Glenn Gordon Caron

Glenn Gordon Caron was interviewed for three hours plus in Manhattan Beach, CA on the set of the show Medium.  Caron talked about his first jobs including his work at an ad agency where he learned to write on a deadline.  He talked about writing his first teleplay, for Taxi, and a number of the series for which he served as story editor in the early 1980s, including Remington Steele.  He described the creation of his own production company, Picturemaker Productions, and the exclusive deal he had with ABC.  He listed the pilots that he wrote and produced under the company’s banner, that included Moonlighting.  He talked about the casting of Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis for this pilot and enlisting director Robert Butler, whose work he admired.  He spoke in great detail about the resulting Moonlighting series, for which he discussed the music, the overlapping dialogue sequences, and the series notorious production difficulties.  He described several of the shows most creative and noteworthy episodes such as “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” (a black-and-white episode that featured an introduction by Orson Welles), “Atomic Shakespeare” (a retelling of “The Taming of the Shrew”), and “The Straight Poop” (a behind-the-scenes mockumentary of the show with interviewer Rona Barrett).  Caron then briefly chronicled his work in feature films and on the short-lived series Now and Again and the unaired series Fling.  Lastly, he discussed the production of the series Medium: the show’s basis on a real-life medium, the casting, the importance of creating a realistic home life for the lead characters, and the season two episode that was broadcast in 3-D.  The interview was conducted by Gary Rutkowski on September 19, 2007.