Why Norman Lear will not be silenced
Producer puts foot down ... and White House flinches
Everything written about Norman Lear anymore leads with his age, which is impressive, but it’s far from the only thing to talk about, so we’ll talk about it last. It’s a recent Thursday morning, and Lear, whose phenomenal streak as a creator and producer of TV sitcoms in the 1970s included All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, apologizes for dawdling at his breakfast table past 10.
“I was out pretty late,” he says. “1:30 or so.”
First he was off to Burbank, where, as part of a “modern masters” lecture series, he sat for a long Q&A with an audience of young film and TV writers. The event was recorded for his podcast, All of the Above. (Because of course there’s a Norman Lear podcast, and no subject is off limits.)
After that, while the rest of the city slept, Lear stopped at a comedy club on Sunset Boulevard in hopes of finding Dave Chappelle, from whom he needed to ask a favour. He watched three other acts, waiting for Chappelle to go on (“All very funny,” he says) and then went backstage to talk to the comedian. (About what? “We’ll see.”)
Lear will be receiving the Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 3, but the U.S. president and first lady won’t be anywhere near the awards show or any of the weekend’s celebrations.
The man who brought Archie Bunker into the American living room nearly 50 years ago — teaching tens of millions of viewers each week that even the most selfishly hard-headed bigot can eventually be reasoned with or simply loved for who he is — just couldn’t abide the idea of standing in the White House shaking the hand of U.S. President Donald Trump. Days after the Kennedy Center announced this year’s honorees, Lear told reporters he would boycott parts of the event.
“I will not go to this man’s White House,” he says. “I will not go to my White House so long as this man is president.”
In August, after first Lear and then dancer Carmen de Lavallade said they would avoid meeting the president — and their fellow honoree Lionel Richie also started to waffle — the White House said the Trumps would not be participating in any of the events, “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.”
Lear’s politics have always leaned left. He believes we’re all just versions of one another, brothers and sisters together, lucky to live in a land of tolerance and diverse opinions. That’s what his best TV shows were about, at their core. The messy family dynamic is desperately interesting to anybody. It’s how we relate to one another.
Lear isn’t surprised that a sense of outrage and disillusionment has taken over — a Bunker mentality fused with a Meathead stridency, everyone digitally shouting one another into oblivion. He feels disillusioned, too.
But the absence of anger gets to him. “T-A-T!” he says, employing a favourite Yiddish phrase, “Tuchus affen tisch — ass on the table! Tell it like it is … call (Trump) out. Force him out if you can. Go down trying. But you’re not representing me if you’re not doing it.”
That lack of leadership affects the other side, too. “Here comes the alt-right and the neo-Nazis, these young people who are also desperate for leadership. Son of a bitch, I so understand people and their disappointment.”
The years have turned him into a sort of a cross between Warren Buffett (nowhere near as rich, he points out) and George Burns in those Oh, God! comedies.
On Twitter, Lear showed his support for NFL players who took a knee during the national anthem by sharing a photo of himself as a young man in uniform and on one knee in the Second World War. He paired that with a present-day photo of himself on one knee.
And even though there are about 500 scripted dramas and comedies in production for the U.S. TV market, Lear decided a couple of years ago to get back in the game: He’s a producer on the reimagined version of One Day at a Time on Netflix, based in spirit and tone on his 1970s hit. It returns for a second season in January.
The Lear touch is evident on the reboot, which weaves the topical and the familial. Elsewhere, hints of his style are perhaps most noticeable today in single-camera dramedies such as Transparent or Veep, which are at once personal and yet sharply, sometimes caustically, relevant.
He turned 95 in July. On the one hand, it’s an amazing feat (see how fast he climbs the stairs), and on the other hand, big whoop.
“I don’t wake up in the morning to be old,” Lear says. “I wake up to do the things that were on my mind when I fell asleep last night.”