Interview with Ron Moore

March 05, 2007

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One of the best things about working at a website devoted to television, is the opportunity to meet the writers of some of your favorite shows. We scored an interview with "Battlestar Galactica" head writer Ron Moore, and he told us all about the future of television, meeting his wife, and working on shows like "Roswell" and "Carnivale."

BrilliantBC: How did you start as a writer? Where was your entry point into writing?

RM: I always wrote when I was a kid growing up. I wrote short stories all through elementary school and I was in a play in high school and I was part of a literary society in college I never considered making it a career. came from a very small town in central California and I thought, you know, “that’s just not a real job , you don’t really do that.” So I thought I was going to be a lawyer and got to college and realized I didn’t want to go to law school. I was on the navy ROTC scholarship and my senior year I flunked out of school and lost the scholarship and so I had to start over. A friend of mine who had graduated the year before came for a visit and he said, “ what are you doing?” and I said “nothing” An he said why don’t you come back to California with me and be a writer because that’s what I’m doing. And I said sure. And I just cashed out my bank account and bought a one -way ticket and started sleeping on his floor for the next few years.

BrilliantBC: What did you watch as a kid?
RM: I watched a lot of TV as a kid .. I mean I grew up in the 70’s and when I was growing up there were the big three networks and then there was the one local channel that did all the strip syndications. So I watched a lot of 1960’s TV in the 70’s that were being scripted. That’s were I came to the original “Star Trek,” which I was obsessed with as a kid. I watched all that stuff: “Lost in Space” and “Get Smart” and any show in the 1960’s that made it into syndication. “The Brady Bunch” to the “Partridge Family” to “Bonanza” to “Gunsmoke.” I watched obsessively. I watched day after day… I watched a lot of tv.

BrilliantBC: You were a writer for one of our favorite brilliant but cancelled shows from HBO: “Carnivale.” WWhat was your part in it?
RM: Daniel Knauf actually created the show. They were looking for a show runner because Dan didn’t want to run the show and initially, I was a consultant of some sort. I was consulting with them for like three days a week because I was writing the Battlestar mini-series at the same time. And then HBO the companies that ran the show asked me to take over. So I did, and guided it through its first season.

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