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Moonlighting Magic: Glenn Gordon Caron on Bringing the 80s Classic to Streaming | Episode 4

Melissa Roth: Weirding Way Media.

Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, so sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh#*ty. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Melissa Roth: Welcome, listeners, to 80s TV Ladies, where we explore female driven television shows from the 1980s and celebrate the people who made them. Here are your fabulous hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Hatem.

Sharon Johnson: Hello, I'm Sharon.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I'm Susan. So this past October, a little dream came true for 80s television fans and 80s TV Ladies fans. Do you know what that could be?

Sharon Johnson: Do bears bear? Do bees be, Susan? Yes, I do! On October 10, 2023, Moonlighting began streaming.

Susan Lambert Hatem: On Hulu, and as of this month it's now available on many streaming platforms for purchase. Moonlighting was a comedy/drama, detective-ish show that ran March 1985 to May 1989. It starred Cybilll Shepherd and the then unknown Bruce Willis, along with Alysse Beasley and Curtis Armstrong. Moonlighting was in many ways one of the quintessential 80s shows and one of the most bonkers detective shows to ever air. Some say it invented the modern television dramedy.

Sharon Johnson: It was a detective show that sent up detective shows, often less about the case of the week and more about the sexual chemistry of the stars, sparkling and yelling banter and seeing just how far a show can go with breaking the fourth wall.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Created by Glenn Gordon Caron, who was tasked by ABC with making one of those boy-girl detective shows. He said he would only write it if he could do whatever he wanted, and he proceeded to do just that in five seasons and 67 episodes.

Sharon Johnson: Here's the premise. Cybill Shepherd plays former model Maddie Hayes, who wakes up one day to find that her accountant has absconded with all her money. She is now broke and in debt, and one of the few assets she has is a ne'er do well detective agency that was designed to cost money and be used as a writeoff for her.

Susan Lambert Hatem: The Blue Moon Detective Agency is run by David Addison, played by Bruce Willis. He's a guy's guy, a wisecracking, fun loving, wild man of a barely detective, but he convinces Maddie that if they become partners, they can turn the agency around and make money.

Sharon Johnson: In most episodes, the cases in the show are almost irrelevant. It's all about the personal. Series regulars include a mostly background cast of office workers, with Allyce Beasley playing the sweet, perky, often naive and always rhyming receptionist Agnes DiPesto. Season three brought Curtis Armstrong in as Herbert Viola, a temp who becomes a detective and love interest for Miss DiPesto.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But a lot of the show was the big swings between comedy and drama, most of all revolving around the will they, won't they, he-she don't they, fast talking Howard Hawkes-ian banter and Marx brothers insanity.

Sharon Johnson: There was big success. So many nominations, a few awards, behind the scenes high stakes drama, TV stars having twins, other TV stars becoming overnight action movie stars, 90 plus pages of scripts, giant budgeted episodes, last minute changes, undelivered, late delivered, not delivered episodes. Chaos. And somehow a lot of television magic.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was an 80s television show some thought might never make it to streaming, mostly because of the amount of music, and music drops in the show. But now it has, and we get to talk to the man behind the show. This one is very exciting for us. Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, Glenn Gordon, Caron We are so happy to have you.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Sharon Johnson: Thank you for joining us today. So shall we kind of start closer to the beginning, Susan? Or shall we just jump right in the middle?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Usually I go all the way back, but we're going to get to that. I want to talk about how you got this show to streaming. I am so excited that Moonlighting came to streaming. I remember when you announced it in social media over a year ago.

Glenn Gordon Caron: It was something I've been trying to do for about four or five years now. When I first heard that they were going to start Disney+, the streaming service, and that was the original service. People don't understand this, but Disney owns the rights to Moonlighting. They basically have since they bought ABC. And I've been trying to get Moonlighting out there because the only copies that existed were sort of bad copies on YouTube. And whenever I would approach them, they'd say, no, it makes no financial sense. People don't realize, but we did 66 episodes, and in the course of those 66 episodes, we used 300 songs.

Sharon Johnson: Wow.

Glenn Gordon Caron: So trying to secure the rights to those songs again, because they never got the rights anticipating anything like streaming, is a herculean task. Additionally, we had to restore the show visually, and that costs quite a bit of money. So they said no for a very long time. And I kept thinking, wouldn't this be great programming? Not knowing where Disney+ was going to be. Wouldn't this be great programming in the evening when children are no longer watching and parents want something for themselves? But nobody was buying. Then finally about it was a little over a year ago, suddenly there was a change in attitude. and they called me and said under certain circumstances, we would be willing to try and do this, if you would agree to this and that and that and this and blah, blah, blah. And I said, sure, yeah, I very much wanted it. Simultaneously, not to bring everybody down, I had known for a period of about two and a half years that Bruce was going through a bunch of health challenges. And my concern was he really wanted to see it on the air. He wanted his children to be able to see it in a pristine way. And I was just afraid that we weren't going to quite make it. And truthfully, I'm not sure we did. But it means the world to his family. His family's watching it and all of that. So there were all these different things. It sort of came together. Hate to say this, I think COVID was a factor. I think COVID is one of the reasons that Disney+ took off the way it did. One of the reasons that Hulu took off the way it did. Obviously, Disney, ah, buying Fox, which got them access to Hulu, mattered. And now they're discovering that by resurrecting other shows that have been lying dormant, that they're actually doing quite well, that this is something people are anxious to see. A long answer to a short question. But that's the Cliff Notes version.

Sharon Johnson: Well, long answers are great, and that's what podcasts are for, as far as I'm concerned. So we can get the full story of whatever it is we're talking about. So, tell us, what involvement if any did you have in the process of restoring or other production issues related to getting it available for streaming?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Less than I would have liked. But part of that was due to the fact that there was a writers’ strike, and I'm a member of the Writers Guild of America. And Disney didn't want to do anything to seem to flaunt the rules of that strike, and I didn't want to do anything to flaunt the rules of that strike. And we had a timetable that had to be met. So every so often, somebody would whisper in my ear and say, sort of, here's where we are, here's what we're up to. But I did not see much of anything till the very, very end, and I didn't hear much of anything because they had this, as I say, secure all these music rights. And a lot of people don't understand about that, but you can't compel people to sell you the rights to their music. You also can't compel people to sell you the rights to their music for the amount that you're budgeted to spend. And when you're going to them and saying, hey, we're going to relaunch the show and all this kind of stuff, to a certain extent, you're saying, we have a gun to our heads. So it's a very complicated process. And so what Disney did was they brought on the same team that does the music, or licenses the music, and helps select the music, the music supervisors that worked on the Marvel films for them. you know, people will ask, are you happy with all because they had to make some change. I mean, we knew we weren't going to get the Rolling Stones. We knew there were things we knew we simply couldn't afford in the current world and given the money that Disney was giving us. And by the way, they were giving us a lot of money. It's not that they were being cheap or anything, but I, felt like I was in pretty good hands. People asked me, are you happy with all the music? And I would say, overall, I am. I said this at the time, my heart's going to be broken eight or ten times over the course of the 66 episodes. There are music cues that are very important to me that we just couldn't make happen. I'm not sure they'd be important to anyone else. The really important stuff, for the most part, we were able to get, and they bent over backwards to get. They sacrificed other things to be able to afford it. But there are some fairly minor changes, mostly in incidental music that plays deep in the background and that kind of thing. And what they did visually, restoring it, making it high def and all that, I thought they did an astoundingly good job. But the main thing is, I'm just happy that it exists, that it's out there, because for almost two decades, it wasn't.

Sharon Johnson: I guess, for, like, the episode Big Man on Mulberry Street, they kind of had to get that one.

Glenn Gordon Caron: And they went out of their way not just to get Big Man on Mulberry Street, but to get, some other Billy Joel music that was featured in the episode. No, the people who did this were, for the most part, really reverent about it. First of all, they were fans. They couldn't tell me enough how much they cared and how much they wanted it to be as close to what was originally broadcast as possible. But some of that wasn't possible, unfortunately. We were actually able to correct some mistakes that were made when it went to DVD. When it went to DVD, they left out the William Tell Overture in Lady In The Iron mask, I think it's called. And the whole sequence was cut to the William Tell Overture. So in the past, there had been mistakes and things that we were able to sew up. When the DVD set came out, I want to say in season four, they actually had the episodes-- They had the episodes in the right broadcast order, but they didn't have them in the right story order. And people go, how is that possible? And, I had to explain that was during a period where we never had Bruce and Cybill at the same time. So because, Cybill was pregnant, was giving birth. Bruce first had a shoulder injury and then was doing Die Hard. There were a bunch of, a bunch of things going on. So the episodes were sort of pieced together and not always in the way that made the most sense. and when they let them out on DVD, they just duplicated the broadcast order, which was basically, do you have an episode ready, Glenn? I said, yes. And they put it on television. We were able to get it back to the story order, the intended order of the episodes. A lot of nice little touches like that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I love that. I was just thinking about also when you were talking about how carefully the sound and the music, it sounds really good too. And I have to say, not all the streaming shows from that era sound that good. So I appreciate that somebody took time with the audio. And with all the overlapping dialogue. It's really lovely.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Well, the overlapping dialogue is actually recorded as-- I mean, I used to make people crazy because we would record it as over. In other words, they would say, okay, we're gonna, we'll do Bruce's side, and Bruce will say his lines. And then, Cybill, don't say anything. I go, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're doing. And we would actually film it that way and record it that way. It gave it a kind of energy that it otherwise wouldn't have. And also, as actors, I think it was easier to execute that, quite frankly. But it was recorded basically in mono. I remember pleading with them, can we please make the show in stereo? It's right around the corner. We're coming to stereo. And no. So, it's recorded in mono. So people had to go back in and sort of split channels and do all kinds of interesting things to make it so that people-- It wouldn't sound like it was coming out of a mouse hole on your HDTV and your 5.1 Dolby speaker systems and stuff. But it makes me very happy that it's out there. And, I mean, some of these shows I didn't look at for almost 30 years, so it's kind of great to revisit them. And now I'm showing them to my youngest child, who's 14. And, you know, he's come to believe that I'm mentally ill, but at least he has a full picture.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Understanding of the mental illness.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah, exactly. And that'll come in handy later in life for him. So, no, it's just been very exciting. And I've spoken with everybody. I've spoken with Cybill, I've spoken with Allyce, I've spoken with Curtis. And, you know, they're all thrilled because it's a significant portion of their legacies, too, you know. And Jay Daniel, who produced with me, and many of the directors that worked on the show, and some people obviously, are no longer with us, but a lot of them are. And they've reached out to say how happy they are that it's out there.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, we're happy, too. We have so enjoyed looking back on these shows and seeing what holds up, what doesn't, what is so interesting. And this one is extremely interesting. And such a time capsule and such a groundbreaking show. I think Community wouldn't exist, I realized watching this, without your show. All right, so I want to go back to the beginning for you of like, how you got started in television, movies, and what made you want to do that?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Well, and I don't think people are aware of this. When I was eleven years old, when I did Moonlighting.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Wow.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes, that makes sense.

Sharon Johnson: Child prodigy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Child prodigy.

Glenn Gordon Caron: You know, once I, once I figured out left to right, I was, I was ready. No, I, like a lot of people, I grew up watching TV and movies. The truth was I was a big snob and really wanted to work in the movies. I came of age during that fantastic period of American cinema where literally every Wednesday a seminal film came out. You know, whether it was Robert Altman or Mike Nichols or, you know, it was just one after the other. And I grew up on the East Coast, very modest household. So the possibility of making movies or working in the film industry seemed like a really distant thing. But I was very, very lucky. When I went to college, I started writing screenplays because it was the one thing I could afford to do. I couldn't afford to rent a camera. I couldn't afford to rent a Nagra, which is how you recorded sound back then. But I could afford to learn to type, basically. So I started writing screenplays as best I understood what a screenplay was. And, somebody I graduated with was working as an assistant to Alan Arkin, who passed away recently and gave one of my scripts to him. And he said, hey, this is pretty good. And so I felt like, okay, what I’m doing is worth it because I was working in gas stations and movie theaters and, and then I would spend every spare moment writing. And then finally one of my scripts got to these two young fellows who were working in New York. And they called me and said, hey, this is pretty good. Would you write something for us? So I wrote something for them and then didn't hear anything for a very long time. And then they called me again, but this time they called me from California where they were working for a guy named Fred Silverman, who was the head of NBC at the time. One of those young guys was a guy named Stu Schezlow, but the other guy was a guy named Warren Littlefield. And if you know your history of television at all, Warren went on to be the president of the network and presided over all those great Thursday night shows that gave birth to all those Thursday night shows. Friends and Cheers and ER, an extraordinary guy. But anyway, they were working for Fred Silverman. And they said, hey, Fred has an idea for a show. Can we share it with you? They told me the idea. I truthfully didn't like the idea, but my soon-to-be wife I was living with said, don't be ridiculous. You have to go out and have a meeting about this. This is how naive and cloistered a life I'd had. I said, well, how do I do that? And they said, you get on a plane. And I said, well, who pays for that? Because I was making like $120 a week. And, they said, you do. And I said, oh. And my wife said, well, put it on a credit card and we'll figure it out. I went, oh. I said, yeah, but what about work? I would have to miss work. She said, call in sick. And I said, but that would be lying. That was the sort of idiot that I was. I got on this plane and, I was in the fetal position from New York to LA. I had never been on a building that flew. This thing seemed enormous to me. I got to California, took a cab from the airport to NBC. I thought every place was like New York, you know, everything was 25 minutes in a cab, and it wasn't. Wiped me out money wise. Got there. And of course I was convinced when I got there that what would happen is I'd go up to the guard at the door and I'd say, my name is Glenn Caron. I have this meeting. And he'd say, I don't have you on the list. And I'd fly home. But that isn't what happened. I went in and I had a meeting. Warren was there and Stuart were there and so were these other young people who went on to be people of consequence, Brandon Tartikoff and Dick Ebersol. And they looked at me and they said, where do you live? And I said, oh, I live in New York on 27th Street between 7th and 8th. And they said, oh, that's a shame, because if you lived out here in California, we'd send you home, you'd write us a little story. If we liked the story, maybe we'd let you write a treatment. If we liked the treatment, maybe we'd let you take a crack at the script. And the meeting was over. Lasted about two minutes. And everybody started to stand up. And as they stood up, I said, you know, if you let me do it, here's what I do. Mind you, this was an idea I didn't like. And I started talking. I did not stop for an hour, apparently. And when I was done, they said, you have a deal. It was as crazy as that. And I wrote this pilot, and when I was done writing it, James Stewart, Jimmy Stewart said, I'll do that role. If you can make it, like, so it's a day or a two days a week, I'll do that. And so they changed this role that I'd written to accommodate him, which was a great thing. And the, script was completely rewritten by a producer at Universal. And they shot the pilot and the pilot didn't go, but my original script started to make the rounds.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I'm curious what the idea was for the pilot that you didn't like that you wrote.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Oh, it wasn't a great idea. It was called the God Squad. And this was sort of in the shadow. If you remember, Warren Beatty made a movie called Heaven-- A wonderful movie called Heaven Can Wait. And the idea was, that three people would die. They go to heaven. And God said to them, if you go down to Earth, I'm thinking on Tuesdays at 09:00 and you each do enough good deeds, say about seven years’ worth, you will find a place in heaven. Seven years would have given us over 100 episodes. That's what I think God was trying to get at there. And I just thought there was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. But I wrote it and, you know, people seem to like it. Liked, it enough to film it, anyway. But Jim Brooks read it, and he was putting together this new show called Taxi, and they invited me to do some scripts on Taxi. I did one script which was well received. Then I got offers to do other things. And at some point, a name that's kind of been forgotten, a gentleman named Steve Tesich, who won the Academy Award. He wrote a film called Breaking Away. Wonderful, though he was asked to turn Breaking Away into a television series. And he reached out to me, I have no idea why, and said, will you help me with this? Will you get involved with this? And I said, sure. Because I really didn't want to do what was called three-camera comedy. I wanted to do filmmaking. And to me, Breaking Away was filmmaking. Long story short, they hired some other people, too, who were much more senior than I were, but they all sort of fell away for one reason. One had a heart attack, a bunch of things, and suddenly I was sort of the only guy left standing. And I was 20 some years old, and I had never produced a television show, much less one that was being shot in Athens, Georgia, and post produced in LA and blah, blah. So it was really baptism by fire. But I did these six or seven episodes of Breaking Away for ABC, and when it was over, they said, hey, we'll give you three pilots, three pilot commitments. Go out and form your own little company. But would you consider that? I didn't even really understand what they were suggesting, but my lawyer said, this is a very good opportunity. You should take it. So I did. So we did, literally did these three, they were two-hour movie of the week pilots. The third one was Moonlighting. The third one was Moonlighting because the first two that we did, which I'm still very proud of, were very, very arty, I think. I think they were just too arty for the room, if you know what I mean. And you have to understand the times, too. ABC used to be called ‘Aaron's Broadcasting Company’ because Aaron's Spelling pretty much dominated the schedule. And I take my hat off to him for being as prolific as he was and as successful as he was. But the kinds of shows he made were of no interest to me as a, ah, 20 some year-old man, in no way reflected life as I understood it. So I had no interest in doing those kinds of shows or making those kind of pilots. In fact, when ABC said to me, for your third pilot, since you blew the first two, the third pilot, you're going to do a boy-girl detective show. And I went, oh, I hate those. Don't make me do that. And, they said, no, it'll be like, Hart to Hart. And I said, oh, no, please. You know, I had done a season of Remington Steel.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I was going to say, you had just done Remington Steel or you were doing Remington Steel?

Glenn Gordon Caron: No, I had done-- Remington was an interesting thing. None of this will reflect well on me. Steven Bochko had come to me. He created this show called Hill Street Station and showed me the pilot. He'd written it with Michael Kozoll, and it was directed by this guy that I so admired, Robert Butler. And, he said, come on, do this with us. Produce this with us. Write this with us. And I looked at it and I said, well, it's never going to go. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, first of all, you're killing the wrong guy because they killed Charlie Haid. It was a bunch of things. I said, but this is never going to go. So I turned it down and I had already alienated myself. Bruce Paltrow had asked me to write an episode with White Shadow, which I did and was about corporal punishment. And when I handed it in, he had a lot of notes. I didn't think his notes were very good. And I told him I didn't think they were very good. And I said, did you go to a public school? And he said, no. And I said, I went to a public school. This is-- I was corporately punished constantly. Corporal punishment is physical, but people hear it today and they go, it sounds like it's from a Dickens book. But if you were an idiot like I was, they would take you down to the gym and they tell you to bend over and they'd paddle you. And they weren't cheating.

Sharon Johnson: I went to an elementary school that was run by nuns.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: And if your, if your wooden desk or your wooden chair fell over one too many times, they'd make you carry it around the school on top of your head. And then there was also the rulers and the-- I remember seeing a kid laying on the floor being kicked by the nun. So, yes, corporal punishment was a thing.

Glenn Gordon Caron: And anyway, Bruce wasn't going to have me on the White Shadow. And suddenly I found myself without a place to be at MTM, which was a place everyone wanted to be. And I had sort of blown two opportunities. and then they came to me and they said, we have this other show. It's not typical of our shows, but you might want to get involved. And it was Remington Steele. And for me, the primary reason to get involved with Remington Steele, other than the fact that it was an MTM show, was Bob Butler had directed the pilot. He also having directed the Hill Street Blues pilot, he was someone I very much wanted to learn from. So I said, yeah, I'll get involved with that show. And it was really great that I did because I did get to know Bob quite well. He ended up directing the first three pilots that I wrote, including Moonlighting. I got to be very, very close with Pierce Brosnan. We're still, well, not close close, but I mean, I just saw him a couple of months ago. it isn't a real education in that sense. I did 13 of those. And then ABC called. I'd written a pilot for them and they had suddenly decided they wanted to do it. And that's what started my relationship with ABC, the three-pilot thing. So that's sort of how it started. So they said, you're going to do this show, this boy-girl detective show. And I moaned and told them I wasn't the right guy. And somewhere along the way they went, look, you can do whatever you want with it, but that's what you're doing. And all I heard was, you can do whatever you want with it. And sort of made that my mantra. And in my arrogant mind thought, I will write a boy-girl detective show that kills this stupid genre. Because for the life of me, if you watched television back then, and this is the early to mid 80s, you would think there was a detective agency on every corner. They were everywhere. And I had, in my life, never seen one detective ageny. Not one. You know, like, it wasn't like you drove through Acme detective agents that didn't exist. And I thought, somebody needs to put a knife through the heart of this thing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And that was your job.

Glenn Gordon Caron: That was my job. You know, I think, frankly, a big part of why it was allowed to be what it was for a long time was that they didn't care because frankly, they were watching the Spelling shows. I don't think they really thought it was ever going to go anywhere. I did end up bringing Bruce to audition eleven times. I mean, they rejected him ten times, which was difficult on both. And I never really brought anybody else, so they would bring people for me to see and I'd say, no, no, no. We had Cybill. Cybill came on. I'd written half the script and realized I was sort of writing Cybill Shepherd and my agent put us together. We had lunch, she and I, and Jay Daniel, who was my producer, line producer, and she said, this is really good. If the other half is as good as the first half, I would do this because, you know, this is a Hawks-ian comedy. I had no idea what she was talking about. I mean, none. She was saying, oh, it's like a Howard Hawks comedy. But I did not understand the reference at that point. But finding somebody to play Bruce's role proved to be really, really difficult. In fact, at one point, they were saying, we're just going to pay everybody off and not make the show because it's uncastable.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I heard that there was, in one of the interviews, you said you guys saw thousands of people.

Glenn Gordon Caron: We saw 3000 men, yeah. I didn't personally see 3000 men, but Reuben Cannon, who cast the show, set up offices in New York, Chicago, in Canada, in Toronto, I believe. We had, like seven different casting offices looking for this guy. And then they became so convinced that this was a disaster in the making that they fired Reuben over my wishes and brought in this other guy who was a very famous casting director who didn't understand what I was looking for at all. And I want to say, finally, after two weeks, I was able to get him replaced and brought Reuben back. And he actually brought in-- I remember we had a casting session. There must have been 15 guys, I want to say. Who's the guy on HBO? Bill Maher came in, pretty much anybody who walked and talked. But Bruce came in and I saw him and I was just galvanized by him. I thought he was amazing. And when he left, I was talking to the other people saying, oh, my God, I think that's him. And they thought I was talking about the guy before him. I said, no, no, no. And I went outside and I ran down Pico Boulevard to try and stop him because he came to California to audition for Desperately Seeking Susan for the role that Robert Joy ultimately played. And he was really punked out. I mean, his hair was, you know, and he was wearing earrings. He was wearing camo and all this stuff. I said, tomorrow, how about we don't do the earrings? Maybe we don't wear the camo. Because I wanted others to see what I had seen. And I could see they, they were put off by that,  

Susan Lambert Hatem: By just the look of him, right?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah. He looked so radical, you know, in that moment. And again, it's ABC. So he did that. And then everybody started to get on board from my team. From ABC's team, they didn't get on board. I don't know if they ever got on board, to be honest with you. The good news was, the excuse they used was they said, he's not a leading man. No one will believe him next to Cybill Shepherd, he's not a leading man. And I said, I, gotta tell you, when I bring him over here. Because ABC had this huge headquarters in Century City. It's almost like a ski lodge with all this wood. And I'd walk him down the hall, and back then they were called secretaries. There'd be rows of secretary, and the secretaries would go berserk. It wasn't casual, it wasn't subtle, it wasn't nuanced. They were clearly having a visceral reaction to this stranger because Bruce had so much swagger and so much-- There's just, you know, I always say joie de vivre. He so clearly put that out there. So anyway, I took him in the 11th time, for the 11th time, they were about to, dismiss him. And finally, this woman named Ann Daniel. And she was-- There were not a lot of women that ran ABC at that point. Again, we're in the-- This is now 1984, I think. Interesting choice of the air and this woman, Ann Daniel finally stood up and said, look, I don't know if he's a leading man or not. I don't know if he's a television star or not. She said, but he sure looks like a dangerous (whistle) to me. And the air went out of the room. All these men were just, you know. And finally, the head of the network, Tony Thomopoulus, turned and looked at me and went. It was like he was. He just didn't want to have to go through this process again. And I refused not to bring Bruce back. And he said, okay, then you can do it. But don't let them get romantically involved. No one will ever believe that. And I said, okay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And on that note, let's take a break.

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Sharon Johnson: This special offer just for 80s TV Ladies listeners ends February 15, 2024. This is the year to invest in yourself.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And we're back. Oh, so exciting. Let's continue.

Glenn Gordon Caron: And, he said, okay, then, you can do it. But don't let them get romantically involved. No one will ever believe that. And I said, okay. I lied. And I thought, did they read the script? I mean, they can't romantically the whole backbone of the thing. And so we just did it. Very lucky. I mean, finding Bruce was providence. That was really extraordinarily lucky. He says, extraordinarily lucky for the both of us. But truthfully, I believe had it not been me and my show, someone would have come along and said, hey, this guy is quite something. The thing that I like to feel I did that might not have happened as quickly is Bruce's gut instinct at that moment in his career was to play tough. And I was like, no, no, no, no. We're not doing that. We're going to lead with our heart. You get that done when you walk in the door. You don't need to add to that. I said, stop leading with your (whistle). Lead with your heart a little bit. I said, that will make all the difference. And he got it. He got it right away. The other thing was, Bruce is fundamentally musical. He really is. He thinks musically, so he understood the dialogue and understood that the dialogue was fundamentally musical, that had a very specific cadence and that it served a very specific purpose and that you couldn't mess with it. He sort of had to embrace it and he understood the references. We had the same references. It was the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, all this stupid stuff, Bugs Bunny cartoons. It was really, really wonderfully serendipitous that we sort of found each other.

Sharon Johnson: You mentioned earlier that you thought that the way that you were going to approach this show was going to kill this genre. Can you expand on that a little bit about what your point of view was going to be and how you were going to.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Well, just. It's ridiculous. I'll give you an example. We did a scene very early on where, you know, and these are inevitable in detective shows, they go to see somebody. The person isn't home; the house is locked. They need to get inside. There's some piece of evidence they want. Typically in a detective show. You're supposed to dream up a way where this clever detective picks a lock or does some stupid thing that is a foregone conclusion. Obviously they're going to pick the lock or you don't have a scene. If they can't pick the lock, we all have to go home. So instead of doing that, what I did was Bruce and Cybill approach the door. They realized the door is locked. He looks at her. She's got a bobby pin. She says, she goes, huh? And he reaches up, he takes a bobby pin from her hair. He sticks the bobby pin in the lock, and he says, you stick the bobby pin in, you pull the bobby pin out You stick the bobby pin in and, you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey. And then the door opens. And ABC called me. They said, you can't do that. And I said, why not? And they said, because no one will ever take the show seriously. I said, I don't want anyone to take the show seriously. They said, all your jeopardy will be gone. I said, what jeopardy? They said, well, there might be danger behind their-- They might get hurt. They might get killed. I said, they're on a television show that has to come back next week. Everyone knows they're not going to get killed. They're not even really going to get hurt. It was like talking to a religious zealot and explaining to them, there's a possibility that some of these things that you hold as closely held truths may not be literal truths. That's what I meant by that. And by the way, very arrogant point of view to take. I recognize that now. But at the time, I mean, I remember thinking, I know what William Goldman was doing when he was writing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He wanted to say, is there any more to say? Are we really going to watch a bunch of cowboys anymore? Once you have those cowboys acknowledge how unserious. And I mean, you've got Rob Redford and Paul Newman running around the West and going, I can't swim. All these silly things that endeared you to them, because they were acknowledging these sort of silent truths that you had said to yourself when you went and watched these silly movies. I meant it in that way that if you can sort of peel back the veneer a bit. And of course, probably the height of that was at the end of that first group of six shows, they have to get into an event that's being guarded by, like, CIA guys or something. And so they're not allowed in. There's a guy standing there in a tuxedo, and he won't let them in. And they realize they've got to try and draft his help. So Bruce says, hey, have you seen a man with a mole on his nose? And the guy answered, basically, it's a mole on his nose. Bruce said a mole on his nose. Now, do you suppose this man with a mole—And it turns into this whole long Dr. Seuss thing. I mean, ABC called me. You would have thought somebody brought a bomb into the building. They said, you can't do that. And I said, why? And they said, because. And again, they gave me the whole thing about jeopardy. Blah, blah, blah. I said, does it make you laugh? They said, yeah. I said, are, you being entertained? They said, yeah. I said, are you going to hang around for the commercial? They said, yeah. I said, so then what? Because they didn't quite understand, and I understood that because I was much younger than everybody else. And I honestly thought, we'll do six of these, and then they'll show us the door and I'll find something else to do. And it was interesting because it was the advertising community that first said, oh, we really like that. Run that again in the summer. We want to be on that. In fact, renew that, because there was a lot of pressure not to renew the show numerically when it first came out. Ratings wise, it didn’t do that well. It was, I think, number 63 among shows, which is pretty low down there. So it took a while, in fact, here in LA. Of course, you guys are from LA, but at that time, there was a very powerful critic who reviewed television shows in the LA Times, Howard Rosenberg. And, when Moonlighting premiered, he ran a review and the headline was Beauty and the Beast. The beast, of course, referred to Bruce Willis, and he basically tore the show apart. Said this is a horrible show. Horribly acted, horribly written. And then three weeks later, he wrote another review and he said, okay, I didn't get it. I get it now. And I think for a lot of people, that was the process, because it didn't sound like other shows, it didn't look like other shows, and it didn't behave like other shows. It was much faster in terms of the-- You know, we would put out 90, 100, 110 page scripts and then shoot them, and then we'd be 15 minutes short, you know, and I would do those silly little openings.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, I do have a question about the silly little opening. I think it's the first episode of season two where you have the intro with Dave and Maddie saying, we're running short, and so we have to talk for a few minutes.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Right.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That seems like the first time you literally break the fourth wall.

Glenn Gordon Caron: That was the first time we had the time. When we were doing the other six, we were so far behind schedule that basically we would just put them together and, you know, they showed them. I also-- I didn't want to have the philosophical conversation with ABC. I was just, you know, weary of that. And the idea of these characters talking directly to the audience at the top of the show and acknowledging that it was a show that felt like it would take a few hours. But at the beginning, we handed in the show, and they really loved the show. I want to say that was the one with Charlie Rocket, that he plays Bruce's brother.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Spare Blonde, yes. Which I wrote. Here's an ego. I wrote it for the lead singer of Van Halen.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: David Lee Roth?  

Glenn Gordon Caron: David Lee Roth. That's who I thought Bruce's brother would be. I knew no boundaries. I just thought, I'll write it and he'll do it, and that'll be that. And then, of course, he didn't know that was my plan and said, no. And Charlie Rocket did it. Did, I thought, a terrific job. But we showed it to the network because it was the first episode of the season. They went, this is great. And I said, there is a problem. I said, but I know how to solve it. And they said, what's the problem? I said, well, sure, I know how to solve it. And they said, all right, go solve it. At that point, they had sort of faith enough people had told them that this thing worked, that they had faith. So we did that opening. And a lot of that stuff was born of necessity. I'd like to tell you that it was part of the original vision, but it wasn't. We were short, and it was the quickest thing I could think of and the most efficient thing I could think of, and the funniest thing I could think of to remedy the problem. Truthfully.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was meta before meta was cool. Like it was. It's so meta.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah. But nobody knew what meta was back then, including me. So, you know, and frankly, what I thought of because then there was a lot of conversation about-- A lot of people wrote about they're breaking the fourth wall. And I thought, do I dare tell them that when I was a little boy and I would watch black and white reruns on TV on The Burns and Allen show, they would break, they would talk to the audience? On the old Abbott & Costello show, they come out at the beginning in front of a curtain, and they would talk to the audience. And the reference that meant the most to me was if you watched any of the road movies with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, they would turn and talk to the audience, to talk about how it was a Paramount movie and they weren't being paid enough and all this stuff. And, it just always cracked me up, and I thought it was funny. I wish I could tell you that I was this visionary, but in my mind I was just-- Somebody once said steal from the best. That's what I was doing. I was trying to do. Anyway.

Sharon Johnson: So after the first season, did you begin to feel emboldened to try things?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. Yes. That's why the second season, in many ways, is the most audacious, because it was like an idiot unbound. Bruce would come in every week. What do we want to do this week, boss? And I'd say, let's do a boxing show, let's do a musical. Let's do this, let's do that. And, also, the public was starting to pick up on the show, and the entertainment community was starting to pick up on the show. So you'd get calls from Phil Ramone would call and say, hey, Billy Joel wrote a song for your show. And you go, what? What? And I'd been looking for an excuse to do storytelling through dance. So, I mean, and that's all I heard was, here's a song, and we can do storytelling through dance. I'll construct a whole episode to support this idea. I had always had the Shakespeare idea because Taming of the Shrew, in many ways, was the inspiration for the show. I had seen it in Central Park with Meryl Streep and Raul Julia, and my first wife had done it in college, so I saw it a number of times there. And, it was just very much front of mind. And whenever I saw it, I thought, boy, if I could figure out a way to get this dynamic into a modern iteration, it would be terrific. I wasn't thinking detective shows. I wasn't even thinking television. But I just thought, this is a fantastic piece of music. If I could just make it my own in some way, I think audiences would be very entertained. So that's where that. I mean, most of those shows from the second season were sort of like ideas that were just uncorked, you know, that had been living in me. A couple came, like the black and white show.

Sharon Johnson: The Dream Sequence.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice. Carl Sautter and Debbie--

Susan Lambert Hatem: Deborah Frank. Is that who you're talking about?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Deborah Frank, who's a wonderful woman. Carl passed away pretty much while we were doing-- Not while we were doing that episode, but while we were still doing this series. He died of the AIDS, which was very tragic, obviously. But anyway, they pitched this idea for a black and white show, and then I, because I can't leave well enough alone, said, what if we do two different kinds of black and white? And it was a wonderful premise. And again, we went to ABC. We said, we did this show. It's going to be black and white. And they went, no. And, we said, yeah. And they said, you know what? Shit. Film it in color, and then we'll take the black and white out when we broadcast it. And I went, no, no, no, no. I'm not that big an idiot. But then we couldn't find any labs to develop the film because nobody developed black and white then. So it turned into quite an undertaking, much bigger undertaking that I think we realized when we started, in addition to all the musical numbers and the period dress and, you know. But I'm so proud of that episode.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's a beautiful, beautiful episode. I mean, it's. And so many wonderful references. Like, yes, yes, Cybill is great in it, and Bruce is great in it. But you had an introduction on that show, too.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. So here's a weird story. So now we have the episode, and ABC looks at it, and they go, well, this is amazing, but we need someone to tell the audience that their TVs aren't broken or, you know, to set it up. So I thought, what about Orson Welles? And thought, I knew that Cybill knew Orson Welles, that Orson had lived at Peter Bogdanovich's house for a long time. So. And we have different recollections about this. So, for a while, Cybill was not a happy camper on the show. The show was a lot of work, and I think much more work than she had anticipated. I think when you make movies, particularly in the 80s and in the 70s, television is thought of as this sort of minor league team. So if movie making is hard, television can't be nearly as hard, because it's a much -- And of course, we were doing-- I mean, she would come in and go, iambic pentameter. Why? Why do we have to do-- Yeah. So anyway, so weren’t on a great basis at that point. I said, hey, could you reach out to Orson Welles for me? She said, no, but I somehow got his number. I don't remember how I got his number. I got this number and I called him, because I would call anybody back then. And he answered the phone, and I explained who I was and what I wanted to do. And he said, send me the script for what you want me to do, and if I like it, I'll do it. And at that point, I hadn't written anything. So I wrote this thing where he talks about monosyllabic, monophonic experiments and get the kids and the dog and lock them in the basement and come watch Moonlighting, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, the worst that happens is he says, no. And I didn't really think we were going to get Orson Welles anyway, so we sent it to him. and he called back. He said, I'll do this. And, I was sort of startled. And then Jay came to me, Jay Daniel. And he said, you have to direct this. And I said, why? And he said, well, you know, Orson Welles has a reputation for being a very unfriendly human being, and particularly unfriendly to directors. There was a famous tape that was going around on a wine commercial that he had done where he screams at the-- And it was an audio. It's like a radio commercial. He just eviscerates this guy. He didn't have a great reputation. So I said, okay, I'll do it. And I had come up with a thing with the prop guy, I think I said, if I tug on my ear at the end of a take, drop something. So we have a reason to shoot it again. But it was completely unnecessary. He was just so wonderful. I think, authentically sort of thrilled to be a part of something that at that moment, anyway, was considered to be very modern, very in the moment. And the soundstage was-- There were like 300 people on the soundstage, mostly young people, you know, up in the flies and stuff. Everybody wanted to see Orson Welles. And you knew he wasn't well. I mean, his feet were enormous, and so he had gout and all this stuff. And he had been wheeled in, in a wheelchair. I remember he drove up. Somebody drove him in this huge Pontiac Bonneville, you know, with big doors. And he came in. But I never needed to ask him to do another. He would say, would you like another? And I go, oh, that would be great. And then when we were done, all these people sort of chaining forward, these surrounding them. And I'm going to get all the names wrong. But I mean, like, I would approach him and he'd say, Mr. Welles, my name is Johnny Smith. And he goes, Johnny Smith? Any relation to Dub Smith? And he'd go, yes, I'm his son. And he'd say, Dub worked on The Magnificent Ambersons with me. And you just thought I, mean, it was mind blowing for me, who never thought I'd even be allowed into California. The idea that I was on a soundstage and yelled action and cut when Orson Welles was also on that soundstage was mind blowing. And that all these people had come to sort of, you know, it was like a religious experience. It was just amazing. And then we put it in the show and, and he passed away before the show was even broadcast. So we put a little thing at the end saying, you know, tonight's show is dedicated to the memory of Orson Welles, you know? And it turns out, so after a fashion, I was the last guy to direct Orson Welles. I ended up directing a movie years later with Katherine Hepburn. and I was the last guy to direct Katherine Hepburn. Or as my first wife liked to put it, I was the kiss of death for a great many great, great motion picture figures.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, wow. Okay. Good to know.

Glenn Gordon Caron: There you go.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my God. Okay. At what point did you feel like I found the rhythm of this show? Did you know you had it at the beginning? Or did you like, were you like--

Glenn Gordon Caron: No, I didn't know how far I could push it. Like on every front. I mean, in the pilot where Allyce Beasley brings Cybill Shepherd in to meet Bruce Willis, she brings him in. The door opens. Bruce Willis is in his office playing sort of basketball. He's got a wastebasket that's up on the hinge of the door, and he's throwing, maybe wadded up paper or a nerf ball. I'm not sure which anymore. But anyway, Allyce and Cybill come through the door. The door opens, and of course the wastebasket falls. It falls on Allyce Beasley's head. And no one acknowledges it. She comes in. So she's now got a wastebasket on her head. And she says, Hi, Mr. Addison. This is—(mumbles). And Bruce looks at her and goes, looking a little pale today, Miss DiPesto. And, Bob Butler, who was the director, turned to me, went, Glenn, really? And I said, yes, it's funny. I think it's funny. And then we would do a scene, and Bob, by the way, was amazing. I mean, he was the first one to say, we should all sit down and watch Howard Hawks’, not Bringing Up Baby but His Girl Friday. Because he knew that pace was important. But while we were filming, I would say to him, let's do another faster. And he'd go, Glenn, we can't go any faster. Please. And invariably, the fastest ones were the ones we used in the pilot. I had read this book that-- Frank Capra was sort of my hero. People don't even talk about Frank Capra anymore. He's an amazing filmmaker, and he made these wonderful-- He's really the father of the romantic comedy in many ways. But he talked about that he would try and get things as fast as possible because the screen cut them by half. That something happened in the alchemy of the film that made it comprehensible, but the speed gave it a lift that it otherwise wouldn't have. You know, you don't want to get into my really, I can get very obnoxious with all this stuff. Anyway, so on the pilot-- And the pilot, probably hews closest to a conventional boy-girl detective show of anything else we did, because it was still me trying to sort of get past the ABC guards and seeing what I could get away with. That scene was one of those scenes I remember thinking, okay, everybody, hang on to your hats, because, you know, they may tell us all to go home, but it was really important to me. The guy, that doctor walking with the lobster bib who's dating Cybill, because, again, everybody's looking at you going, really, really? Bruce, talking about his bikini underwear. I mean, it's just, you didn't do that on shows that didn't have a studio audience where the audience wasn't aware of the art of this. So when did I really feel like, okay, I can do anything I want? Probably the mole on his-- There were a lot of, like, different moments at the end of The Lady in the Iron Mask, when you've got Bruce dressed as a woman in the veil, you know, Cybill dressed as a woman and Dennis Christopher dressed as a woman. And I remember thinking, I'm, gonna have Charlie do a rap song at the beginning of-- This is 1985, I think. Most people didn't know what a rap song-- And by the way, it's not a great rap song, but I mean, it's just, it's just anyone sort of making that on television, your mainstream television was clearly slightly out of their minds, and that was me. I was slightly out of my mind, and I just. But it amused me. And my whole thing was, if it amuses me, maybe it'll amuse someone else. I've never been didactic in that way. Like, I don't like this, but I think someone else will. I've always just stopped it. I don't like this and I won't do it, but if I do like it, I've been wrong, by the way. I've been wrong a lot in my life. I'm not suggesting otherwise, but luckily, on Moonlighting, more often than not, people agreed with me. And that was very, very comforting. When the failure started, it was a big shock, but no. So I would say those were sort of seminal moments. The mole on his nose, certainly. Because they actually called, said, you cannot do that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Did they call with the script or did they call after they saw the dailies?

Glenn Gordon Caron: They called with the script. And I would say, just watch it when it comes in. The other thing I would do too, because we also had censor problems on the show. So I would try and send the show in as late as I could, usually on a Friday. Because if I sent it in on a Friday, the sensors and those people were all on the East Coast. So we would send it by plane. We'd get off the plane, it would go to these people, and they would invariably watch it with their families at home on Saturday. And if they watched it with their families, their families would laugh. And so they knew they were giving away a laugh if they made me-- And so I can count the number of times they said, no, you have to change this. I remember once we had a thing where Cybill and Bruce were disagreeing about something, and he says, well, I don't agree with you. And she says, I don't give a frig what you think. He says, what's a frig? And she said, I don't know. And he turns to the camera and he goes, well, they do. And that was the thing. And they said, you cannot say frig on the American Broadcasting Company. I said, why? What's a frig? Come on. And they said, you know what a, frig is? And we're not saying it on ABC. So I was like. And I didn't know what to do because it meant we had to shoot it again or do. So I just didn't know what to do. And so my lawyer said, take out everything but the ‘f.’ And it's. So I took everything out but the ‘f.’ And they went, you can't do that. That's worse than what you had before. So we ended up taking out the ‘r.’ So they said, fig. I don't give a fig. You don't give a fig. They know what a fig is. Which had the exact same effect. But, I mean, that was one of the few times-- I remember doing this joke. We did a Christmas episode that I was very proud of.

Susan Lambert Hatem: ‘Twas the Episode Before Christmas.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Before Christmas. But at one point, Bruce comes down a chimney.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, as, ah, Santa.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah, as Santa. And he comes out and he's coughing and he's dusting himself off. And Cybill goes, what's the matter? He says, and forgive me, he says, that's the last time I squeezed myself into a tight hole with clothes on. And I thought, this is never getting on television. They let it go. I mean, it's just, you know, and all that stuff was written.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Was this a fun time in your life? Were you like, I'm getting away with this, or was it so stressful just to get it done?

Glenn Gordon Caron: It was both simultaneously. I could not believe. And Bruce, I think, felt the same way. Like, we both were certain that at some point somebody was going to come up and tap us on the shoulder and go, we're on to you. You’re leavin’ town by sundown. You know, one of those things. And, at the same time, I was giddy and honestly thought, this is going to be very short lived. Because not only was I, you know, upsetting people at ABC who were enjoying the show and recognized that it was entertaining, but I was making their jobs really difficult because they had people to answer too. But I was also shooting the shows until I felt we had it right. I really had little sympathy for this idea. These have to be made, and at that time it was in seven days. My argument to ABC was, if I make them funny, you can run them more than once, and they will earn their keep, and they will earn the fact that you spent more on them than you would normally do that. And by the way, as long as I have you all in a room, that's insane premise that every show should cost the same thing and take the same amount of time to make. Where does that come from? It's obviously some accountant somewhere went, oh, I have a brilliant idea. But it doesn't make for great television. And frankly, I was young and arrogant and didn't really care. I didn't want to be doing television. I wanted to make movies. I wasn't terribly concerned with my reputation. I would live to regret that, frankly. But so that's what I did. I would just keep shooting them until I felt they were worthy of the audience’s time. And that's not to say they were all really good. There are some that if there were a fire in the vault and it happened to burn up, I wouldn't be upset. And then there are some that people love that I still struggle with and think, oh, I did not do my best there. So it's funny how that works, but I would just shoot them until they were. And that cost money. It cost a lot of money. And, you know, and then it ticked people off. And we would shoot like the Shakespeare show, I think we had three units shooting simultaneously, 24 hours a day. So it's literally the crew. At 12 hours, crew would leave the equipment, and other crew would come on, take the equipment, and we continued shooting.

Sharon Johnson: Wow.

Glenn Gordon Caron: I was not unsympathetic to Cybill's protestations, because I knew it was hard, and it wasn't helped by the fact that I held myself to the same standard. So I would not give them script pages till I felt the script pages were worthy of them. And what was great about Bruce, he had this amazing facility. If I wrote something, if I wrote him a three-page monologue at 5:30 in the morning, and he got it at 7:00 in the morning, he would have it memorized, word perfect by 7:45. Again. And that's a musical thing. Yhave a metronome in your head. And, he was amazing. But not everyone has that facility, and so it becomes much harder. And then I would say, not only do you need to memorize this, but when, when we do it, we need to do it fast. My joke used to be, if we do it really fast, nobody will realize how weak the writing is. So it was difficult for everybody. It was difficult for the director. Sometimes they didn’t know what they were shooting that day. Poor Jay Daniel, who was amazing. Amazing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Now, you had worked with him before.

Glenn Gordon Caron: He had done all the pilots with me. Yeah. The third was Moonlighting, and then he stayed and did the show with me. But he would literally say to me, Glenn, how does it end? We have to know how it ends. And I'd say, well, I think there's a pie fight in a ballroom. I would have that much of it. And he'd go, all right, I'll get a ballroom, because that was the only thing left to shoot. So they'd get a ballroom for that evening. They don't know what the scene is. They don't know how anyone's dressed. They don't know why people are in the ballroom. They just know they're going to be pies.

Sharon Johnson: I could see where that might be challenging for the production crew.

Glenn Gordon Caron: I mean, I think I gained 40 or 50 pounds over the course of the show. I was already a pretty heavy smoker when I did the show. It was not a healthy lifestyle, and it was the 80s. So, yes, there was a lot of anxiety. You have to remember, too, back then, there were only four places to work. You were either working for CBS, NBC, ABC, or that new place, HBO. Fox didn't even exist yet. So your decorum mattered, you know. But again, I had this thing, look, I'm, I'm going to go make movies. Come or high water, I'm going to go make movies. And I somehow had convinced myself that that was a different group of people. And it wasn't. But I mean, but it was also so exhilarating and so great. But at the same time, for me, what I did was I didn't participate. I was not present. And I tell people now, because I've come to know people who have this sort of sudden burst of, oh, my gosh, what I'm doing matters and I'm relevant and I go be present. You only get one first time. Everything after that is different. But I truly couldn't process how enormous it was. I remember I flew to Rochester, New York, once. When I got off the plane, there were reporters waiting, and they wanted to know, was it Mark Harmon's baby or Bruce Willis'? And I thought, this is scary, you know? Do they not know that it's pretend? And I remember being in Hawaii and going into a gift shop, and it was a Mad Magazine on the rack. And Bruce and Cybill were on the cover of the Mad Magazine. For me, that was like, wow, on the cover of Mad Magazine?

Susan Lambert Hatem: That was the moment?  

Glenn Gordon Caron: That was the moment. Being on the cover of Time. But they were, you know, that stuff. Then unfortunately, we were on the cover a lot of like, the Inquirer and stuff like that. Doing what I do, there was still a fair amount of anonymity. Bruce, clearly, you know, you don't become an actor of that sort unless you want to be famous, but was not prepared and really had a difficult time. I actually apologized to him at one point and said, I'm so sorry, because I can see that this is authentically messing with you in a way that isn't productive. He loves life so much, it was an adjustment for him to say, okay, I get it. I'm being watched all the time, and so I have to be more, a little more circumspect about my behavior. I also can't say the first thing that pops into my head ‘cause people actually think I know what I'm talking about. You know, it's so tricky. It's so tricky, and there's no school for it. There's no learning it. You try and surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth and help guide you. And, you know, he and I were both visitors initially. And then, you know, he had a second-- When Die Hard came out, then it was a whole ‘nother thing. Where Cybill had been through it. She had been a huge movie star. It was a funny period. But also-- But yes. To answer your question, it was fantastically exhilarating, somewhat scary, but also, I pinched myself a lot. I, like, every day. And go. Because also you think I'm quite a fake, aren't I? I mean, I've never directed anything. I've never written anything of consequence. You want me to balance the budget? You know, before I got into this business, I'd never made more than $135 a week in my life. You know, you're just completely unequipped.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my gosh. This interview is so exciting. We're gonna have to break it into two parts, so stay tuned. Our next episode will be part two with Glenn Gordon Caron.

Sharon Johnson: In today's audiography, Moonlighting is now streaming on Hulu and is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon.

Susan Lambert Hatem: A great Moonlighting fan website is davidandmaddie.com. You can check out fun facts on the episode, The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice, which is from season two and is the black and white episode that we talked about in this show. Also, I'm going to shout out my own publication. The play I wrote, Confidence and the Speech, has just been published by Broadway licensing for dramatist play service. If you want to pick up a copy, links will be in our description.

Sharon Johnson: So thank you for listening to 80s TV Ladies. If you like the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, GoodPods, or wherever you listen. We hope 80s TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch. All of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the 21st century.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Thanks for listening.

Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, so sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh#*ty. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

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