Episode Transcript
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Weirding, Wayne Media, so prettyBabies through the city, up and drained,
getting good money. Man World.Welcome listeners to Eighties TV Ladies,
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where we explore female driven television showsfrom the nineteen eighties and celebrate the people
who made them. You're your fabuloushosts Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert had him
Hello, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. Susan and I were just at podcast
and she Podcast Live to Indie Podcastingconventions, both held in Orlando, Florida
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in January twenty twenty four. Wehad a blast meeting so many wonderful podcasters
and meeting some people in person thatwe'd only known through social media. In
fact, we had our very EightiesTV Ladies fan meetup. It was a
last minute idea when I realized oneof my favorite online friends and a big
fan of the pod lives in theOrlando area, Miss Amy Hood, So
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we decided to throw a little meetupparty at Cooper's Hawk Winery and Restaurant.
Sharon, it was so much fun. Oh, it was just great.
So thank you too, Amy andPatrick, Lauri, Zi and Pike for
coming out to spend the evening withus. And say hello and a big
thank you as well to the staffat Cooper's Hawk who were very helpful with
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us, especially to our waitress whosang us seventies and eighties TV theme songs
and took really great care of us. Go to Instagram and Facebook slash Eighties
TV Ladies to see pictures and somefun for our trip, and let us
know listeners if you'd like us todo more fan meetups. But now most
importantly, we're back with part twoof our interview with Glenn Gordon Karen,
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the creator of Moonlighting. If youwant to start at the very begins,
a very good place to start.You can go back one episode to start
with part one, or you canmix 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 abouthow he handled the Lightning in a Bottle
success of Moonlighting. Before I gotinto this business, I've never made more
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than one hundred and thirty five dollarsa week in my life. You know,
you're just completely unequipped, and thenyou're meeting people that you've admired your
whole life. I mean literally oneday, one day back this is back
before cell phones and all that.There's a phone sitting my office at night.
He rings and I pick it upand I go hello, and the
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voice on the other end he goes, Hello, this is Carry Grant.
Can I speak with Glenn Karen?And I said, I said, because
I'm smart, and I think youknow, I said push anyway, No,
no, this is this is thisis really Carry And I hung on
called back and it was really CarryGrants. And he was a huge fan
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of the show, and you know, invited me to go to the races
with him in del Mair and Ithought, I thought that the stock call
races had no lock. They knewwhat he was talking about. And Jamie
realized he was talking about the horseraces and he would take he and his
wife would take a train to delMar every weekend to go to these racism
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And I said, I called mywife and I said, We've been inviting
guard to the races from Carry Grant. I don't know what to do,
like, what are you wear?What do you you know? I well,
first you said yes, yes,which is what she said, and
so I said, I said yes. And that was like on a Tuesday,
and he passed away. Here's anotherone on a Thursday. Oh oh
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goodness. You never had to goto the races with Carry Grant. No,
but and this is where the friendshipcomes from. My phone running about
four weeks later, and it wasStanley Donn and the man who directed Singing
in the Rain and innumerable movies withCary Grant, including Charade, and here
just a bunch of things. Andhe called me and introduced himself, and
he was an enormous hero Meowray.And he said, look, I know
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you were going to go to theraces with Carry and his wife. And
his wife Barbara and asked him tocall because she'd like to arrange a little
dinner party. She'd still like tomeet you. And so we went to
dinner. And here's who was hisdinner Carry Grant's wife, Barbara, Stanley
Donnan, David Beegelman, who hadjust been fired from Columbia Pictures for forging
a check with Cliff Robertson's name onit. But he was prior to that.
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I didn't know this. He waslike a huge agent. He was
like the Iri Manuel of his day, and you know, represent Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Burton and all these andbut for me this was the thrill.
The other couple there was Billy andAudrey Wilder and Billy Wilder. Again,
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it's just a huge here. Theidea that I was sitting with Billy Wilder,
that he had questions to ask mewas just mind blow And I spent
the whole meal squeezing. My wife'sso excited, and you know, just
couldn't believe that I had fooled allthese people. You know, it's just
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stunning to me. Was that howStanley Donnon got involved in Big Man and
Mulberry Street episode. Yes, Icalled him and said, will you do
this? It was funny. Isaid, I have this new musical number
blah blah blah blah blah. Willyou directed? And he said how much
will you pay me? And Isaid, I can't pay you anything.
He went and he laughed and hesaid how much time do I have?
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I said, you have to youa day and he laughed again, and
he ended up he ends up doingthree days, and we ended up buying
him a really nice gift and webecame friends. And then he asked me.
He produced the Oscars the next year, and he said, will you
come write it with Larry Gelboord,so he did wow, sort of pay
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him back. People don't even knowthe oscars are written, but they are.
And that was how the friendship withStanley Donner and Wow happening. He
was such an amazing I would goin. I would be recommended from movies
to direct movies and I would beunavailable or I didn't think it was right
for me, but I'd say,you should talk to Stamley. It was.
I thought it was criminal that thisextraordinarily talented man wasn't making movies.
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But you know, he wasn't infashion, if you will, which is
insane to think, Yeah, butyou know it's it's a business of fashion
in any ways. Yes, Sobefore we get to my questions about Simple
Shepherd, how did the title comeabout? And the song? The title
is a strange story. I wentin. I needed to tell you,
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you see, what the show wasabout. We had a meeting. I
told him sort of premise about thiswoman who is a model loses all their
money, et cetera, et cetera, And they said great, and the
meeting was over and I was walkingout the door down the all and suddenly
I heard a voice go Glenn what'sit called. I swear this is the
truth. I turned and I wentmoonlighting. I have no idea what I
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was thinking. I don't know whereit came from. Everyone doing it great.
Later I realized it's a really goodtitle in the sense that someone the
Moonlights does a job other than theirreal job. And you know, it
has all sorts of echoes and meaningsand inferences that very much apply to the
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show. But again, I'd belying if I told you that it was
a calculation on my part. Itliterally came to them spontaneously. I don't
remember where it came from. Wow. And then how did the song the
song was? I lived for abrief time in Chicago. Eight months.
I was working and I was alsoin the Second City Workshop, and there
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wasn't a lot of great television on. But one of the great television shows
that was on was a show mighthave been on PBS called Soundstage or sound
I can't remember, but I watchedit religiously every weekend. One week there
was Algiro and I was just sortof struck by him. And you know,
a couple of years later, Iwas here, I was doing this
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show, and when I edit things, I use a lot of music.
When I write, I'll put onmusic, and that music so noow becomes
part of the fabric of the show. So when we put together Moonlighting Algebra,
I'd recorded a song I think itwas called after All I Do Hey,
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that's what I tempt, which isthe term for temporary music they use
in the show the pilo with Andwhen it came time to actually make the
show, I called to see ifwe could get the rights to after All,
and his people said, why don'tyou do a in the original song?
And I said, oh, okay, and so Al came in.
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He had written these lyrics and someof them didn't make abundant sense to me.
So I tried very generally because itwas Algio and I was nobody,
you know, And some of themwe whiggled around. The music was written
by the gentleman who scored the pilot, whose name escapes me, who was
a very very famous arranger. Hewould arrange for Barbara streisand he would arrange
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for all these people, but hedidn't often compose. But he composed our
score and composed the song with Aland my daughter. I have four children.
My second child, my daughter,was born on February second, and
I think we recorded the song onFebruary third. I always remember because I
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felt really conflicted about leaving and goinginto a soundseer because you have to remember,
nobody had seen mon lighting. Ihad no reason to believe that anything
was going to happen with no lighting. I was really thrilled and excited to
meet now. Yeah. But anyway, so we all thought the song was
like, amazing, somebody excep shoot. And then we came up with that
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title sequence, you know, withthat, and I remember put back to
me be seeing they were like wowagain, you know, you're in your
early twenties and you just think Ihave nothing to lose. Let me see
maybe al Jerral will do this.You know. It was a great experience.
I remember the night really saying forthe fact that I felt incredibly guilty
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not being at the hospital, itwas an extraordinary experience. Wow. Yeah.
When our son was born, myhusband's a TV writer, and he
left for a meeting, but hewrote the script that he was working on
in the room. Wow, forthe dead Zone, I can relate these
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things happened. Yeah. Yeah,So we were there and he was writing
over there, and then I toldhim. He had to get out because
I had to have a C sectionthat was somewhat unexpected. And then they
gave me vicodin and it made memanic and crazy. And then there was
a moment he said something funny andI couldn't stop laughing. And then I
literally was like, you have toleave the room and he's like what,
I'll stop and I'm like, no, your face, you have to leave
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the room all together. Get out, 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 vicain and so
I refuse to take him and thenI felt much better once I got home.
Anyway, that was a diversion.So four kids, four kids,
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two boys and two girls, actuallymy oldest and my young liasterwo boys and
the two middle girls. So yeah, I see the love you dad.
Oh. I keep wanting to eraseit because he you know, it gets
a lot of scrutiny. But atthe same time, I really don't want
to erase it. I feel likeit's there's something blasphemous and you know,
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no, but I will at somepoint have to erase it. You know,
I don't want to. It's veryvery sweet. And if you'r a
fourteen year old wrote that, youcan't erase it was my fourteen who's about
to be fifteenth. So yeah,yeah, it has to stay, has
to stay. Okay, So SybilShepherd, I know her. Yes,
I know it was a challenging relationship. Yeah, yeah, of course it
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was. Yeah, I think,yeah, it's been pretty well a staussed.
Can you talk about when she firstcame on the show why you thought
of her for the show? Evenfrom the beginning, the topography of her
life fit the topography of the story. She was a mild became a huge
movie star, she lost everything inthe sense that she was this huge movie
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star who miscalculated the nature of herappeal and overstated her welcome and actually got
the audience to resent her at apoint where she couldn't go work as a
movie actor. And I thought,that's close enough to Maddie, as you
know, it just made sense tome, and you know, it seemed
like a very very very good sad. Now that was interesting because I think
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I'm attracted to audacious people because andpeople forget this now, but in the
trajectory of Bruce's career. You know, Bruce came on TV and ballimed me,
blew up in a big way.But there was a moment when he
started to make movies and he didBlind Date. Then he did a movie
called Sunset, and then the feelingwas people didn't want to see him in
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the movies. They've had enough ofthem. He was so audacious in its
television persona that they were almost wornout. And people forget about this.
They forget that when Diehard came out, the original poster for the movie was
a poster of a building. Hewas not on it because they were convinced
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that he would turn you off.I mentioned this only because in my own
life, I've worked with a lotof people who have gone through periods like
this, where you know, Idirected a movie with Michael Keaton and it
was writ at the time where alot of people went, you know,
I've had enough of Michael Keaton,and what I was asking him to do
he had never done before. Iwas asking him to play dramatic role This
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is for clean and so clean,yeah, which is pretty great, which
was the role that got him Batman. That sort of changed his whole thing
around. But it's interesting. Ithink the most dynamic actors invariably go through
a period where the audience says,I need a break. You'd each show
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me something else or you know.But that's what attracted me to Sybil initially
was it just seemed like the contoursof her journey were similar to the contours
of the nineties, and the onscreen chemistry between the two of them is
pretty astonishing, even you know,looking back, and that's all mes.
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Yes, it is. And whenthey first met, if I'm beingblutantly honest,
I knew it would be that way. She resisted meeting him for a
long time. She likes to tellpeople that she picked him. She didn't.
She in fact, would a screentest with him. She was very,
very difficult about it. She confessedto me. At one point,
I said, why are you doingthis? They're going to cancel this show,
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and she said, Glenn, ifyou screen test me, you'll fire
me. And I said, no, you know what, I won't.
She said, yeah, you will. So it was one of the few
times that I saw insecurity mm hm. But I understood the nature of his
appeal. The reason I liked himso much was he was thirty guys I
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grew up with, and I understoodunderneath 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, thisguy's got my back, and not only
that, he's gonna be a lotof fun to run with. And in
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Sybil it's a different kind of energy, but she's also in for the ride.
So I just felt like, youput the two of them together,
if they will start to fire,then that somebody should just buy me a
plane ticket and I should leave,you know, Hollywood. And I couldn't
see why other people couldn't see.It was so clear to me. But
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I'm gonna take this opportunity to saysomething. You haven't asked me the question,
but I'm gonna just yeah, pretendyou did. Brus ended up being
one of the people I'm closest toin life. Sybil was a much more
complicated relationship. I don't think she'ssomeone who implicitly gets along with anyone who
could be perceived to being any theboss. She's one of those people that
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it is dubious of all that kindof stuff, and I don't think I
present that way, But I amthe person that asked to sort of say,
here's what we need to be,here's what 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 responsiblefor making it hard, for saying,
yeah, we're gonna do I amat the time, Yes, we're gonna
sing and dance. She literally saidto me, why can't we just do
a regular television show. She hadit in her head that this was somehow
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going to be easier. And Iunderstand that instinct, you know. Having
said that, and having now hadan opportunity to go back and look at
the episodes, goddamn, she's amazing. And then, and I'm not sure
I was as clear about that atthe time. I think I was so
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rewhelmed with all of it, butalso with how difficult it was to get
her from point A to point B, to get her to leave the motor
home and come into the stage,to get her to take two. He
said, we need another, andshe goes, no, I'm done.
No, I'm going home. Shewas literally say I'm going home now,
and you go, no, youcan't go. We're not done. She
said, I'm going home and youknow. I said, you're not leaving.
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She said, I'm leaving. Andif I locked the door and wouldn't
let her go because we had fivemore hours of work, she'd go,
Okay, She'd come back here andshe'd finished the five and then she'd call
in the next morning sick and stayout for two it she'd show me how
it was going to work on.I said, you know, you are
a prima donna, and she said, yes, I am. Do you
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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, Ithink she was right as often as I
thought she was wrong, and Idon't think I was as again, I
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just don't think I knew. Imean, I knew she would be incredibly
difficult, and I don't need togo into the whys of any of it.
And I would just think, ohmy god, this is just you
can't do this because you're holding uptwo hundred other people who want to go
home and see their kids, andblah blah blahlahlah and all this other stuff.
But then I'd go into a projectionroom and I'd watch the dailies and
I'd go, oh, oh,that's why, but that would go a
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pretty quickly because you'd have all theseother problems. But now I watched the
shows and I go, my god, she's amazing. She is amazing in
the show. She's amazing. We'vesince made up and all that up,
by the way, but I'm justsaying at the time, I think she
consumed so much oxygen, so muchenergy, and I resented that because the
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show consumed so much oxygen so much. The enterprise was so debilitating, and
you know, we were all swingingfor the fences, so it was it
was just hard for me to finda calculus that made sense for all that.
And I've certainly worked with more difficultpeople since. But your work was
astonishing. Yeah, Sharon and Iwere just talking about just how beautifully it
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shot too, like she's shot basically. That's Jerry Finnemon. He was a
real old school cinematographer, which iswhy we hired him. I wanted it
to look like a Frank Kapa movie. Yeah, painting with light and shadow
and all that, and Jerry wasan old school deep painting and was thrilled
to do it. Sometimes we doit a little too much, and he
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was also DPIs back then the firstthing they did was a made friend with
the leading lady. They understood thatthat's where their power came from. So
he sat Sybil down, he said, I will protect you, I will
always make you look great, butyou have to listen to me. So
he would use all kinds of diffusion. He would do all sorts of things
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and sometimes he go overboard, andyou know, I couldn't help but make
jokes about it. And we didthat show with Runner Barrett the straight poop
and Sybil walks out with the causewas stuff. But Jerry, Jerry was
everything he wanted in a cinematographer.He was a perfect piece of pasting for
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that show. You know, that'sfantastic to hear. Yeah, I think
I owe that in large part toJay Daniel, who was a producer I
worked with for a very long time. I think Shay was one who turned
me on to him. Jay wasvery smart that way and sort of hear
what I was coming up with,because we shot the pilot with a different
cinematographer who used the techniques that werein that moment very much involke but made
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me crazy. It was use softlight, use long lenses, all this
kind of stuff, and I said, yep, I loved the artifice.
I wanted it to be romantic.I wanted it to be a dream,
and I wanted it to be youknow, and all that stuff took time.
So it was a nethla in theworld of television. And I was
young and stupid and arrogant sighting care, I said, I wanted to We'll
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take the time, you know,still young and stupid, but not really
as arrogant. So the straight poopisn't interesting, Like it's an episode that
basically starts with Rohona Barrett, whowas who wasn't gms of her time?
Her time, and she's outside thestudio and she's going to get to the
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bottom of why Dave and Maddie aren'tmaking more Moonlighting episodes. Yes, and
I've told this story before, butin that period where we were not churning
out with episodes as quickly as thenetwork wanted or the viewers wanted, people
were getting pissed off in a majorway. And I would shoot the commercials
for the show. I was outof my mind. And I even shot
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this one commercial with I think hisname is rayge Arden, wonderful actor.
I put him in a sort ofa gray working man's outfit with the ABC
logo on his thing and his nameon the other. And he's standing on
a loading dock in the dark,and it says at two thirty five am,
and you hear a voice from overthe camera, do hey, what'd
you do it? And he looksup and he says, Oh, let's
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just waiting. What you're waiting for? He says, were blude lighting?
And oh, is there going tobe a new one? He goes,
who knows? And because they neededthey needed a commercial to rhyme and they
never knew if they had a newepisode. Anyway. It was during that
period and I went to an event, I think, honoring Brandon Tartakoff.
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And at these events, you know, you go in and yay, hek
near the speeches and it's lovely,and then you come out and you wait
in out line. There's three hourslong to get your car so you can
go home of la line. AndI'm standing in this line with my wife
and I look up ahead and Isee this little tiny lady and I realized
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it was Rohona Berett. I meanshe was just this very petite, tiny
lady, and I thought, wow, there's Roona Bearon. I have an
idea, and I left the lineand I walked up to us to excuse
me. You don't know me,and my name is Glenn Town. I
do this show Moonlighting, And thenshe knew who I was, and I
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said, are you free tomorrow?And mind you it's you know, it's
like ten o'clock at night. Andshe said why And I said, well,
can you come over to twenty centuryFoxes sing thirty in the morning.
I want to. I want toshoot a whole episode with you in a
day. And she said, okay, I mean because I think in her
line this is like a big scoopsomething's going on. So she's up and
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I said, look, here's thedeal. I said, everybody's asking about
why we can't make these episodes,and they hear that bruson similar fighting,
I said, and I sort ofwant to blur the line, and I'm
going to put this earwig in yourear and I'm gonna feed you questions and
we're going to have the three camerason it, and blah blah blah,
and at the end of the day, I'm going to use clips to illustrate
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these different things and hopefully we'll havea new episode. And that's what we
did. Oh my god, it'sgreat. It's a clip episode, but
it's great. It's funny, it'sweird, it's meta. I remember at
one point thinking do I do this? And then I went ahead and do
it. I said, we're gonnaask him about his hair. He was
losing his hair every day, anduh, you know, stupid stuff,
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you know, But we all hadfun and we did we made an episode.
I thought, if I'm gonna stoopto do a clip episode, I
wanted to be funny and special andI loved using the outtakes at the end.
That was something that you didn't seeanybody do back then. I mean
people were like thrilled by it andshocked by it. And that's an episode
where Pierce Brosnan appears playing Remington Steel. Yes, Yes, I love Peerce.
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I just saw Pierce a couple ofmonths ago. He had an art
show. He said he's quite apainter, just a great guy and wildly
underestimated as an actor. He alsodid Love the Fair for Me with Warm
Baty In and At Benning and KatherineHepburn. Yes, I was to play
missus Lincoln. So did you justcall up Pierce Broston and say come do
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this? And the networks were okaywith that? Oh, the networks were
thrilled. Are you kidding? Imean I didn't ask NBC. I just
asked him and he said yes.And I don't know that we implicitly said
he was right. No, Noyou didn't. He just sort of played
Remington and then said, oh,I went up with Maddie. It was
like I'm into Sila going out withother famous ditch. It's stupid in he
(26:56):
ought of conceit. But you know, we all got the joke. And
then you got Peter Bugdanovitch. Yesthan my other joke. Yes, I
liked Peter a lot. Peter wouldcome around a lot, He spent a
lot of time. Larry McMurtry camearound a lot. I was gonna say,
but she was not with Peter Bogdanovitchat that point. I don't know
that Sybyls ever done with the menand hearth. You know what I mean.
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She's one of these people who theyseem to hang on. Okay,
you know, the relationships don't definethemselves in that way that Murcury would come
around. Bogdanovitch. The only onethat I never saw come around, and
I think it's because he had passedaway, was Elvis. But you called
(27:38):
up Peter Bugdanovich and said come dothis. Yeah, that's fantastic, and
he was thrilled. He was awonderful, generous guy. So a love
affair. And your movies, youworked with a lot of amazing women in
those, yeah, Jennifer Anderson,Deborah Winger, Katherine Hepburn. Who are
some of your favorite ladies to workwith. Deborah is someone I still consider
(28:02):
a really good friend. She's just, you know, one of a kind.
I adored working with Jennifer. Idon't think she had a good time
with me, but I adored workingwith her. She was I remember being
like a little dumb struck because everyactor has a different process, and typically
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in television you'll do two or threetakes and you're hoping they peek around take
three. But that's kind of allyou have. Movies are much more generous,
or at least they were back inthose days. And I remember starting
Picture Perfect and I do six orseven takes, but she was started hitting
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all runs at take two and three. I never met someone who got there
so fast. I realized a lotof it was because her muscles were so
well developed. Because Friends, youknow, we did the movie in between
the hiatus between the first and secondseasons of Friends. I thought she was
great. I bored her, youfound out later. So again, like
I say that, I did somethings that ticked her off, which is
(29:07):
inevitable, you know. I mean, everybody's gonna love you. But I
thought she was great. And it'snot the best movie, you know,
It's kind of a good double ormaybe a good triple. I'm not sure.
I did it largely because my oldestdaughter was fourteen at a time,
and I just thought I knew howhuge Jennifer sort of wound. I knew
(29:33):
how important Friends was. I mean, people forget, but this sort of
the second friend showed up. Itchanged the world. They let me make
the movie in New York, whichis 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 wentto Kevin Bacon, who I did not
know, and said, hey,do this with me, and he said
(29:56):
cool, and we did it.Finish the Jay Moore has been talking of
it all as we talked about abunch, so, you know, I
think that was one of the reasonsJennifer wasn't crazy about me. Was we
ended up making a movie with Jay, and there were people she really wanted
more than Jay our part of thepunt. But for me, it was
a very pleasant experience. I wishthe release of it helped, being a
(30:19):
little more muscular. It was sortof half heartedly released. I felt like
they should have put a little moreenergy into it. But I like the
movie a lot, you know,and it is what it is. It's
you know, it's a small movie. It wasn't wasn't high budgeted movie or
anything. It was her first movie, as you know, as a star,
and she'd been in the Leprechaun movies. I think part to that,
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but she had never fronted a movie. You know. The movie was you
know, there was there was aLibido caucus, which was a great get
and you know, we did thebest recruit. But I'm still fond of
the movie, and people still tellme they liked the movie. You know,
there were people that just think it'sgone awful. You know, it's
it's one of those movies. ButI'm very fond of her. I've run
into her a couple of times,but I don't think she'd never work with
(31:04):
me yet. I just think peoplewas can't make everybody love you. What
you had mentioned earlier that initially youhad wanted to work in movies as opposed
to television, and so since youeventually had the chance to move into movies,
I'm just wondering what your thoughts areabout movies versus television. It's interesting
because they've sort of switched roles inthe sense that when I said that,
(31:29):
and when I felt that television tendedfor the most part to be fairly frivolous
and not terribly ambitious, movies werethe place you went to get your mind
stimulated. It dealt much more withthe business of being a human being.
I used to say when I wasa 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 tobe an adult. Now we go to
(31:52):
the movies to be reminded what itfelt like to be a kid. Obviously
that's a simplification, but I meanI would go being sixteen years old going
seeing five thesy pieces and just lookingat the screen of going, I've recognized
his anger, his confusion, andI couldn't put words to it, but
(32:14):
I related to when I was doingLove and Fair. I confessed to Warren
Batty when I went and saw aShampoo and I was a young man when
I saw it that I didn't understanda lot of it. I really liked
it, but it was so outsidemy realm of experience. You know.
It was a movie about, inmany ways, about politics. I didn't
(32:37):
know anybody knew anything about politics.I had never been exposed to that sort
of thing. It was about wealthypeople. I didn't know much about wealthy
people. It's about a lot ofthings that were completely foreign to me.
But I always found that fascinating whenyou see a movie about things that were
foreigner and you go oh, andthen it's the things that nonetheless we share
(33:04):
that make them. I mean,I remember going to see ten years ago
when I see the movie about itgets in India and the kid wins the
Quid Show and plumb out a millionaire, and just thinking, what great great
movie, what a great, greatstory, what fantastic execution. I mean,
ending it with a musical number.I mean, it's just all these
(33:25):
fantastic choices, and you never once, I never wants when I'm watching it
going, I can't relate to you. I don't know what's going. It's
instead you're leaning forward and sort ofdrinking in the differences. Television never did
that. Television was the definition ofcomfort for me. Television was designed I
(33:47):
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 makethis so compelling that you don't dare do
anything else, I've failed. Thatwas not the case when I got into
(34:08):
it. Now it's since become Imean, we've all seen I've seen television
things that take my breath away.I mean, how do you being madmen?
I don't know if you saw it, but how do you beat normal
people? How do you beat theQueen scambit? Amazing pieces of work?
(34:30):
So, now, of course we'rein a situation where filmmakers want to work
in television. Everybody wants to working. And again I'm being simplistic, but
if you're an American filmmaker, thestudio system offers a very sort of limited
(34:51):
menu of styles and types of storytelling. I mean, you couldn't make clean
and sober today, that is thestudio film. Might be able to make
it as an independent and then hopethat it gets shown on the Sundance channel.
The things that I'm interested in andattracted to for the most part,
I mean, I love a goodcommercial movie, and I'd love to make
(35:13):
up. I've never had a bigI mean, Love Affair was supposed to
be, you know, obviously abig commercial movie, but truthfully it was
a disappointment. But the great thingat that time about movies, and I
used to say this in television,you paint with a roller. In movies,
you contemplate, and you paint witha very very very fine brush.
(35:34):
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.
Twenty two of anything a year now. I was saying, just make
eight and make them as good asyou can. That was sort of what
we were trying to do with Moonlighting, you know, the first one that
sort of did that in a publicway and wasn't being chastised for it.
(35:58):
Was I think probably, you know, they did as many as they could
do well, you know, whichwas you know, an attitude that I
had. I'm sure I'm not theonly one who had that attitude, but
I had it, and you know, it was sort of taking a task
for it on the business side ofthe business. But I don't know if
I answered your question, but yes, absolutely absolutely, I know that Sharon
(36:21):
in particular is a big fan ofNow and Again. I'm a huge fan
of Now and Again. It's oneof 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 tryingto find it, and I just only
recently realized it had been released onDBD in twenty fourteen. I think it
was so love that show and Iwould love to know how that came about.
(36:45):
What was the story behind that?Do you want to hear the story
because it's a weird story. Ohyes, please? So I'm 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 dowhat people would have expected that Warren Baby
(37:09):
and that's banning movie, that's howto do. And I got a phone
call from less moon Bess, whoI did not know. I may have
met him once prior to that,and he said, well, you have
breakfast with me. I'm in NewYork. We have breakfast with me.
I said sure. So when Ihad breakfast with him, and he said
he had just taken over CBS,and he said, I want you to
(37:30):
write a pilot for me. AndI said, well, I'm you know
I'm in the movie because I reallywant to stay in there. I said,
I fooled everybody once with Moonlighting.I don't think I have it in
me again to fool anybody. Andhe said, I want you to write
a pilot. He said, andif you write a pilot and I don't
make it, I'll give you amillion dollars. So I went home and
(37:55):
told my wife. She said,you can write anything, said right,
whatever you want. So I wrotenow and again and now and again.
It was sort of my riff onDamn Yankees. Damn Yankees is an old
Broadway show about a guy he's inhis forties or fifties, is middle aged.
(38:16):
He watches the Seattle whatever the nameof their team was at the time,
the baseball team get shellac all thetime. All he wants to do
is see them be a championship teamand help them be a championship team.
And the devil appears, and thedevil says, I'm going to turn you
into a young man and you're goingto leave the Seattle whatever they are is
(38:37):
to the World Series. He says, you're kidding. This is like the
greatest moment of his life. Sohe goes, and indeed he fulfills that
prophecy. He's like an amazing baseballplayer. But he gets there and he
misses his wife, he misses hisfamily, he misses his wife. But
(38:59):
he's like a twenty two year oldguy. And his wife is you know,
she's forty or forty two, whateverit is. And he's made a
deal with the double and I don'teven remember how it ends, but a
very popular vice of musical theater,and if you stop and think about now
and again, he's sort of aboutriff on that John Goodman, who was
a friend, plays this guy whogets him by subway train and wakes up
(39:22):
and finds that his brain has beenheld for government experiment and what they want
to do is they've been trying tobuild a man who can fight wars for
them, an artificial man, andthey've done it everything except they can't figure
out the brain port. They realizethey need to harvest the brains to make
it work, or at least totest it. So they harvest this brain
(39:43):
that used to belong to John Goodman. And you remember what John Goodman used
to look like. I mean heused to you know, he weighed three
hundred and twenty pounds, he livedin New Orleans, he was you know,
he comes back and he's ever closethis guy who weighs one hundred and
forty five pounds, and he's youknow, ripped it. All he wants
to do is be with his wife, who has played I uh, Margaret
Colin, and she's amazing, trulyone of my favorite collaborators. And I
(40:07):
loved the ache buried in that idea. So we filmed the pilot. I
directed it. I was very proudof it. And I got a phone
call to come to LA because Iwas living in New York and come to
LA and meet with Less Moon investorswho I didn't know. I had to
one meal with him. So Icome to La and I go with the
(40:29):
head of the studio to meet lessoninvesting. He's kind of whole feelings of
people around him, and he said, I can't tell you how disappointed I
am. Terrible, terrible piece ofwork. Now, if I had a
couple of days, if I hadsome time, I probably could fix it.
I could probably maybe go out anddirect some sequences and fix it.
And I was like, wow,Okay, clearly I've let these people down.
(40:52):
And I felt terrible because I'm that'sthe way I'm wired, Like I
feel badly if people don't show up, like 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 Ifelt really bad. But the head of
the studio, a guy named Kerrymcclugg, it was sat in the corner
and he listened to Less do histhing, and he knew Less much better
(41:15):
than I did, and he did. At one point he said, did
you test it? And I said, no, I didn't test that.
I don't need to test it.I saw it. I know what I
saw. And he said you shouldtest it. And the meeting was over
and we were walking out of CBSStudio Center over there, and I said,
I'm sorry. I said, Ifeel so bad. I'm sorry.
He said, oh, whoa,Clinn, It's it's going to be on
(41:36):
television. I said what he said, it's going to be on television.
I said, how can you saythat? You're in the same meeting I
was in. I haven't been talkedto you that way in my professional life,
maybe ever. And he said,glad. First of all, he's
going to test it. I said, yeah, And what's going to happen?
He said, we tested it.Tests through the roof, he said.
(42:00):
And the second thing is he wantsto be able to announce that he
has the guy who did Moonlighting's 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 backto New York and I was getting a
haircut and it was the first daysof like mobile phones. I had a
flip phone and it starts to gooff in my pocket. This is about
(42:22):
three weeks later, and it's Iwant to say, it was Nancy tell
In, one of those executives atCBS. Hi, how are you?
And then I said, I'm okay, how are you, and she said,
I'm good. I just want tomake sure you didn't get the wrong
idea from the meeting we had.I said, what do you mean?
She said, your show is goingto be on CBS, and we just
want you to know how exciting weare, and we want you to come
(42:44):
to Carnegie Ole because they would dothe upfronts at Carnegie. Oh blah blah
blah. I go to Carnegie anymy shoe was going to be on blah
blah blah. Unless God is revenge, she put it on. But he
put it on nine o'clock on Fridaynight after candid camera. I mean,
it had no lead in, ithad known nothing, and it didn't do
well, but because nobody knew itwas there. But it was extraordinarily well
(43:05):
reviewed. I mean Esquire wrote apiece on it. I mean, it's
like crazy good reviews. And sohe was able to cancel it. Was
he wanted to make the point,was I told you it was no good
at least that's what I think.Less, if you're listening, I apologize,
but that's what I thought. I'mnot sure Less we'll ever listen to
our podcast. Maybe somebody else.I don't know how, but I found
it, and I was hooked fromthe very beginning. You very loved it,
(43:29):
loved it, loved it, lovedit. We did it, and
then it got canceled in and thenI got a call saying, you got
to come back to California. Youwant 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 anyscience fiction. It must be a
mistake, and they said now andI can, and I said, They
went, oh, it's science fiction, isn't it. And I ended up
(43:50):
sitting next to at James Cameron onone side of me, and a good
friend of mine, a producer producedThe Green Mile, and a bunch of
other things on the other side ofit. And I'm very proud of it.
You know, it's a very it'sa highly original piece of work.
As my wife said, it's almostas if you sat down and said,
(44:12):
I would really prefer the million dollars. I was quite taken with it.
But CBS, it wasn't down themid you know, it was. It
was pretty out there. And alsoyou didn't know what to expect each week,
which was I thought was exciting aboutit. But they found it very
troubling in that sense, and Iinsisted we make it in New York.
And this was before all the taxcredits, and so it was quite an
(44:37):
expensive and difficult show to make.So there it isn't a nutshell. I'm
thrilled to have the chance to tellyou just how much I really Oh,
that means, that means a lotto me. It means a great deal
to me. And I was heartbroken. I mean, I think by that
point I was already at the pointwhere I was I would find that the
shows I really liked did not last. So I was prepared, although not
(44:58):
happy about the fact that it didn'tget a second season. But nevertheless,
I've never forgotten about that show.You're very set, you actually trying not
to gush too much, but yeah, love the show, love it,
love it, love it. Well, you need to get out more and
see more things. But I'm verysweet now I appreciate that I've never forgotten
both the ending and the beginning ofit. The eggs on the subway with
(45:22):
the kiss, That's what Esquire wroteabout. They said that I think the
headline was something like the most frighteningtwo minutes and twenty seven seconds of television
we've ever seen or something like thishad some some ridiculously over hyped headline like
that, but it meant a lotto me because I es Squire to me
was like an estimable thing, youknow. And the ending, I mean
(45:43):
that was me trying to out smarteverybody, thinking if I write a cliphanger,
they can't cancel it. But aswe've all come to learn, you
can't underestimate less mood. Best he'llcancel you don't care. And we actually
did have the other chef that cliffhangermostly worked out, Renee Chevalrio. It
was a wonderful writer who I didthat show with a long with a number
(46:06):
of brothers, but Renee was reallymy major sounding board. He and I
pretty much figured out how to digour way out of that ending, which
was pretty dramatic. But I'm soglad you liked it. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean you can secretly tell Sharon, no one else will hear.
(46:27):
I would tell Sharon if I couldremember it. That's why I keep invoking
Renee's name, you know, buthopes that he remembers and then quickly.
Although it was a very long runningshow, How did you get involved?
With Medium and a little bit aboutPartricia arkat Medium Mantatrish is all one story,
and it's a great story. Iwas under contrast still to Paramount.
(46:51):
Paramount was not port of CBS atthat time. And they called me it
said do you believe in psychic phenomenon? Do you believe in And I said
no? And they said both.And they said, well, we've we've
met this woman who is the psychicuh, and we think there might be
(47:14):
a television show in her life.Would you be all interested in coming out
here to California and spending time withtheir meeting her? And I said,
uh no, and and I hungup the phone, and my my curl
wife stood to me, by god, you are you are really arrogant?
(47:37):
Who would not want to spend timewith someone who sees the world a little
liberally than you do? And letme let you know another secret, sir.
Uh, women believe that they areintuitive. A lot of women believe
(47:57):
this, and you shouldn't belittle it, you know. Blah blah blah.
Long story short. And I calledthem back, said okay, I'll meet
this woman. So but but Iam the original cynic. Just so you
understand where I come from so Igo and I meet the real Alice in
Dubois, who's a fascinating woman,and I will go into all the nitty
(48:22):
gritty of it. And I remainedskeptical, but she was telling me in
her world as she experienced it,and I basically sort of marched her through
her life. I said, tellme 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
(48:45):
drinking heavily because it would keep thevoices of the ghosts down. And I
said, has anyone ever prescribed haldAll for you? And she said,
what's howl All? I said,it's it's a drug used to control it's
a phrenics. And she said no, with a certain measure of contempt,
(49:06):
which not unexpected given the question.And we continued to march through her life
and then she told me how shemet her husband, and I said,
what does your husband do? Shesaid, my husband is a physicist.
He's a doctor of physics. AndI went, okay, wait a second,
I thought, she lays in bedat night and sees dead Civil War
(49:30):
soldiers in the corner, and hethinks about the physical facts of the world.
What the hell kind of marriage canthat be? That's amazing, because
what is marriage? Marriage is youmeet another human being and initially you're overwhelmed
(49:50):
by all these feelings that you canmake sense of. But they add at
a point and they change their shape, and now the relationship demands that you
make room not just for all thethings that fascinate you, got to lure
you, and but also the thingsthat you can't quite make sense out of
(50:14):
that maybe you don't agree with.I mean, it is in miniature sort
of the model of what a marriageis. And that was my way into
it. That's what made it interestingto me. They had children, and
having said that, I couldn't ingood faith write about a lot of the
(50:36):
things I heard, I found someof them dubious, so I sort of
had to invent my own things.And it also had the problem of how
do you do this on a televisionshow? So I came up with this
thing up she dreams these things,that's Alison doesn't do that, The real
Alison doesn't do that. And thenI had to come up with a story
you'd involve her husband that we coulddo for the poet. And then she
(51:00):
called me and she said, boy, we'd love to watch some filmings.
So I said sure, that seemedreasonable to me, and so she and
her husband and their kids came toCalifornia. They live in Arizona, and
they watched this film and they alwaysremember that there was a scene between Patrician
Jake and her husband leaned over andwhispered in my ear and said, how
(51:21):
did you know? And I rememberthinking I meaned it up. And I
came to realize that to some extent, what Allison did was she became the
character I created, and to someextent, my character moved to stuff that
she did. I don't know whatto tell you, but I was always
worried because I always thought, I'masking the audience to make a lead peer,
(51:45):
and I'm content as a storyteller tomake that leap, as long as
we all understand that it is aleap. And I used it as an
excuse to do all kinds of fantasmicwork, things that I'm sort of interested
in as a filmmaker. And let'sdo animation, let's do three D let's
do this, let's do that,anything to sort of make those things evocative.
Now, the same woman who saidmy god, you're arrogant read the
(52:12):
first half three quarters of the scriptand said, this is Patricia Arquette,
and I went, okay, great, Yeah, that's going to happen.
But I knew it was a greatidea. 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 wasone of the producers of the movie.
(52:37):
And so I called her and said, look, I had this script and
I blifted. Patricia read it.I know it's a long shot. She
said, oh, send it tome. So I sent it to her.
Forty eight hours later, Patricia wasin Wow, 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 anyless than she presents herself to be,
(52:59):
but I would be disingenuous, andso I need to qualify that I am,
by nature a cynic, and Ithink one of the reasons the show
worked to the extent that to work, because it was a very successful show
is that it gave the senex aplace to stand. She was as uncertain
(53:21):
of her abilities as the people inthe audience who might not embrace the idea
would be. And that's not trueof the real house. The real Allison
is a very Bravia doesn't have anysecure bone in her body. Patricia,
on the other hand, that aredifferent people. I remember having a conversation
(53:42):
with Patricia and saying, here's thenews, here's what you need to know,
here's how I see it. Wecan argue about this. I can't
imagine that God we give someone thisextraordinary sensitivity and also make them in any
way at all, all narcissistic.The what she is is the complete opposite
(54:06):
of narcissistic. She's completely uninvolved inthat way. And what that means to
me is she does not look ina mirror. She doesn't care how she
dresses. The house is always abit of a mess. It's like the
real houses that people live in.There's always laundry that's stacked up because as
have been cleaned yet, and otherlaundry are stacked up because it's been cleaned
(54:29):
but never putt away. You havekids, so there is this low level
about thirty five decibetl sound fields that'sjust always going on. That's mixed with
the sound of a television over here. And to this and to that,
I said, you are at theleast vain person there is. And she
said she just had a child,and so she was carrying I don't know,
(54:51):
ten or fifteen pounds more than shewanted to. And I said,
I'm fine if you don't rush tolose 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 grocerystore, or that was my take.
I said, And maybe maybe ifwe make her real enough and normal enough,
(55:16):
people will give us this one thingshe can dream the future. Because
I thought that's the only way you'regoing to get adults to watch this goddamn
thing if you pretend that she's allknowing and all. I mean, you
know, other shows did it andthey didn't worry about that, and they
(55:37):
were successful, so clearly I'm wrong. But for me to do it,
I needed all that other stuff tobe. 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 Burbankschool of smiling all the time, you
know, you know who had allkinds of behavioral stuff that they would in
(56:00):
because they were kids. And JakeWeber was she got it. She's the
lead singer in the band, andhere I am, and I'm gonna support
her in any way I can.And in many ways it was. First
of all, Patricia has a workethic. She's stir generation actor. It's
(56:21):
the family business, so she hasa work ethic that's fantastic. And even
she would get exasperated with me fromtimes time with the late diligious, but
she was just so talented and wehad the same north star. And I
would say to guest stars, Iwould say, watch Patricia. Her performance
(56:44):
is this big. It's this big, it's so real. So you can't
come in with all this because you'regonna look ridiculous. Watch Patricia. She's
the lead singer in the band.And he you know, and good actors
got it, the instantly got it. I like to brag, so I
(57:07):
will tell you that some of thegood actors we worked with have gone on
to become even bigger actors than whenwe worked with them. We did a
show with a young woman named RileyStone who was amazing, but for some
reason, after doing our show,decided to injure named Mamma. She was
(57:29):
like fantastic, and I wrote oneof these huge monologues for her that she
got the day of, and shejust she was seventeen. I think we
used Jennifer Lawrence twice. I neverused somebody twice, but she was so
good the first time that I lether play young Patricia Arquat in an episode
(57:50):
in another I mean she was anotherone like Patrician, just the three of
them, I remember just being Idid my talent so much. You know,
I love actors, I love makeingstuff. So when you meet somebody
like a Patricia Arcado or Jennifer Lawrenceor an Amaztone or you know, and
(58:14):
I'm not sure Ema or Jennifer wouldeven remember me, but you just go,
oh my goodness, this is justthis is what it's all about.
You know, that's amazing. AndI think while we'd love to keep talking
because that's what we do, Ithink we're we are. You have been
so generous with your time and answeringour questions. I'm so appreciative. So
(58:37):
Moonlighting is now available also on iTunesand Amazon now correct, Yes, it's
on iTunes. There are a coupleof places where you can buy digitally wellku,
I want to say there may beanother one or two. Okay,
but still on Hulu, yes,okay, awesome? And can people?
Do you have a website? Doyou do you have social media? Are
(58:59):
you still on Twitter? I'm stillon Twitter. Yeah, I'm one of
those idiots. Me too, Metoo. One of these days I'll I
guess I'll move over to Instagram orsomething, but that would require effort.
And I actually liked Twitter tool.I love Twitter, I love old Twitter,
and I'm hoping that Twitter will survivesomehow North back. Yeah, me
(59:21):
too. I don't know a lotof strange ideas flying around. And anyway,
thank you for being so generous,and thank you for offering to talk
to me and whatever else. We'lldo it again some tom if I do
anything else worthy of discussion anytime,we would love to have you back if
you're available. So fantastic, Thankyou so much. Likewise, thank you,
(59:43):
thank you now strange just in today'saudioography, we'll have links in the
(01:00:08):
description for this episode to where youcan watch Moonlighting on streaming. Just go
to our website Eightiestvladies dot com.You can find Glenn Gordon Karen on Twitter,
Twitter, dot com, slash Glenng Karen. Thank you for listening
to Eighties TV Ladies. We're goingto do a few more episodes looking at
(01:00:29):
the five seasons of this groundbreaking show, so stay tuned for more moonlighting strangers
that we meet on the way.As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies
brings you joy and laughter and lotsof fabulous new and old shows to watch,
all of which will lead us forwardtoward being amazing ladies of the twenty
(01:00:52):
first century. Thanks for listening.Every stay below live down through the City,
every staybul coping train at Getting wecan Hard for the money, the
band anything,