Ron Cowen

In the fifty-minute solo portion of his interview, Ron Cowen talks about his childhood and early interest in theater, as well as his undergraduate and graduate education. He discusses how his UCLA professor Jerome Lawrence inspired him to begin writing plays and how, when he wrote his first play, Summertree, Lawrence sent it to the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. He shares the significance of the O’Neill in his career, where he met writing partner Daniel Lipman, and how Summertree went on to be produced in New York City and later made into a movie starring Michael Douglas. Cowen shares stories of his solo television writing opportunities, including writing episodes of CBS Playhouse and PBS’ American Short Story. He then talks about his experiences with the Writers Guild, his writing process, and shares advice for aspiring writers and his proudest career achievement. 

In the over-four-hour joint portion of their interview, Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman share the story of how they met, as playwrights, and how they came to be writing partners. They talk about moving to Los Angeles and beginning to write for television, including their first television writing job, on the show Family. They go into detail about their 1985 made-for-television movie An Early Frost, which was groundbreaking for its depiction of a gay character suffering from AIDS. They discuss how the movie came about, their preconditions for writing it, including how the experience of AIDS was to be presented, their run-ins with Standards & Practices at NBC, the research they did in order to write it, and the response to the movie. Cowen and Lipman talk about their made-for-television movie The Love She Sought, starring Angela Lansbury, and their admiration for Lansbury. They then move onto their series Sisters, including how they came to create the series, casting the show, their emphasis on hiring female writers and directors, the writing process on the series and its use of theatrical elements and flashbacks, and some specific storylines. They talk about why Sisters ended and the legacy of the series. They then discuss creating Queer as Folk, which was adapted from a British series of the same name, including the political context of gay rights when they were writing the show, Showtime’s hands off approach to the series, casting (and its challenges), the explicit use of sex in the series and the reasons behind this choice, and the importance of sharing an honest portrayal of the gay community on television. They talk about the response to Queer as Folk from the gay community and others, the depiction of people living with HIV/AIDS on the show, the series’ end and its legacy. Cowen and Lipman conclude by sharing how the industry has changed since they started out and their proudest career achievements as a writing team. Nancy Harrington conducted the interviews in a joint venture with the Writers Guild Foundation on July 22, 2019 in Los Angeles, CA.