Date Published: 6/1/2021
Publisher: The Fayetteville Mafia Press
Once upon a time ABC-TV’s Moonlighting was among the most buzzed-about shows in the country, thanks largely to the bravado of creator Glenn Gordon Caron, who never met a television convention he didn’t want to break, and the sizzling on-screen chemistry between glamorous erstwhile film star Cybill Shepherd and a New Jersey bartender nobody had ever heard of before named Bruce Willis, who bickered and flirted ceaselessly on screen and engaged in epic off-screen battles that all these years later remain the stuff of Hollywood legend. This combustible blend of creative brilliance produced some of the most acclaimed, audacious, and innovative programming of the eighties, including a black and white tribute to film noir, with an introduction by Orson Welles; a parody of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, written in iambic pentameter; an homage to The Honeymooners; and countless metafictive episodes breaking through the fourth wall — almost unheard of at the time for hourlong comedy-dramas. Without a doubt, Moonlighting helped pave the way for the era of prestige television we are now all enjoying.
The real story of this pioneering television series and the extraordinary behind-the-scenes challenges, battles, and rewards has never been told — until now. Author Scott Ryan (The Last Days of Letterman, thirtysomething at thirty: an oral history, The Blue Rose, Scott Luck Stories) interviews over twenty people, including the actors, writers, directors, and producers who made Moonlighting such a dynamic, unforgettable show, delving deep into their thoughts and feelings as they relive this magical moment in pop culture history in this full color oral history.
Excerpt:
What happened next? Well, that is
the question this book asks. How
did a show that was hotter than the
Rubik’s Cube or “Baby on Board”
signs get canceled less than two
years and twenty-eight episodes after
airing its most-watched episode? The
media dubbed it the “Moonlighting
Curse.” The conventional wisdom
became that if two main characters
from a series got together, the show
died. It happened on Moonlighting,
so therefore it will happen on The X-Files or
Felicity. This is why Castle,
Bones, Friends, Downton
Abbey, and every show since 1987 delayed,
at all
logical costs, their main characters
getting together. But was this really
the cause of the cancellation? I
wanted to solve this mystery more than
knowing
who was the real killer in the Flamingo Cove murder.
Moonlighting: An Oral History is a look at the series through the words
of the people who created it, how
the series was shaped and cared for
and how it finally slipped away from
the hearts and minds of the same
American audiences who once had
catapulted it to the top. I also had no
interest in covering gossip or
tawdry tales, so readers will have to look
elsewhere for those stories. My
interest was to find out how a massively
successful series could have so many
production problems that, as Bill
Carter of The New York Times reported,
it “used more reruns during its
four years on the air than any other
series.”10 Why?
Can the Anselmo case
finally
be solved? Find out on tonight’s all new episode of Moonlighting.
Contact Links
Purchase Link
a Rafflecopter giveaway
No comments:
Post a Comment