‘Moonlighting’ Director Puts His Mark on ‘Clean and Sober’

PROF LI GATE: (prafle git) adj. 2. extremely wasteful; recklessly extravagant. n. A profligate person--profligacy. As in--”Moonlighting” creator Glenn Gordon Caron.

Has executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron really spent more money on “Moonlighting” than the Pentagon did on the B-1 bomber?

ABC-TV accountants are still trying to figure out how much Caron’s full-costume “Taming of the Shrew” episode really cost. They can only say it rivaled the time Caron brought in acclaimed director Stanley Donen to handle a lavish 7-minute Billy Joel musical number.

Driven half-mad by weeks of reruns, “Moonlighting” loyalists swear that a new episode isn’t a surprise--it’s an event. Caron often heralded the arrival of fresh material last season by having Allyce Beasley, who plays the show’s ditzy receptionist, Agnes Dipesto, do a promotional spot saying, “After three years on ‘Moonlighting,’ I thought I’d seen everything, but they’ve come up with a new one!”

With this reputation for profligacy, you can imagine how tongues were wagging when Caron turned his energies to film, directing his first movie, “Clean and Sober,” starring Michael Keaton. Could Caron possibly live up to his image?

He did not disappoint.

When Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, questioned Caron’s decision to cast the talented--but obscure--actress Kathy Baker opposite Keaton, Caron brought the co-stars to the studio for a screen test.

How long did it last? If Warners had given him more film, he might still be shooting.

“We shot for 14 hours,” Caron said with a gleeful grin. “We went for the gold! Michael calls it my ‘Apocalypse Now’ screen test. He thought I was crazy. After about eight hours, he called me aside and said, ‘What the (heck) are you doing?’

“But I had to have Kathy. I just saw this tremendous chemistry between the two of them. Michael without Kathy would have been like . . . “--Caron threw his arms in the air--”like Abbott without Costello. Laurel without Hardy!”

And how did the studio react? Caron flashed the impish grin of a Little Leaguer whose towering fly ball had just crashed through a bedroom window down the block. “When we hit 12 hours, the guy from Warners came down to see what the hell was going on.”

Caron bolted out from behind his desk and paced around a corner of the room, parodying the film exec. “He stood off-stage, with his arms crossed, tapping his foot and staring impatiently at everybody. I knew what he was thinking. He was saying, ‘This guy is crazy!’ ”

Caron shrugged. “What can I tell you. I’m profligate. Look it up in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of me.”

The jury is still out on the 34-year-old “Moonlighting” creator who--if nothing else--has earned a comfortable niche in the Prime-Time Hall of Fame for injecting a high-octane blast of sassy irreverence into ‘80s network TV. Still, success has its costs.

Caron is still peeved about the time TV mogul Grant Tinker gave him a public spanking at a New York press conference, calling “Moonlighting” a “disgrace” which should be taken off the air.

Other TV notables, aggravated by or envious of the show’s chaotic work habits, have also blasted away--Caron is also unhappy with shots fired by rival producer Stephen Cannell.

By last fall, it was hard to say whether “Moonlighting” got more ink for its on-screen escapades or its co-stars’ alleged off-screen feuds. “I’d never read the National Enquirer in my life,” Caron said with a weary shrug. “Then suddenly we had to get a subscription to keep up with everything.”

How everyone is getting along is still an open question. When a visitor arrived at Caron’s cluttered office on the Burbank lot, he spotted an issue of Vanity Fair, with Cybill Shepherd on the cover. The office copy had been defaced, with horns and devil-worship symbols drawn on Shepherd’s face.

“I’d like to make it clear,” Caron said politely, turning the magazine face down, “that I had nothing to do with that.”

If you ask “Moonlighting” co-star Bruce Willis, Caron is a delight. “He’s warm, sensitive and he has a big heart,” said Willis, phoning from a Midwest film set. “In fact, I think he’s a genius. I know a lot of people in the industry are appalled by the money we spend--and Glenn certainly hasn’t got a lot of support from ABC. But he’s really good at his work and underneath it all, I think he gets a big kick out of life.”

A shy, genial man who looks more like a chubby certified public accountant than the creator of perhaps the ‘80s’ most adventuresome TV show, Caron is clearly uncomfortable talking about himself--or the huzzarri sparked by his work.

“It’s very bizarre to me,” he said, lighting up a Carlton as he settled behind his desk. “I once turned on the national news and they had a story about ‘Miami Vice’s’ budget! That’s the downside of success--this business of talking about yourself.”

He raised an eyebrow. “For me, the secret of any good puppet show is not seeing the puppeteer.”

Give Caron credit--he goes for the gold. Not everybody would take their first shot at the big screen with “Clean and Sober,” an edgy, downbeat film set in a detox unit which--in a curious scheduling move--is being released during the Hot-Fun summer movie months.

“All I can say is that it’s a plan born of enthusiasm, not skepticism,” explained Caron, who is refreshingly serious about his work, not himself. “The way I look at it, Warners ponied up the money and largely left me alone, so I’m going along with them.”

The script, by Tod Carroll, focuses on an ambitious young real-estate whiz who struggles with self-awareness--and a cocaine and booze habit. Keaton’s character, much like “Moonlighting’s” David Addison, is a favorite Caron type--an obnoxious charmer with what Caron calls “a misplaced gusto for life.”

“I desperately didn’t want this to be a polemic, because who wants to see a polemic,” he said. “I mean, was ‘The Hustler’ a pool movie? I didn’t walk out humming ‘pool’ afterwards.

“To me, this is a movie about a journey--it’s an interior road picture. I wouldn’t have spent two years working on a project that delivers the bulletin that drugs are bad. But it’s unfair for people to come in expecting this to be ‘Rocky,’ either. The triumph here is very incremental--it’s about the little victories you win in life.”

According to Willis, Caron constantly works at avoiding those ‘Rocky’ cliches.

“Glenn has the ability to think in a very non-linear fashion,” Willis said. “So he’s always able to find a new way of saying something. I like him because he knows the language of performance. When you’re looking for the feel of a scene, he can give you the right clues.”

“Moonlighting’s” breakneck pace is reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ and Preston Sturges’ screwball comedies. But Caron, who’s more comfortable quoting John Updike than John Ford, says he’s not an old-movie buff. The films that made the biggest impact on him were brooding, post-Altamont films by Hollywood mavericks like Arthur Penn, Robert Altman and Mike Nichols.

“Those guys, when they were hitting ‘em out of the park, had a real vision,” Caron said. “Listen, I wanted to be Arthur Penn. In the late ‘60s there was this incredible romance about being a film maker. They were like the rock stars of that era.”

Caron chuckled as he lit another Carlton. “My wife still kids me about how, when I got out of college, I got a job as an usher at the Green Acres Theatres in Valley Stream, N. Y. And I was so excited that I sent her a post card saying, ‘Hey, I’m in show business!’ ”

In show business, you take the bouquets with the brickbats. So far the critical reaction to “Sober” has been mixed. Many reviewers praised its performances but panned the film’s 2-hour plus length. Of course, this being a Caron project, it was initially even longer.

“The script was 156 pages long, which I really didn’t think was long, coming from ‘Moonlighting,’ where we shoot 90 pages in barely 45 minutes,” Caron said.

He realized his 145-minute cut needed trimming, especially after showing it to a pivotal viewer--Warners Chairman Bob Daley. “When he first saw it, he got up and told me, ‘I love this movie. But it’s too long and I gotta go to the bathroom!’ ”

In TV, you don’t have such a captive audience--and Caron admits that “Moonlighting” was a disappointment last year, for its creators as well as its fans.

“I think everyone is aware that the show lost a little of its shimmer,” he acknowledged, flopping down on the office carpet. “I’ve had to confront the fact that I can’t make 22 shows in a year. The fatigue showed. You’re making half a movie every 10 days. And when you’re done, you have to do another one--you can’t even take a bow! At some point, your mind, your body--your will-- starts to break down. And everybody’s lives change--Bruce’s, Cybill’s and mine.”

By Caron’s account, Cybill’s life change--her much-publicized pregnancy--wreaked the most havoc with the show. “She had a very difficult pregnancy and we had to shoot all of her material in one month’s time--and without Bruce,” he explained. “We had to plan eight months of TV, all in advance. Suddenly we became exactly the thing we didn’t want to become--a soap opera. We’d always wanted to surprise everybody--you can think of something on Friday, shoot it that night and get it on the air Tuesday. Instead, it was like we’d turned into ‘Dallas.’ ”

Caron seems aware that even the most satisfying TV shows have a very ephemeral relationship with their audiences--and once that bond is severed, it is difficult to restore.

“We didn’t hold up our end last year. But I still have the excitement for it--and I think Bruce does too. He called the other day to say, ‘Let’s get out there and kick some (butt)!’ ”

Caron refused to criticize Shepherd, but when asked to characterize his relations with her, he fell silent--very silent. Finally, he said: “It’s fair to say that I don’t feel as close to her as I do to Bruce. With Cybill . . .” He groped for an explanation.

“Unfortunately, I’m cast in the role of boss, so I’m the one who has to say now it’s time to go to work. We put a real burden on the actors and everyone responds differently. When you say ‘Go for it,’ some people say ‘Yeah!’ And other people say, ‘Why?’ ”

Shepherd’s publicist said she was shooting a film here and was unavailable for comment.

For now, Caron is just happy to use a few “different muscles” making a movie. “Listen, even if it’s a failure, I’ll feel I did my best,” he said. “But if no one goes to see the film, there’ll be a very depressed fat kid running around Southern California.”

Caron quickly shook off that forlorn image. “Hey, it’s worked this far. I’ll just have to hope that I can fool someone else into letting me make another one!”