortly. I had expressed to Hunter that I was annoyed and that I would send her the Q&A file anyway but it was not her that I was annoyed with, it was those that freaked out that I contacted her in the first place. There seems to have always been some level of a “superiority complex” (bragging, jealousy, withholding information) that certain fans that are her acquaintances seem to possess. That does spoil it a little for others but the whole “protect the star at all cost” thing is quite strange. In the end I was left to feel that I had done something wrong and I was embarrassed and distrusting of people. I had never experienced that with any other celebrity that I had been in touch with through fan clubs and websites. I guess that I expect that everyone is down-to-earth but obviously that assumption is wrong. The whole protection culture that Hunter seems to have fostered for distancing herself from fans has been developed quite well over the years. It is one big wall that one can quickly find themself on the wrong side of. It is like nothing that I have ever experienced before and I have run fan clubs and websites devoted to celebrities for years so it was quite an eye-opener for me. The lesson to be learned from this perhaps is that, as her former best friend, Kimberlin Brown might tell you, Hunter’s way of dealing with “problem people” is to cut off all communication and forget about them in the hope that they will go away (and encourage other people to do so as well). Well I for one am still here and I believe that a so-called Christian should both forgive and forget, not just the latter. There may be some clues though as to why Hunter seems to have dealt with me in the manner in which she did. The Q&A consisted mostly of questions about the mission of Hunters Chosen Child and how her cosmetics line was going plus a few personal questions (not that personal) to give people a better insight. Some of these questions may have put her off answering because although she said that she would work on them there has never been a response yet (maybe the person they went through filtered them down to just a few questions). I had noticed in one forum that she was concerned about young girls and oral sex so I asked her about her concerns about where the youth of today are at (by comparison to yesteryear). There were then some general questions about her favorite television shows and music and so on. Obviously the novelty had worn off with the charity and business by this time so she did not feel the need to respond I guess. My reponse to the fan club showed that, when dealing with a so-called born again Christian, you have to hype it up a little to make it look good. That is exactly what I did as you can see in HunterNet’s forum in a message in October of 2004. Normally I would not talk like that but the end result, as I have previously mentioned, may appear to some to indicate that Hunter issued a directive to “her people” asking that no further communication with me occurs again. There was stay in October at a swanky resort hotel where the family Tylo and the person that ran the fan club gathered to discuss its future and a decision to close it was made. One last newsletter explaining it all went out in December but, as Hunter indicated it was only closing "on paper" (you can still obtain some items from the fan club). Prior to that though there had been in touch with one person associated with Hunter and there was some talk (hopefully just in jest, as I took it) that I was a stalker which is completely impractical for many reasons and a load of utter nonsense but amusing nevertheless. So with all this in mind, did I have anything to do with the fan club's closure? No. The person that ran it needed to take a break from it and the number of members had hit an all-time low so there was little left of the club. My final column may have been the catalyst though for decisions that were made thereafter. So what have we learnt here, if anything? Hunter’s book first gave us an indication of what she thinks of her fans and this stalker rubbish together with her need to have fan communications filtered just shows what we might be dealing with here. There is nothing wrong with a need for privacy and I am certainly all for that. However Hunter’s way of dealing with “troublesome” folk by ignoring the problem in the hope that it will go away does not work. The way in which I was treated by those involved was just appaling but if they can sleep at night, with this culture of “protecting the star” then good luck to them. Fortunately for those poor suckers that were paying money for excuses in the fan club (for late newsletters offering irrelevant information (poems and the like) as well as miniscule information (about the family Tylo) they were soon put out of their misery when the club unofficially closed by late 2004. You can still obtain information if you are prepared to wait up to several months for the person offering it to get around to it. That is the problem with fan clubs sometimes. If you run one and spread yourself too thin with other activities in your life the hobbies come last and excuses abound. People do not pay money for that. When the novelty wears off it is what happens though unfortunately and it becomes a very low priority, which is completely unacceptable to those paying money. I will not say that it is selfish but it is not on by a long shot, that is for sure. Again this comes back to the relationship, or lack thereof, that Hunter has with her fans. They can be merely a statistic when it comes to a show like ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’. For every fan letter, email or forum post the theory has it that it represents something like fifteen to twenty other people’s opinions also. So when you see critics saying that Hunter only communicates with fans when contract negotiations come up (when she quickly runs to the Net and blabs something that she is not supposed to in order to get a reaction, as she has done in the past) it is not hard to understand where they are coming from. She is a shrewd businessperson just as much as she is an excellent actress. Anyway I do not mean to badmouth her but it is food for thought. 2005: A New Beginning? Click here. Appendix to this page On October 5th, 2004 Hunter was cast in a movie called 'Highway 101'. As of early 2006 the film was still seeking finance and is therefore in pre-production still.