Ron Moore and Diana Gabaldon clearly enjoy working together, and it’s not every day that highly successful novelists and producers come to a meeting of the minds.
Fantasy and paranormal writers such as Rick Riordan and Anne Rice have notoriously been less than glowing about some of their adaptations and creative teams. On the other hand, George R. R. Martin seems pretty satisfied with his Game of Thrones showrunners. Hopefully the Gabaldon and Moore “love affair” will continue as the Starz adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander kicks off on August 2.
Hypable was able to sit down with Moore and Gabaldon the day after the series had its red carpet premiere at the Spreckle’s Theatre in downtown San Diego. The theater was filled with close to 1,000 fans who jumped to their feet in a standing ovation when the screening concluded.
Was the premiere and audience reaction what you expected?
Diana Gabaldon (DG): I really expected people to like it. Fortunately, they did. They laughed in the right places, they gasped in the right places, they saw Jamie (who is somewhat hidden at first) and they said “ooh!” and then she (Claire) set his shoulder and they were all like “Ahhhh!” It was a lot of fun to share it with them, and to feel their reactions. They were into it.
Do you feel like there was a lot of pressure on you taking on this story with a massive fan-base?
Ron Moore (RM): There was pressure on all of us. The production felt the responsibility of what we were trying to do. Like Diana, I was trusting that the fans were going to like it, but there is that part of you that isn’t exactly sure how the audience will react. It was very gratifying.
What scenes did you think going in were going to be hard and easy to film, and in the end it turned out the opposite was true.
DG: Oh, he hasn’t filmed it yet. I just broke it to him, and he hasn’t figured out what to do about it yet.
RM: Well the travel through the stones was the one that for a long time I was like “How am I going to do that?” I didn’t want it to be a light show. I didn’t want Claire to just disappear. I had to puzzle that out. I kept going back to the books, and rereading that section. Then what we ended up with filming is the car crash that is mentioned in the book. It was the best way to convey the nuance of being helplessly thrown as the world spins in slow motion. Once I decided to go in that direction, it was relatively easy to film.
DG: I thought that technique was very effective, and very clever.
How has it been going from a basic cable experience to a premium cable experience?
RM: Well there is a lot of freedom to do what you don’t get to do on broadcast TV. With premium cable there are no commercial breaks, so you can just have a solid hour instead of 40 minutes. Content is free and open. There are no standards and practices to have to deal with. They are willing to trust the audience more. You don’t have to lead them by the hand and over-explain everything. They are going to get it. They are smart. It’s great. I like it creatively. It just gives me a chance to do the best version of the show over and over again instead of having to constantly fight to do that only dumbing things down.
The show was shot in Scotland. Was there ever a moment where you thought, “Oh, we’re actually not going to be able to do it there?” Was there a “Plan B” if Scotland didn’t work out?
RM: Not really. In the very early discussions we talked about possibilities of where we wanted to shoot this. Scotland was always number one, and then there was New Zealand, and maybe Eastern Europe and South Africa, because those are on the list of thriving film communities and big tax credits, but there was never any real serious discussion beyond Scotland.
Diana, you had a comment at your panel the other day when you said this was the first time someone adapting your work didn’t want to make you “burst in flames” when you saw their plan. What was your sold moment that made you want to work with this team?
DG: Well partly I was predisposed to like them, because they took the trouble to come out to visit me in my home for two days, and talk through characters and storylines, and backgrounds. Ron was sharing with me what he had in mind for adaptation, and I kept going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” So I was predisposed to think he would do a good job. Secondarily, it was sixteen hours and not two. All previous attempts had been to try to wedge the large novel into a two hour movie and it can’t be done. I have read attempts by very reputable screenwriters, all of which did make me turn white or burst into flame, so the fact that he had enough room to spread his wings also encouraged me quite a bit. Then, he showed me his pilot script and I thought “OK, it flows nice, and he’s shown me a rough outline for a ten episode season.” I thought, “Well given the limitations this looks all right.” It may have just been contrast with what I had seen before, but I don’t think so. I recognize good storytelling when I see it, and Ron is a storyteller.
How did you approach setting in time places that actually existed vs. a fantasy world like a Battlestar?
RM: It was a lot of research. The primary research was already done by Diana in the books. We had that to go to start with. Each department head would do research into their area of expertise. We had our armorer do bladed weapons, edged weapons, to flintlocks and pistols. The costume design the same thing. Each individual design team tried to make it as authentic as they could. We figured out where we could shoot it, what was architecturally true. There are some things that are somewhat anachronistic, but we try to minimize that. There are practical considerations when dealing in historic structures. If it feels true and is off by 10 years, but the vast majority isn’t… it’s small things, like maybe the building we are shooting in was slightly newer than the date, or the window framing style is more recent than what we wanted. You would really have to know and be an expert to spot these things that that particular molding, or that particular window frame was off.
From your Star Trek days what was one of the things that has carried through for you?
RM: Really the most fundamental thing, sitting in writers’ rooms and hashing out story and character. That’s the process that’s the life’s blood of the TV show. All those hours spent with writers arguing and laughing and chewing over the characters, and laying out the cards on the storyboard and shuffling story structure. I learned that in Trek. That’s a skill I use all the way through today.
Have you read all the books? Your wife is a big fan of the series and she introduced you to it.
RM: She has read them multiple times. I’ve done them all once through. And the further into me shooting the current series, the vaguer they become, because I keep having to focus here and now. It’s hard to say which is my favorite, because I’m so focused on the first one now. I think whatever I am currently working on is going to be my favorite.
Diana, what made you choose WWII as the time that Claire’s story originates from?
DG: To start with all I knew was that she was relatively modern by how she spoke. So I was thinking, “If I were a time traveler, what sorts of skills would I want to have?” And I thought, “Well, maybe I’d like to be something in the medical line so I can keep people alive including myself.” Then I thought, “Maybe she’s a doctor? But she can’t be too modern because modern medicine is so technological. She can’t find wounded men on a battlefield and say, ‘if only I had an MRI to put him through!’” I wanted someone who would fall to her knees, fairly rough and ready, with hands-on sorts of skills. So a little more primitive, but in line with the modern mindset as far as medicine went. There are three basic pillars of modern medicine: antisepsis (germ theory), antibiotics, and anesthesia. So I looked back through history and those things were actually discovered in the late 19th century or early 20th, but they came into wide practice during WWII and into modern society thereafter. So I said, “OK that’s where she came from. That’s why she can put someone back together.” I also knew quite a bit about WWII and the women who participated in it, and they were tough ladies. I don’t want some ninny who is going to run around having a fit because there is a privy and not a toilet. She lived rough. She’s not thrown by being hurled into circumstances.
I’m curious about the voiceover. It’s not a very common technique in a series like this.
RM: I think it was a big attraction in that the show is also a single narrative through Claire’s POV. It was natural to use the voiceover because Claire finds herself often without anyone to talk to. We need to see what is in her head. As the series expands into other books there are other POVs.
DG: We have eight POVs in the most recent novel. But the thing to remember is on screen anyone can have a POV, the camera just has to focus on their reaction.
Catch Outlander on the Starz’s website and YouTube channel for free starting August 2. Television airings begin August 9.
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