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