Search - Moonlighting: The Pilot on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1985 DVD Release: 01/25/2000 Format: DVD Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 33 mins Studio: Anchor Bay Members Wishing: 4 Genres: Mystery, Comedy Thriller, Detective Film

First telecast in early 1985, the 2-hour pilot film for the lighthearted TV detective series Moonlighting opens with fashion model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepard) discovering that her business manager has skipped with her fortune. The only asset she has left is the ramshackle Blue Moon Detective Agency, manned by acerbic David Addison (Bruce Willis). Maddie takes an immediate dislike to David, while he considers her a sexual conquest-to-be. The twosome continues to bicker their way through their first case, pausing for amenities only when it appears that both of them are about to be bumped off. Once safely back in the office, their verbal guerilla warfare resumes, leading the viewer to expect marvelous things from the subsequent Moonlighting TV series. Little of the series' fabled self-consciousness (talking directly to the audience, making references to the quality of the scriptwriting, etc.) surfaces in the Moonlighting pilot, but the film works well despite this "drawback." The series itself ran (or, as it turned out, limped) until May of 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cybill Shepherd - Madelyn "Maddie" Hayes
Bruce Willis - David Addison
Allyce Beasley - Agnes DiPesto
Robert Ellenstein - Heinz
Jim McKrell - Alan

Every DVD should only offer the joys and surprises found on =Moonlighting: The Pilot. Moonlighting was special in its own time, as one of the most critically and popularly well-received network television series of the mid-'80s, and one of the most frustrating. Just at the point when the public was most interested in the program, a combination of production problems and difficulties with the scripts and the stars helped reduce the number of new shows to a trickle, and some of those were bizarre (starring the supporting players). But when it worked, Moonlighting worked magnificently, capturing very much the spirit of what Cybill Shepherd felt was its inspiration, Howard Hawks' 1940 romantic comedy-thriller His Girl Friday. The pilot may not have been the best episode -- the plot, dealing with a hunt for a cache of diamonds stolen by the Nazis, parallels that of Marathon Man, only with the usual '70s/'80s television detective show conventions (and one good chase scene, involving two men in glass-enclosed elevators) -- but it was the place to start, and it was different. The major point of departure was Bruce Willis. His brash mix of working-class cockiness and a sense of class, coupled with an outrageous sense of humor of a kind seldom paraded in an action vehicle, was a breath of fresh air in popular culture at the time.

The film-to-video transfer on the DVD is impeccable, giving viewers a better look at the episode than anyone working on it ever believed possible in 1985. The real bonus here, beyond the fun of the program, is the accompanying narration by Bruce Willis and the show's creator Glenn Gordon Caron, and the inclusion of 15 minutes of screen tests -- that of Willis and also of an unsuccessful candidate for the role of David Addison, Harley Venton, both done with a very attractive stand-in leading lady named Mary-Margaret Hume. Venton was more conventionally good looking and had a straighter, more subdued take on the role; he was apparently more what ABC had in mind, but had he gotten the role, his and Shepherd's character never could have struck the sparks that Willis ultimately did. Willis and Caron's narration is fascinating because they sound like mirror images of each other; Caron never says it outright, but one gets a sense that he spotted something in Willis' reading for the part that triggered a sense of interior identification, as though Willis the actor could project what Caron knew he wanted in the role, beyond the writing. Their narration is a lesson in television history from the standpoint of acting, directing, and writing, as well as a celebration of the series that followed. Throughout the narration, the actor and the producer recall the rules that the series broke, often to its benefit. Unlike the inflated accounts given on these tracks by certain directors, so much of the commentary is refreshingly self-deprecating -- as when Caron proudly admits that he begged Willis not to sign to do Die Hard during a shut-down because of Shepherd's pregnancy, thinking it would kill his career. One also learns how much successful television can be the result of happenstance -- if success in the field of invention, as Edison said, was "one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," then it seems to arise out of the same mix in certain kinds of television. Even the Al Jarreau theme song, one of his biggest selling records, was a result of one of his earlier songs being tracked temporarily into the pilot to show composer Lee Holdridge what the producer wanted; they ended up getting a new song from Jarreau. Willis also makes a very telling comment about the violence of action-adventure entertainment in the years since Moonlighting, admitting that reruns of the series are some of the few examples of his work that his children can watch.

The DVD is well assembled, with a simple, straightforward menu that even includes the option of listening to Willis and Caron over the screen tests. One wishes there were some promo spots for the show, and all of the discussion between the star and the producer about details of subsequent shows makes one wish that a "Best of Moonlighting" DVD series could follow. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide