When we went on the air, I didn’t want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain. Norman Lear Read Quote
I guess because the shows were activist in their own way – the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know – people understand me very well. They also understand there’s a very strong bipartisan part in all of this. Norman Lear Read Quote
Life goes on pretty much the same way. I’ve been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show. Norman Lear Read Quote
There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end. Norman Lear Read Quote
The American people may not be the best-educated, but they’re very wise at heart. Norman Lear Read Quote
That’s the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people. Norman Lear Read Quote
But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that’s not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met. Norman Lear Read Quote
But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They’re all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives. Norman Lear Read Quote
In the area we’re discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings. Norman Lear Read Quote
Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make. Norman Lear Read Quote
