Ron Moore was interviewed by WIRED.com about his past productions and his current ones, Outlander and Helix. Below are some relevant excerpts, but visit WIRED to read the entire article. LOVE the photo of Ron in front of the Tall Ship Productions office.
You were one of the first showrunners to really interact with fans on the Internet, and now it’s almost a job requirement. Think you’ll do that again?
I’ll probably start doing that on Outlander. Things are different now. Twitter was a little after Battlestar, and when the studio asked me to start doing podcasts, I had never even heard that word. Now everyone does it. I remember what it was to be a fan and wanting to have contact with the people who are doing the work.
Some TV writers worry that the relationship can become too close. You start giving fans what they want instead of what they don’t expect.
I never worried about it back then. Outlander is slightly different in that we’re trying to realize something they already love. We do want to please people who have fallen in love with these books. That said—I said this duringBattlestar—it’s not a democracy. I make the choices I think are the best creatively.
You won’t be keeping tabs on Twitter and Facebook while an episode is airing?
That’s a very skewed perspective, in my opinion. I would go online when Battlestar aired and people were liveblogging, but that’s a very small fraction of the audience, a very specific slice. I feel good about the decisions we make, and Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the books, reads the scripts. We talk, and if Diana thinks what we’re doing is OK, that’s good enough for me.
Source: WIRED, photo by René & Radka
