Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. My guest, the legendary TV
Speaker 1: producer his new memoirs called even This I get to experience.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the program. Norman Lear. Norman Norman Lear.
Speaker 2: Yes, what a night, What a night to me?
Speaker 1: Listen, look at this book here, even this, I get
Speaker 1: the experience. I want to thank you for raising me.
Speaker 2: I want, I want to thank you for making this.
Speaker 2: This last piece was no wonder. My wife and I
Speaker 2: go to bed with you every night, really.
Speaker 1: Every My ears are Bernie. How First of all, you
Speaker 1: kids today have everything at their fingertips. They can download things,
Speaker 1: they have it, they have, they can watch things when
Speaker 1: they want, all in the family, Maud, the Jefferson's. This
Speaker 1: was appointment television. I can remember as a kid, the
Speaker 1: anticipation and excitement when your shows were going to be
Speaker 1: coming on. You owned television back then.
Speaker 2: I was working as hard as you work today. No, truly,
Speaker 2: that's what we were doing. We were all working our
Speaker 2: asses off to make the best television we thought we could.
Speaker 2: The difference was that we were all serious people. Comedy
Speaker 2: was our business. You're a very serious man. That was
Speaker 2: a very serious, hilarious people.
Speaker 1: It's very kind sir. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: But that's where.
Speaker 1: I think where I think I learned how to process
Speaker 1: complex thoughts, things that I really cared about through the
Speaker 1: lens of comedy was watching Norman Lear shows, because that's
Speaker 1: and at that time it was astonishing. I mean, at
Speaker 1: that time it was the Banana Splits and the Hudson
Speaker 1: Brothers and then all of a sudden, Archie Bunker comes
Speaker 1: on the scene and all in the Family and all
Speaker 1: of these issues underlying the American culture.
Speaker 2: Well, what could make me prouder than to have sat
Speaker 2: through those last few I'm saff to repeat it again.
Speaker 2: That was so brilliant.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you so when you but you struggled though
Speaker 1: for a while, right, like, all right, a lot of yours, right,
Speaker 1: tell me about that. What was in your mind? Did
Speaker 1: you think I'm going the wrong direction here? Did you
Speaker 1: think people don't want to hear these types of issues
Speaker 1: through a narrative?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: The first big break Ed Simmons and I had was
Speaker 2: the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Kogate Comedy Hour. Well
Speaker 2: on the Kogate Comedy Hour it debuted. After the show,
Speaker 2: I was having dinner with my agent and his wife,
Speaker 2: and I was crying because Jerry Lewis had destroyed the scene.
Speaker 2: I thought that we had written for him because he
Speaker 2: didn't pay attention to the or he did pay attention
Speaker 2: to the script, but he left the script often. Now
Speaker 2: we wrote a scene that had some meaning for us,
Speaker 2: and that's why I was crying. But he delivered the
Speaker 2: scene so well that they had to apologize to the
Speaker 2: motion picture industry because this was a scene about television
Speaker 2: destroying the motion picture industry, and they made a public apology.
Speaker 2: Really yes, at the insistence of the motion picture industry.
Speaker 2: And our scene had scored. So there was something on
Speaker 2: our minds at the very first beginning, at the very first.
Speaker 1: My career is that something. So you went into this
Speaker 1: very consciously deciding that you weren't just going to write
Speaker 1: any kind of comedy, you were going to write social comedy.
Speaker 2: You might didn't go into it with that, because that
Speaker 2: would have assumed I had some conscious of forth.
Speaker 1: I get it all right, fair enough, fair enough. First
Speaker 1: night All in the Family comes on. This is groundbreaking television.
Speaker 1: What was your expectation of what would happen when this
Speaker 1: Archie Bunker character, this plane spoken lovable bigot gets into
Speaker 1: American television living rooms. What was the network worried about?
Speaker 1: What were you worried about?
Speaker 2: Well, the network goes worried about. It was twenty minutes
Speaker 2: before the show went on the air in New York
Speaker 2: when I got a call that they were putting the
Speaker 2: show on the air because there was one line that
Speaker 2: they wished out. The Bunkers are returning from church because
Speaker 2: he hated the sermon and he hated the pastor. And
Speaker 2: the kids have the house alone, Mike and Gloria, and
Speaker 2: they're going upstairs. They come in and interrupt that, and
Speaker 2: Archie says, he gets what's happening. The meaning of what's happening?
Speaker 2: He says, eleven ten on a Sunday morning, that was it?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that had to come out. Now. When I
Speaker 2: said why, they said, it makes it very explicit. It
Speaker 2: makes it very eleven ten on a Sunday morning. That
Speaker 2: nails what there happened. I said, well, let that be.
Speaker 2: How about the fact that they're married, they're going upstairs.
Speaker 2: They're married, Yes, what's the problem?
Speaker 1: Married people are allowed to have sex in the morning.
Speaker 2: I think so it's sometimes it's good for them anyway.
Speaker 2: They insisted that that come out. Now it sounds I
Speaker 2: don't mean it as a tribute to bravery at all.
Speaker 2: I had the common sense to understand if that little thing,
Speaker 2: if I give up on that little thing, I was
Speaker 2: dead from there on then, no matter what crazy silly thing.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was just playing silly. I also
Speaker 2: had a three picture deal offered to me by the
Speaker 2: United Artists.
Speaker 1: So you had a little something in there, You had
Speaker 1: a little fall back. Yeah, I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about within all this, you become an icon for
Speaker 1: the free speech movement, this idea of So in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, you produce this special I am I love liberty.
Speaker 2: I love liberty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stars from all around Hollywood are going to all
Speaker 1: gather two hours of network television.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Jane fonded a Barry Goldwater.
Speaker 2: Both on the same stage. Jane find at that time
Speaker 2: was known as Hanoid Yeah, Hanoid Jane, and gold Order
Speaker 2: was running about to run for the presidency of the
Speaker 2: United States and the Republican ticket. Also. The producers of
Speaker 2: the show were Gerald Ford former present and Lady Bird
Speaker 2: Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson And it was a thrill
Speaker 2: to be doing a show that was about America and
Speaker 2: about the treasures of those documents, the Bill of Wrights,
Speaker 2: the Declaration of Independence, Constitution. I mean, we were taking
Speaker 2: it all very seriously.
Speaker 1: How did you get you know, could a show like
Speaker 1: that happen in this environment? Is this environment more divisive
Speaker 1: than the environment that you progess that show in? And
Speaker 1: could you get a show like All the Family on
Speaker 1: the air today?
Speaker 2: I'm told by guys and gals that are not some
Speaker 2: girls that are running shows that no, it couldn't get
Speaker 2: on the air today. And yet I think there are
Speaker 2: some glorious it's on the air today that are dealing
Speaker 2: with subjects that are unbelievably difficult. But they tell me
Speaker 2: the answer to the question that when I ask you
Speaker 2: is now.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because even that the story that you tell
Speaker 1: about the network is complaining that he's saying it's eleven
Speaker 1: ten on a Sunday morning. You know the explicit nature
Speaker 1: of what we see on television today in terms of
Speaker 1: sex and violence. But it's interesting to me that ideas
Speaker 1: are still forbidden to some extent.
Speaker 2: I think I've nailed it, and certainly context is forbidden.
Speaker 2: There is no context when we get our news. It's
Speaker 2: bumperstickers and people yelling at each other the talk shows, right,
Speaker 2: but there is no context. America doesn't have the opportunity.
Speaker 2: I often think we're a country. I think it's in
Speaker 2: print these words that that depends on an informed citizen ry,
Speaker 2: and that would suggest that the establishment everywhere, whether it's media, journalism,
Speaker 2: pharmacceutical American leadership would help people understand what it means.
Speaker 2: But we get none of that help now.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because it's almost the antithicis it's almost
Speaker 1: as if they actively work to uninform.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You see, even with some corporations and things, people will say, well,
Speaker 1: why can't we put the ingredients on the label? What
Speaker 1: you can't require that you can't. We don't have to
Speaker 1: tell you what we're putting into your food. We don't
Speaker 1: have to tell you what's going into the ground. You know,
Speaker 1: there's that. I think there's a.
Speaker 2: Law that are going into the ground are.
Speaker 1: Going in right exactly. But I think they just passed
Speaker 1: one now that that companies that give chemicals that are
Speaker 1: used on death row don't have to they can be
Speaker 1: shielded from the idea that they use that. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: interesting little things like that where it's almost like they're
Speaker 1: actively keeping people from knowing what's up, don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that if you know what's up, maybe you're
Speaker 2: not going to deal with this substance, right, or maybe
Speaker 2: you're going to train. If you know what's up, you're
Speaker 2: not going to stand for the government the way the
Speaker 2: government is working right, or the way the government isn't
Speaker 2: working right.
Speaker 1: What was it like to ride the wave of controversy
Speaker 1: back then, because you weren't in that same type of
Speaker 1: media environment that twenty four hours where if you do
Speaker 1: something controversial, man, it's just picked apart for a week
Speaker 1: or so. Did you feel the weight of the controversy
Speaker 1: did you feel that on your shoulders?
Speaker 2: We were working I mean, truly, we were just working hard.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel that on my shoulders, right. It wasn't
Speaker 2: that long after what's his face called us my generation,
Speaker 2: the greatest generation broke off. Broke Tom broke on that
Speaker 2: that that I did.
Speaker 1: It was like a bad game of password, but greatest
Speaker 1: Generation broke off.
Speaker 2: Well, I had to do something to prove my anyway.
Speaker 1: Exactly by the way to be a gentleman, though, Do
Speaker 1: people think they know how old you are because it's
Speaker 1: we're not going to tell them, all right, We're not.
Speaker 2: Telling them to tell the thirty eight forty two.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: So yeah, brocaw So he called us the greatest generation. Now,
Speaker 2: I fought in World War Two. We won World War Two.
Speaker 2: There was no reason to believe America was going to
Speaker 2: win World War two, if there were any if there
Speaker 2: were people sitting around watching the access powers and where
Speaker 2: we were at the time. But this country came together
Speaker 2: and miraculously we pulled it together and we won that four.
Speaker 2: Then we were good enough to do the Marshall plan,
Speaker 2: get your help, get your back on its feet again,
Speaker 2: and we were splendid. We were really terrific. But we
Speaker 2: began to believe our own publicity, I think, and and
Speaker 2: we reached the place not all that long afterwards, where
Speaker 2: we looked ourselves in the mirror and didn't see ourselves
Speaker 2: accurately at all, as just a group of human beings
Speaker 2: that got it right, you know. And today I think
Speaker 2: we suffer from that. We suffer from the platitudinous.
Speaker 1: You know, the.
Speaker 2: Mythology, the mythology of the flag pin. That's what it
Speaker 2: means to be in America, and that's not what it
Speaker 2: means to be an American, right, What it means to
Speaker 2: be an American is being able to criticize what you
Speaker 2: feel is wrong from whatever perspective, left or right, which
Speaker 2: is what that last piece that before I got knocked
Speaker 2: me out on that level just knock me out.
Speaker 1: Well, I just I can't tell you how excited we
Speaker 1: are to have you here, and what a treat it's
Speaker 1: been for us. And you're a good, good man who
Speaker 1: made great, great television. Did you see it?
Speaker 2: Normally?
Speaker 3: Even as I get experiences on the bookseels Now.
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