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Moonlighting Magic and Hollywood Legends | Glenn Gordon Caron Part 2

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.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Hello, I'm Susan.

Sharon Johnson: And I'm Sharon. Susan and I were just at Podfest and She Podcasts Live, two indie podcasting conventions, both held in Orlando, Florida, in January 2024. We had a blast meeting so many wonderful podcasters and meeting some people in person that we'd only known through social media.

Susan Lambert Hatem: In fact, we had our very first 80s TV Ladies fan meetup. It was a last- minute idea when I realized one of my favorite online friends and a big fan of the pod lives in the Orlando area, Miss Amy Hood. So we decided to throw a little meetup party at Cooper's Hawk Winery and restaurant. Sharon, it was so much fun.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, it was just great.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So thank you to Amy and Patrick, Laura, Z, and Pike for coming out to spend the evening with us and say hello.

Sharon Johnson: And a big thank you as well to the staff at Cooper's Hawk who were very helpful with us, especially to our waitress who sang us 70s and 80s TV theme songs and took really great care of us.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Go to Instagram and Facebook -slash- 80s TV Ladies, to see pictures and some fun for our trip. And let us know, listeners, if you'd like us to do more fan meetups.

Sharon Johnson: But now, most importantly, we're back with part two of our interview with Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of Moonlighting. If you want to start at the very beginning-

Susan Lambert Hatem: A very good place to start.

Sharon Johnson: You can go back one episode to start with part one, or you can mix it up and start with part two. Either one is fine with us. We're diving right back in where we left off with Glenn, talking about how he handled the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Moonlighting.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Before I got into this business, I've never made more than $135 a week in my life. You know, you're just completely unequipped, and then you're meeting people that you've admired your whole life. I mean, literally, one day, one day back-- This is back before cell phones and all that. There's a phone sitting in my office, and it, rings and I pick it up, and I go, hello. And the voice on the other end goes, hello, this is Cary Grant. Can I speak with Glenn Caron? And I said, because I'm smart, and I think. And I said, bulls*$t! And he went, no, no, this is really Cary Grant. I hung on, but he called back and it was really Cary Grant. And he was a huge fan of the show and invited me to go to the races with him in Del Mar. And I thought that, stock car races? I had no idea what he was talking about. And came to realize he was talking about the horse races. And he and his wife would take a train to Del Mar every weekend to go to these races. And I said, I called my wife and I said, we've been invited to go to races with Cary Grant. I don't know what to do. Like, what do you wear? What do you--

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, first you say, yes.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. Which is what she said. And so I said, yes. And that was like on a Tuesday. And he passed away-- here's another one-- on a Thursday.

Sharon Johnson: Oh. Oh, goodness.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You never got to go to the races with Cary Grant?

Glenn Gordon Caron: No, but-- And this is where the friendship comes from. My phone rang about four weeks later and it was Stanley Donen, the man who directed Singin’ in the Rain and innumerable movies with Cary Grant, including Charade and just a bunch of things. And he called me and introduced himself and he was an enormous hero of mine. And he said, look, I know you were going to go to the races with Cary and his wife. And his wife, Barbara, asked me to call because she'd like to arrange a little dinner party. She'd still like to meet you. And so we went to dinner. And here's who was at dinner, Cary Grant's wife Barbara, Stanley Donen, David Beagleman, who had just been fired from Columbia Pictures for forging a check with Cliff Robertson's name on it. But he was prior to that, and I didn't know this. He was like a huge agent. He was like the Ari Emanuel of his day and represented Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and all these. But for me, this was the thrill. The other couple there was Billy and Audrey Wilder. And Billy Wilder-- Again, it just a huge. The idea that I was sitting with Billy Wilder, that he had questions to ask me, was just mind blowing. I spent the whole meal squeezing my wife’s hand under the table. So excited, and just couldn't believe that I had fooled all these people. It's just stunning to me.

Sharon Johnson: Was that how Stanley Donen got involved in the Big Man on Mulberry Street episode?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. I called him and said, will you do this? It was funny. I said, I have this musical number, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Will you direct it? And he said, how much will you pay me? And I said, I can't pay you anything. And he laughed and he said, how much time do I have? I said, you have to do it in a day. And he laughed again. And he ended up-- We ended up doing three days and we ended up buying him a really nice gift. And we became friends. And then he asked me, he produced the Oscars the next year and he said, will you come write it with Larry Gelbart? So I did.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Wow.

Glenn Gordon Caron: To sort of pay him back. People don't even know the Oscars are written, but they are. And that was how the friendship with Stanley Donen-- He was such an amazing-- I would go in, I would be recommended for movies, to direct movies, and I would be unavailable or I didn't think was right for me, but I'd say, you should talk to Stanley. It was-- I thought it was criminal that this extraordinarily talented man wasn't making movies. But, you know, he wasn't in fashion, if you will

Susan Lambert Hatem: Which is insane to think.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah. But, you know, it's a business of fashion in many ways.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes. So before we get to my questions about Cybill Shepherd, how did the title come about and the song?

Glenn Gordon Caron: The title is a strange story. I went in, I needed to tell ABC what the show was about. We had a meeting. I told them sort of premise about this woman who is a model who loses all her money, et cetera, et cetera. And, they said, great. And, the meeting was over and I was walking out the door, down the hall and suddenly I heard a voice go, oh, Glenn, what’s it called? I swear this is the truth. I turned and I went Moonlighting. I have no idea what I was thinking. I don’t know where it came from. Everyone went, great. Later I realized it’s a really good title in the sense that someone who moonlights does a job other than their real job. And, it has all sorts of echoes and meanings and inferences that very much apply to the show. But again, I'd be lying if I told you that it was a calculation on my part. It literally came to me spontaneously. I don't remember where it came from.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Wow. And then how did the song.

Glenn Gordon Caron: The song was-- I lived for a brief time in Chicago. About eight months. I was working and I was also in the Second City workshop. And there wasn't a lot of great television on. But one of the great television shows that was on was a show-- Might have been on PBS called Soundstage or Sound-- I can't remember, but I watched it religiously every week, and one week, there was Al Jarreau. And I was just sort of struck by him. And a couple of years later, I was here. I was doing this show, and when I edit things, I use a lot of music. When I write, I'll put on music, and that music somehow becomes part of the fabric of the show. So when we put together Moonlighting, Al Jarreau recorded had a song. I think it was called After All.

Al Jarreau: Darling, after all, I will be the one to hold you in my arms. After all.

Glenn Gordon Caron:  And that's what I temped, which is the term for temporary music they use in the show, the pilot with. And, when it came time to actually make the show, I called to see if we could get the rights to After All. And his people said, why don't you do a new song, an original song? And I said, oh, okay. And so Al came in. He had written these lyrics, and some of them didn't make abundant sense to me. So I tried very gently because he was Al Jarreau and I was nobody. And some of them, we wiggled around. The music was written by the gentleman who scored the pilot, whose name escapes me, who was a very, very famous arranger. He would arrange for Barbra Streisand. He would arrange for all these people, but he didn't often compose, but he composed our score and composed the song with Al. And my daughter-- I have four children. My second child, my daughter was born on February 2, and I think we recorded the song on February 3. I always remember because I felt really conflicted about leaving and going into a sound studio. Because you have to remember, nobody had seen Moonlighting. I had no reason to believe anything was going to happen with Moonlighting. I was really thrilled and excited to meet Al.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Glenn Gordon Caron: But anyway, so we all thought the song was, like, amazing.  

Al Jarreau: Some walk by night, some fly by day. Nothing could change you. Set and sure of the way.  

Glenn Gordon Caron: And then we came up with that title sequence, you know, with the-- And I remember back to ABC, and they were like, wow. Again, you know, you're in your early twenties, and you just think, I have nothing to lose. Let me see. Maybe Al Jarreau will do this. You know? It was a great experience. I remember the night being really same for the fact that I felt incredibly guilty not being at the hospital. It was an extraordinary experience.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Wow. Yeah. When our son was born-- My husband's a TV writer, and he left for a meeting, but he wrote the script that he was working on in the room.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Wow.

Susan Lambert Hatem: For The Dead Zone.

Glenn Gordon Caron: I can relate.

Sharon Johnson: These things happen.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yep.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So we were there, and he was writing over there, and then I told him he had to get out because I had to have a C-section that was somewhat unexpected. And then they gave me Vicodin, and it made me manic and crazy. And then there was a moment he said something funny, and I couldn't stop laughing. And then I literally was like, you have to leave the room. And he's like, what? I'll stop. And I'm like, no, your face. You have to leave the room altogether. Get out.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Wow.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then he did. And then we went home and they were like, she's got to keep taking her pain pills. And I was like, don't give me any more Vicodin. And so I refused to take them. And then I felt much better once I got home. Anyway, that was a diversion. So four kids.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Four kids. Two boys and two girls. Actually, my oldest and my youngest are boys and the two middle are girls. So.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. I see the ‘love you, Dad.’

Glenn Gordon Caron: Oh, yeah. I keep wanting to erase it because, you know, it gets a lot of scrutiny, but at the same time, I really don't want to erase it. I feel like there's something blasphemous and, you know, but I will at some point have to erase it, you know, but I don't want to.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's very, very sweet. And if your 14 year old wrote that, you can't erase it.

Glenn Gordon Caron: It was my14, who's about to be 15. So, yeah.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, it has to stay. It has to stay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, so Cybill Shepherd,  

Glenn Gordon Caron: I know her.  

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes, I know. It was a challenging relationship.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah, yeah, of course it was. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's been pretty well established.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Can you talk about when she first came on the show, why you thought of her for the show, even from the beginning.

Glenn Gordon Caron: The topography of her life fit the topography of the story. She was a model. She became a huge movie star. She lost everything in the sense that she was this huge movie star who miscalculated the nature of her appeal and overstayed her welcome and actually got the audience to resent her at a point where she couldn't get work as a movie actor. And I thought, that's close enough to Maddie Hayes. It just made sense to me, and it seemed like a very, very, very good fit. Now, it was interesting because I think I'm attracted to audacious people because. And people forget this now, but in the trajectory of Bruce's career, Bruce came on TV and boom, he blew up in a big way. But there was a moment when he started to make movies and he did Blind Date and he did a movie called Sunset. And then the feeling was people didn't want to see him in the movies. They'd had enough of them. He was so audacious in his television persona that they were almost worn out. And people forget about this. They forget that when Die Hard came out, the original poster for the movie was a poster of a building. He was not on it because they were convinced that he would turn it off. I mentioned this only because in my own life I've worked with a lot of people who have gone through periods like this where-- You know, I directed a movie with Michael Keaton, and it was right at a time where a lot of people went, you know, I've had enough with Michael Keaton and what I was asking him to do, he'd never done before. I was asking him to play a dramatic role.

Susan Lambert Hatem: This is for Clean and Sober.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Clean and Sober, yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Which is pretty great.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Which was the role that got him Batman, that sort of changed his whole thing around. But it's interesting. I think the most dynamic actors invariably go through a period where the audience says, I need a break. You need to show me something else, or, you know, but that's what attracted me to Cybill initially was it just seemed like the contours of her journey were similar to the contours of Maddie's.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And the on-screen chemistry between the two of them is pretty astonishing, even looking back. Right?

Glenn Gordon Caron: That's all me. That's all me. Yes, it is. And when they first met, if I'm being completely, honest, I knew it would be that way. She resisted meeting him for a long time. She likes to tell people that she picked him. She didn't. She, in fact, wouldn't screen test with him. She was very, very difficult about it. She confessed to me at one point, I said, why are you doing this? They're going to cancel the show. And she said, Glenn, if you screen test me, you'll fire me. And I said, no, I won't. She said, yeah, you will. So it was one of the few times that I saw insecurity. But I understood the nature of his appeal. The reason I liked him so much was he was 30 guys I grew up with. And I understood underneath all that bravura and all that jazz, there's a genuineness that's hard to resist. You sense, okay, if I get into a fight, this guy's got my back. Not only that, he's going to be a lot of fun to run with. And in Cybill, it's a different kind of energy. But she's also in for the ride. So I just felt like you put the two of them together. If they don't start a fire, then somebody should just buy me a plane ticket and I should leave Hollywood. And I couldn't see why other people couldn't see it. It was so clear to me. But I'm going to take this opportunity to say something. You’re not gonna  ask me the question, but I'm going to just pretend you did. Bruce ended up being one of the people I'm closest to in life. Cybill was a much more complicated relationship. I don't think she's someone who implicitly gets along with anyone who could be perceived to be the boss. She's one of those people that is dubious of all that kind of stuff. And I don't think I present that way, but I am the person that has to sort of say, here's where we need to be, here's why we need to be there, and here's what you need to do. And then, of course, I'm also the person who was clearly responsible for making it hard, for saying, yeah, we're going to do iambic pentameter. Yes, we're going to sing and dance. Yeah. She literally said to me, why can't we just do a regular television show? She had it in her head that this was somehow going to be easier. And I understand that instinct. You know, having said that and having now had an opportunity to go back and look at the episodes, god, she's amazing. And. And I'm not sure I was as clear about that at the time. I think I was so overwhelmed with all of it, but also with how difficult it was to get her from point A to point B, to get her to leave the motorhome and come into the stage to get her to two, take two. I said, we need another. And she'd go, no, I'm done. No, I'm going home. She would literally say, I'm going home now. And you go, no, you can't go, we're not done. She's like, I'm going home. And, you know, I said, you're not leaving. She said, I'm leaving. And if I blocked the door and wouldn't let her go because we had five more hours of work, she'd go, okay. She'd come back in, she'd finished the five, and then she'd call in the next morning, sick and stay out for two. She'd show me how it was going to work. I remember once I said, you know, you are a prima donna, and she said, yes, I am. Do you know what the word prima donna means, Glenn? And I went, uh. And she said, first woman. I am the first woman. Don't you forget it. I mean, I think she was right as often as I thought she was wrong. And I don't think I was as-- Again, I just don't think-- I knew-- I mean, I knew she would be incredibly difficult. And I don't need to go into the whys of any of it. And I would just say, oh, my God, this is just-- You can't do this because you're holding up 200 other people who want to go home and see their kids and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this other stuff. But then I'd go into a projection room, and I'd watch the dailies, and I'd go, oh, oh. That's why. But that would go away pretty quickly because you'd have all these other problems. But now I watch the shows, and I go, my God, she's amazing. She is amazing in the show.

Susan Lambert Hatem: She's amazing.

Glenn Gordon Caron: We've since made up and all that stuff, by the way. But I'm just saying, at the time, I think she consumed so much oxygen, so much energy, and I resented that because the show consumed so much oxygen, so much. The enterprise was so debilitating, and we were all swinging for the fences. So it was just hard for me to find a calculus that made sense for all that. And I've certainly worked with more difficult people since. But her work was astonishing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. Sharon and I were just talking about just how beautifully it shot, too. Like, she's shot beautifully.

Glenn Gordon Caron: That's Jerry Finnerman. He was a real old school cinematographer, which is why we hired him. I wanted it to look like a Frank Capra movie.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Painting with light and shadow and all that. Jerry was an old school DP, and, was thrilled to do it. Sometimes we do it a little too much. And he was -- DP's back then, he first thing they did was they made friends with the leading lady. They understood that that's where their power came from. So he sat Cybill down. He said, I will protect you. I will always make you look great, but you have to listen to me. So he would use all kinds of diffusion. He would do all sorts of things. And sometimes he'd go overboard, and, you know, I couldn't help but make jokes about it. We did that show with Rona Barrett, The Straight Poop, and Cybill walks out with the gauze. That was very funny stuff. But Jerry. Jerry was everything you wanted in a cinematographer. He was a perfect piece of casting for that show, you know,  

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's fantastic to hear. Yeah,  

Glenn Gordon Caron: I think I owe that in large part to Jay Daniel, who was a producer I worked with for a very long time. I think Jay was the one who turned me on to him. Jay was very smart that way. And so to hear what I was coming up with-- Because we shot the pilot with a different cinematographer who used the techniques that were in that moment, very much involved, but made me crazy. It was soft light, he used long lenses, all this kind of stuff. And I said, yeah, but I loved the artifice. I wanted it to be romantic. I wanted it to be a dream. I wanted it to be, you know, and all that stuff took time. So it was anathema in the world of television. And I was young and stupid and arrogant, so I didn't care. I said I wanted to, we'll take the time. You know, still young and stupid, but not nearly as arrogant.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So The Straight Poop is an interesting, like, it's an episode that basically starts with Rona Barrett, who was, who was--

Glenn Gordon Caron: The TMZ of her time.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Her time. And she's outside the studio and, she's going to get to the bottom of why Dave and Maddie aren't making more Moonlighting episodes.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes, and I've told this story before, but in that period where we were not churning out new episodes as quickly as the network wanted or the viewers wanted, people were getting pissed off in a major way. And I would shoot the commercials for the show. I was out of my mind. And I even shot this one commercial with, I think his name was Ray Girard, a wonderful actor. I put him in a sort of a gray working man's outfit with an ABC logo on his thing and his name on the other. And he's standing on a loading dock in the dark and it says at 02:35 a.m. and you hear a voice from over the camera go, hey, I what you doing? And he looks up and he says, oh, it's just waiting. What you waiting for? He says, new Moonlighting. And oh, is there going to be a new one? He goes, who knows? And because they needed a commercial to run and they never knew if they had a new episode to run. Anyway, it was during that period. And I went to an event, I think, honoring Brandon Tartikoff. And at these events, you go in and you listen to speeches and it's lovely. And then you come out and you wait in a line that's three-hours long to get your car so you can go home. A valet line. And I'm standing in this line with my wife, and I look up ahead, and I see this little tiny lady, and I realized it was Rona Barrett. I mean, she was just this very petite, tiny lady. And I thought, wow, there's Rona Baron. I have an idea. And I left the line. I walked up to her, I said, excuse me, you don't know me. My name is Glenn Caron. I do this show Moonlighting. And then she knew who I was, and I said, are you free tomorrow? And mind you, it's, you know, it's like 10:00 at night. And she said, why? And I said, well, can you come over to 20th Century Fox at 6:30 in the morning? I want to. I want to shoot a whole episode with you in a day. And she said, okay. I mean, because I think in her mind, this is like a big scoop. Something's going on. So she showed up, and I said, look, here's the deal. I said, everybody's asking about why we can't make these episodes. And they hear that Bruce and Cybill are fighting. I said, I sort of want to blur the line, and I'm going to put this earwig in your ear, and I'm going to feed you questions, and we're going to have the three cameras on it, and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, I'm going to use clips to illustrate these different things, and hopefully we'll have a new episode. And that's what we did.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my God. It's great. It's a clip episode, but it's great. It's funny, it's weird. It's meta.

Glenn Gordon Caron: I remember at one point thinking, do I do this? And then I went ahead and did it. I said, Rona, ask him about his hair, was losing his hair. And, you know, stupid stuff, you know. But we all had fun, and we did. We made an episode. I thought, if I'm gonna stoop to doing a clip episode, I want it to be funny and special, and I loved using the outtakes at the end. That was something that you didn't see anybody do back then. I mean, people were, like, thrilled by it and shocked by it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And that's an episode where Pierce Brosnan appears playing Remington Steele.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. Yes. I love Pierce. I just saw Pierce a couple of months ago. He had an art show. He's quite a painter. Just a great guy, and wildly underestimated as an actor. He also did Love Affair for me with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn. How was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Susan Lambert Hatem: So did you just call up Pierce Brosnan and say, come do this? And the networks were okay with that?

Glenn Gordon Caron: The networks were thrilled. Are you kidding? I mean, I didn't ask NBC, I just asked him, and he said yes. And I don't know that we implicitly said he was-- I think it was.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You didn't.

Glenn Gordon Caron: He just sort of played Remington and then said, oh, I went out with Maddie. It was like, I’m Remington Steele. I went out with other famous dicks. It's a stupid, idiotic conceit. But, you know, we all got the joke.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then you got Peter Bogdanovich.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes. Then my other joke. Yes, I liked Peter a lot. Peter would come around a lot. He spent a lot of time. Larry McMurtry came around a lot.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I was going to say, but she was not with Peter Bogdanovich at that point?

Glenn Gordon Caron: I don't know that Cybill's ever done with the men in her-- You know what I mean? She's one of these people who they seem to hang on.. You know, the relationships don't define themselves in that way. McMurtry would come around, Bogdanovich. The only one that I never saw come around, and I think it's because he had passed away, was Elvis.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But you called up Peter Bogdanovich and said, come do this.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: That's fantastic.

Glenn Gordon Caron: And he was thrilled. He was a wonderful, generous guy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So, Love Affair and your movies, you worked with a lot of amazing women in those.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Jennifer Aniston, Debra Winger, Katherine Hepburn. Who were some of your favorite ladies to work with?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Debra is someone I still consider a really good friend. She's just one of a kind. I adored working with Jennifer. I don't think she had a good time with me, but I adored working with her. She was-- I remember being, like, a little dumbstruck because every actor has a different process, and typically television, you'll do two or three takes, and you're hoping they peak around take three, but that's kind of all you have. Movies are much more generous, or at least they were back in those days. And I remember starting Picture Perfect, and I do six or seven takes, but she started hitting home runs at take two and three. I never met someone who got there so fast. I realized a lot of it was because her muscles were so well developed because of Friends. You know, we did the movie in between the hiatus between the first and second seasons of Friends. I thought she was great. I adored her. I found out later-- So again, like I say, that I did some things that ticked her off, which is inevitable, you know. I mean, everybody isn’t gonna love you. But I thought she was great. And it's not the best movie, you know, it's kind of a good double or maybe a good triple, I'm not sure. I did it largely because my oldest daughter was 14 at the time and I just thought I knew how huge Jennifer sort of loomed. I knew how important Friends was. I mean, people forget, but sort of the second Friends showed up, it changed the world. They let me make the movie in New York, which is where I was living at the time, and that was a huge thing. And I thought I just wanted to make one of those. I went to Kevin Bacon, who I did not know, and said, hey, do this with me. And he said, cool, and we did it. And Jay Mohr has been-- As we talked about a bunch. I think that was one of the reasons Jennifer wasn't crazy about me was we ended up making the movie with Jay. And there were people she really wanted more than Jay. Pardon the pun. But for me it was a very pleasant experience. I wish the release of it had been a little more muscular. It was sort of half heartedly released. I felt like they should have put a little more energy into it. But I like the movie a lot, you know, and it is what it is. It's a small movie. It wasn't a highly budgeted movie or anything. It was her first movie as a star of the movie. She'd been in the Leprechaun movies, I think, prior to that, but she had never fronted a movie. You know, the movie was, you know, there was, there was Olympia Dukakis, which was a great get. And, you know, we did the best we could, but I'm still fond of the movie and people still tell me they like the movie. You know, there are people that just think it's godawful. You know, it's, it's one of those movies. But, I'm very fond of her. I've run into her a couple of times, but I don't think she'd ever work with me again. I just think it was-- Can't make everybody love you.

Sharon Johnson: Well, you had mentioned earlier that initially you had wanted to work in movies as opposed to television. And so since you eventually had the chance to move into movies, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about movies versus television.

Glenn Gordon Caron: It's interesting because they've sort of switched roles in the sense that when I said that and when I felt that, television tended, for the most part, to be fairly frivolous and not terribly ambitious. Movies were the place you went to get your mind stimulated. They dealt much more with the business of being a human being. I used to say when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, even when I was a young adult, I would go to the movies to figure out what it meant to be an adult. Now we go to the movies to be reminded what it felt like to be a kid. Obviously, that's a simplification, but, I mean, I would go-- I remember being 16 years old, going to see Five Easy Pieces and just looking at the screen and going, I recognize his anger, his confusion, and I couldn't put words to it, but I related to. When I was doing Love Affair, I confessed to Warren Beatty when I went and saw Shampoo, and I was a young man when I saw it, that I didn't understand a lot of it. I really liked it, but it was so outside my realm of experience. You know, it was a movie about, in many ways, about politics. I didn't know anybody who knew anything about politics. I had never been exposed to that sort of thing. It was about wealthy people. I didn't know much about wealthy people. It was about a lot of things that were completely foreign to me. But I always found that fascinating. When you see a movie about things a that were foreign to you, and you go, oh. And then it's the things that, nonetheless, we share that make the-- I mean, I remember going to see, ten years ago, going to see the movie about, I think it’s in India and the kid wins the quiz show and--  

Sharon Johnson: Slumdog Millionaire.  

Glenn Gordon Caron: Slumdog Millionaire. And just thinking, what a great, great movie. What a great, great story. What fantastic execution. I mean, ending it with a musical number. I mean, it's just all these fantastic choices and you've never once, I never once, when I'm watching it going, I can't relate to the-- I don't know what's going. Instead you're leaning forward and sort of drinking in the differences. Television never did that. Television was the definition of comfort food. Television was designed-- I had people say this to me. It was designed so that you could do other things while it was on. And I've always sort of dedicated myself to the proposition, if I don't make this so compelling that you don't dare do anything else, I've failed. That was not the case when I got into it. Now it's since become-- I mean, we've all seen-- I've seen television things that take my breath away. I mean, how do you beat Mad Men? I don't know if you saw it, but how do you beat Normal People? How do you beat the Queen's Gambit? Amazing pieces of work. So now, of course, we're in a situation where filmmakers want to work in television. Everybody wants to work in television. And again, I'm being simplistic, but if you are an American filmmaker, the studio system offers a very sort of limited menu of styles and types of storytelling. I mean, you couldn't make Clean and Sober today, not as a studio film. You might be able to make it as an independent and then hope that it gets shown on the Sundance Channel. The things that I'm interested in and attracted to for the most part. I mean, I love a good commercial movie, and I'd love to make a-- I've never had a big. I mean, Love Affair was supposed to be, you know, obviously a big commercial movie, but truthfully, it was a disappointment. But the great thing at that time about movies-- and I used to say this, in television, you paint with a roller. In movies, you contemplate, and you paint with a very, very, very fine brush. You have the time to do it. Now it's changed because the process has changed, because for the most part, people aren't making, and it's a crazy business, 22 of anything a year. Now we're saying, just make eight and make them as good as you can. That was sort of what we were trying to do with Moonlighting. The first one that sort of did that in a public way and wasn't being chastised for it was, I think, probably the Sopranos. They did as many as they could do well, which was an attitude that I had. I'm sure I'm not the only one who had that attitude, but I had it and was sort of taken to task for it on the business side of the, business. But I don't know if I answered your question, but--  

Sharon Johnson: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I know that, Sharon, in particular, is a big fan of Now & Again.

Sharon Johnson: I'm a huge fan of Now & Again. It's one of the shows that's on my list of shows that went away way too soon. I've never forgotten it. I've just, you know, gave up on trying to find it, and I just only recently realized it had been released on DVD in 2014. I think it was so-- Love that show, and I would love to know how that came about. What was the story behind that?

Glenn Gordon Caron: You want to hear the story? Because it's a weird story.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, yes, please.

Glenn Gordon Caron: So I just finished Picture Perfect, I think, and I was kind of in movie jail, because I had done Love Affair, which was a big, expensive movie. And as I say, it didn't do what people would have expected a Warren Beatty-Annette Benning movie of that type to do. And I got a phone call from Les Moonves, who I did not know. I may have met him once prior to that. And he said, will you have breakfast with me? I'm in New York. Will you have breakfast with me? I said, sure. So I went and I had breakfast with him and he said he had just taken over CBS. And he said, I want you to write a pilot for me. And I said, well, I'm in the movie business. I really want to stay in. I said, I fooled everybody once with Moonlighting. I don't think I have it in me again to fool anybody. And he said, I want you to write a pilot. He said, and if you write a pilot and I don't make it, I'll give you a million dollars. So I went home and told my wife, she said, you can write anything? He said, write whatever you want. So I wrote now and again. And Now & Again was sort of my riff on Damn Yankees. Damn Yankees is an old Broadway show about a guy, he's in his forties or fifties, is middle aged. He watches the Seattle whatever the name of their team was at the time. Their baseball team gets shellacked all the time. All he wants to do is see them be a championship team and help them be a championship team. And the devil appears and the devil says, I'm going to turn you into a young man and you're going to lead the Seattle whenever-they-are to the World Series. He says, you’re kidding. This is like the greatest moment of his life. So he goes, and indeed he fulfills that prophecy. He’s like an amazing baseball player. But he gets there and he misses his wife, he misses his family, he misses his life. But he’s like a, 22 year old guy and his wife is 40 or 42, whatever it is. And he's made a deal with the devil. I don't even remember how it ends, but, very popular piece of musical theater. And if you stop and think about Now & Again, it is sort of a riff on that. John Goodman, who was a friend, plays this guy who gets hit by subway train, wakes up and finds that his brain has been held for government experiment. And what they want to do is-- They've been trying to build a man who can fight wars for them, an artificial man. And they've done it. Everything except they can't figure out the brain part. They realized they need to harvest brains to make it work, or at least to test it. So they harvest this brain that used to belong to John Goodman. And you remember what John Goodman used to look like? I mean, he used to, you know, he weighed 320 pounds. He lived in New Orleans. He was, you know, he comes back and he's Eric Close, this guy who weighs 145 pounds and he's, you know, ripped. And all he wants to do is be with his wife, who is played by, Margaret--

Sharon Johnson: Margaret Colin.

Glenn Gordon Caron: And she's amazing. Truly one of my favorite collaborators. And I loved the ache buried in that idea. So we filmed the pilot, I directed it. I was very proud of it. And I got a phone call to come to LA because I was living in New York. Come to LA and meet with Les Moonves, who I didn't know. I’d had the one meal with him. So I come to LA and I go with the head of the studio to meet Les Moonves. And he's got a whole phalanx of people around him. He said, I can't tell you how disappointed I am. Terrible, terrible piece of work. Now, if I had a couple of days, if I had some time, I probably could fix it. I could probably maybe go out and direct some sequences and fix it. I was like, wow, okay. Clearly, I've let these people down, and I felt terrible because that's the way I'm wired. Like, I feel badly if people don't show up. Like, I feel like somebody gave you a lot of money to make a thing and you made the thing and you didn't make it well enough. So I felt really bad. But the head of the studio, a guy named Kerry McCluggage, who sat in the corner and listened to Les do his thing. And he knew Les much better than I did. And he did-- At one point he said, did you test it? And Les said, no, I didn't test. I don't need to test it. I saw it. I know what I saw. And he said, you should test it. And the meeting was over. Remember walking out of CB's studio center over there. And I said, I'm sorry. I said, I feel so bad. I'm sorry. He said, oh, well, Glenn, it's going to be on television. I said, what? He said, it's going to be on television. I said, how can you say that? Were you in the same meeting I was in? I haven't been talked to that way in my professional life, maybe ever. And he said, Glenn, first of all, he's going to test it. I said, yeah? What's going to happen. He said, we tested it. It tests through the roof. He said, and the second thing is he wants to be able to announce that he has the guy who did Moonlighting show. He's got his next show. That's good for him. He said, it's going to be on television. I didn't think so. I went back to New York and I was getting a haircut and it was the first days of like mobile phones. I had a flip phone and it starts to go off in my pocket. This is about three weeks later and it's, I want to say it was Nancy Tellem, one of those executives at CBS. Hi, how are you? Then I said, I'm okay. How are you? And she said, I'm good. Just want to make sure you didn't get the wrong idea from the meeting we had. I said, what do you mean? She said, your show is going to be on CB's and we just want you to know how excited we are and we want you to come to Carnegie Hall. Because they would do the upfronts at Carnegie. Oh, blah, blah, blah. So I go to Carnegie, hey, my show is going to be on. Blah, blah, blah. and Les got his revenge. He put it on, but he put it on 9:00 on Friday night after Candid Camera. I mean, it had no lead in. It had no nothing. And it didn't do well because nobody knew it was there. But it was extraordinarily well reviewed. I mean, Esquire wrote a piece on it. I mean, it's like crazy good reviews. And so he was able to cancel it. He wanted to make. The point was, I told you it was no good. At least that's what I think. Les, if you're listening, I apologize. But that's what I thought.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I'm not sure Les will ever listen to our podcast. Maybe somebody else.

Sharon Johnson: I don't know how, but I found it and I was hooked from the very beginning.

Glenn Gordon Caron: You're very smart.

Sharon Johnson: Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Glenn Gordon Caron: We did it and then it got canceled. And then I got a call saying, you got to come back to California. You won a Saturn award. And I said, what's a Saturn award? They said, it's an award for science fiction. I said, I haven't done any science fiction. It must be a mistake. And they said Now & Again. And I suddenly went, oh, it's science fiction, isn't it? And I ended up sitting next to James Cameron on one side of me and, a good friend of mine, producer, produced the Green Mile and a bunch of other things on the other side of me. And I'm very proud of it. You know, it's a very, it's a highly original piece of work. As my wife said, it's almost as if you sat down and said, I would really prefer the million dollars. I was quite taken with it, but CBS, it wasn't down the middle. It was pretty out there. And also, you didn't know what to expect each week, which was, I thought was exciting about it. But they found it very troubling in that sense. And I insisted we make it in New York. And this was before all the tax credits, so it was quite an expensive and difficult show to make. So there it is in a nutshell.

Sharon Johnson: I'm thrilled to have the chance to tell you just how much I really liked the show.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Oh, thank you. That means a lot to me. It means a great deal to me.

Sharon Johnson: And I was heartbroken. I mean, I think by that point I was already at the point where I would find that shows I really liked did not last. So I was prepared, although not happy about the fact that it didn't get a second season. But nevertheless, I've never forgotten about that show.

Glenn Gordon Caron: You're very sweet. You're very sweet.

Sharon Johnson: I'm trying not to gush too much, but, yeah, love the show. Love it, love it, love it.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Well, you need to get out more and see more things, but it's very sweet. I appreciate that.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I've never forgotten both the ending and the beginning of it. The eggs on the subway with the kid.

Glenn Gordon Caron: That's what Esquire worried about. They said that. I think the headline was something like the most frightening two minutes and 27 seconds of television we've ever seen or something like this. Some ridiculously overhyped headline like that. But it meant a lot to me because I-- Esquire to me was like an estimable thing, you know? And the ending, I mean, that was me trying to outsmart everybody, thinking, if I write a cliffhanger, they can't cancel it. But as we've all come to learn, you can't underestimate Les Moonves. He'll cancel; he doesn’t care. And we actually did have the other half of that cliffhanger mostly worked out. Rene Echevarria, who's a wonderful writer, who, ah, I did that show with, along with a number of others. But Rene was really my major sounding board. He and I pretty much figured out how to dig our way out of that ending, which, was pretty dramatic. But I'm so glad you liked it.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah, absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I mean, you can secretly tell Sharon. No one else will hear it.

Glenn Gordon Caron: I would tell Sharon if I could remember it. That's why I keep invoking Rene's name in the hopes that he remembers.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And then quickly, although it was a very long-running show, how did you get involved with Medium and a little bit about Patricia Arquette?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Medium and Patricia is all one story, and it's a great story. I was under contract still to Paramount. Paramount was not part of CBS at that time. And they called me and said, do you believe in psychic phenomenon? Do you believe in-- And I said, no. And they said, oh. And they said, well, we've met this woman, who is, the psychic. and we think there might be a television show in her life. Would you be at all interested in coming out here to California and spending time with her and meeting her? And I said, no, and I hung up the phone. And, my current wife, said to me, my God, you are really arrogant. Who would not want to spend time with someone who sees the world a little differently than you do? And let me let you in on another secret, sir. Women believe that they're intuitive. A lot of women believe this and you shouldn't belittle it. You know, blah, blah, blah. Long story short, I called them back, said, okay, I'll meet this woman. So. But I am the original cynic, just so you understand where I come from. So I go and I meet the real Alison Dubois, who's a fascinating woman, and I won't go into all the nitty gritty of it. And I remained skeptical, but she was telling me her world as she experienced it, and I basically sort of marched her through her life. I said, tell me about when you were seven. Tell me about when you were eight. Tell me when you had your first experience. Tell me what it was about, blah, blah, blah. And we got to when she was a teenager and she started talking about how she began drinking heavily because it would keep the voices of the ghosts down. And I said, has anyone ever prescribed Haldol for you? And she said, what's Haldol? I said, it's a drug used to control schizophrenics. And she said no, with a certain measure of contempt, which not unexpected, given the question. And we continued to march through her life. And then she told me how she met her husband. And I said, what does your husband do? She said, my husband is a physicist. He's a doctor of physics. And I went, okay, wait a second. I thought, she lays in bed at night and sees dead Civil War soldiers in the corner, and he thinks about the physical facts of the world. What the hell kind of marriage can that be? That's amazing. Because what is marriage? Marriage is you meet another human being, and initially you're overwhelmed by all these feelings that you can't make sense of. But they ebb at a point and they change their shape. And now the relationship demands that you make room not just for all the things that fascinate you and allure you, but also the things that you can't quite make sense out of, that maybe you don't agree with. I mean, it is in miniature, sort of the model of what a marriage is. And that was my way into it. That's what made it interesting to me. They had children. And having said that, I couldn't in good faith write about a lot of the things I heard. I found some of them dubious. So I sort of had to invent my own things. And I also had the problem of, how do you do this on a television show? So I came up with this thing of she dreams these things. Alison doesn't do that. The real Alison doesn't do that. And then I had to come up with a story that involved her husband that we could do for the pilot. And then she called me and she said, boy, we'd love to watch some filming. So I said, sure. That seemed reasonable to me. And so she and her husband and her kids came to California. They live in Arizona. And they watched us film. And I’ll always remember it was a scene between Patricia and Jake. And her husband leaned over and whispered my ear and said, how did you know? And I remember thinking, I made it up. And I came to realize that to some extent, what Alison did was she became the character I created. And to some extent, my character moved to stuff that she did. I don't know what to tell you, but I was always worried, because I always thought, I'm asking the audience to make a leap here. And I'm content as a storyteller to make that leap, as long as we all understand that it is a leap. And I use it as an excuse to do all kinds of phantasmagoric things that I was sort of interested in as a filmmaker. And let's do animation, let's do 3D, let's do this, let's do that. Anything to sort of make those things evocative. Now, the same woman who said, my God, you're arrogant, read the first half, three quarters of the script, and said, this is Patricia Arquette. And I went, oh, okay, great. Yeah, that's going to happen. But I knew it was a great idea, and I suddenly realized that when I had made Picture Perfect with Jennifer, Jennifer was managed by a woman who also managed Patricia Arquette. She was one of the producers of the movie. And, so I called her and said, look, I had this script, and I’d love for Patricia to read it. I know it's a long shot. She said, oh, send it to me. So I sent it to her. 48 hours later, Patricia was in. Go figure. I'm grateful, really grateful to Alison Dubois. I didn't mean in my remarks in any way to suggest that she's any less than she presents herself to be. But I would be disingenuous. And so I need to qualify that I am, by nature, a cynic. And I think one of the reasons the show worked, to the extent that it worked, ‘cause it was a very successful show, is that it gave the cynics a place to stand. She was as uncertain of her abilities as the people in the audience who might not embrace the idea would be. And that's not true of the real Alison. The real Alison is a very bravura. Doesn't have an insecure bone in her body. Patricia, on the other hand, very different people. I remember having a conversation with Patricia and saying, here's the news. Here's what you need to know. Here's how I see it. We can argue about this. I can't imagine that God would give someone this extraordinary sensitivity and also make them in any way at all narcissistic. That what she is is the complete opposite of narcissistic. She's completely uninvolved in that way. And what that means to me is she does not look in a mirror. She doesn't care how she dresses. The house is always a bit of a mess. It's like the real houses that people live in. There's always laundry that's stacked up because it hasn’t been cleaned yet. And other laundry is stacked up because it's been cleaned but never put away. You have kids, so there is this low level, about 35 decibel sound fields that's just always going on, that's mixed with the sound of a television over here and this and that. I said you are the least vain person there is. And she said she just had a child and so she was carrying, I don’t know, ten or 15 pounds more than she wanted to. And I said I’m fine if you don’t rush to lose that. I want you to look like someone we’d know from church or somebody we’d know from school meetings or somebody we’d know in the grocery store or-- That was my take. I said maybe, maybe, maybe if we make her real enough and normal enough, people will give us this one thing. She can dream the future. Because I thought that's the only way you're going to get adults to watch this goddamn thing. If you pretend that she's all knowing and all-- I mean other shows did it and they didn't worry about that and they were successful. So clearly I'm wrong, but for me to do it, I needed all that other stuff to be, I needed the kids to be, I used to call them primitives, you know. I wanted to cast children who hadn't gone to the Burbank school of smiling. You know, who, you know, who had all kinds of behavioral stuff that they would bring in because they were kids. And Jake Weber was-- He got it. She's the lead singer in the band and here I am and I'm going to support her in any way I can. And in many ways it was-- First of all, Patricia has a work ethic. She's third generation actor, it's the family business, so she has a work ethic that's fantastic. And even she would get exasperated with me from time to time with the late pages. But she was just so talented. And we had the same North Star and I would say to guest stars, I would say watch Patricia. Her performance is this big, it's this big, it's so real. So you can't come in with all this because you're going to look ridiculous. Watch Patricia. She's the lead singer in the band and you know, and good actors got it. They instantly got it. I like to brag so I will tell you that some of the good actors we worked with have gone on to become even bigger actors than when we worked with them. We did a show with a, uh, young woman named Riley Stone, who was amazing, but for some reason after doing our show decided to change her name to Emma. She was like fantastic and I wrote one of these huge monologues for her that she got the day of, and she just-- She was 17, I think. We used Jennifer Lawrence twice. I never used somebody twice. But she was so good the first time that I let her play young Patricia Arquette in an episode. In another. I mean, she was another one like Patricia. You just—You-- The three of them-- I remember just being-- I admire talent so much. You know, I love actors. I love making stuff. So when you meet somebody like a Patricia Arquette or a Jennifer Lawrence or an Emma Stone or, you know, and I'm not sure Emma or Jennifer would even remember me, but you just go, oh, my goodness. This is what it's all about.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's amazing. And I think while we'd love to keep talking because that's what we do best—

Glenn Gordon Caron: I think we’re probably out of—

Susan Lambert Hatem: We are. You have been so generous with your time and answering our questions. I'm so appreciative. So Moonlighting is now available also on iTunes and Amazon now, correct?

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes, it's on iTunes. There are a couple of places where you can buy it digitally. Roku, I want to say. There may be another one or two.

Susan Lambert Hatem: But still on Hulu?  

Glenn Gordon Caron: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, awesome. And can people, do you have a website? Do you have social media? Are you still on Twitter?

Glenn Gordon Caron: I'm still on Twitter. I'm one of those idiots.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Me too. Me too.

Glenn Gordon Caron: One of these days, I guess I'll move over to Instagram or something, but that would require effort. And I actually liked Twitter until--

Susan Lambert Hatem: I love Twitter. I love old Twitter, and I'm hoping that Twitter will survive somehow.

Glenn Gordon Caron: North back. Yeah, me too. I don't know, there's a lot of strange ideas flying around. Anyway, thank you for being so generous, and thank you for offering to talk to me. And, whatever, whatever. We'll do it again sometime if I do anything else worthy of discussion.  

Sharon Johnson: Anytime. We would love to have you back if you're available. So fantastic. Thank you so much.

Glenn Gordon Caron: Likewise. Thank you.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Thank you.  

Glenn Gordon Caron: Bye bye now.

Al Jarreau: We’ll walk by night, babe. We’ll fly by day. Moonlighting strangers who just met on the way.

Sharon Johnson: In today's audiography, we'll have links in the description for this episode to where you can watch Moonlighting on streaming. Just go to our website, 80sTVladies.com.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You can find Glenn Gordon Caron on Twitter, twitter.com/glenngcarron. Thank you for listening to 80s TV, ladies. Wgoing to do a few more episodes looking at the five seasons of this groundbreaking show. So stay tuned for more Moonlighting strangers that we meet on the way.

Sharon Johnson: As always, 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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