LEAR’S GOOD TIMES AT EMERSON
When you’re a television legend like Norman Lear, you get a massive statue made in your likeness and placed in downtown Boston. Emerson College, his alma mater, did just that yesterday, celebrating the father of hit sit-coms for his neverending career.
“Of all the times they’ve unveiled statues of me, this is my favorite,” Lear jokingly told the crowd gathered in front of the piece, made by artists Peter Schifrin and David Duskin and donated by famed producer/director Kevin Bright. The statue is in Boylston Place alley on the campus.
“I wish I could call my mother to tell her about this and invite her to come to Boston,” he continued, adding that her response might resemble what she said when he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame alongside William Paley, David Sarnoff, Paddy Chayefsky, Edward R. Murrow, Lucille Ball and Milton Berle in 1984: “Listen, if that’s what they want to do, who am I to say?”
Lear — whose long list of credits includes “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Maude” — is still in the TV game at the ripe age of 96. He told the Track that he just wrapped 13 episodes for the third season of Netflix’s “One Day at a Time,” which will be available in February. And he did tease that he’s mulling over an animated series, inspired by his favorite shows on TV today.
“I’m not a big television viewer. I don’t see that much,” Lear told me, adding that he makes an exception for “South Park.” “I love those guys. I love what they do. And Seth MacFarlane, all his shows. I watch them anytime I can, which is rare.
“With Brent Miller, my young executive partner, we may be doing an animated show,” he continued. “The man of the house would be about 11, 12, 13-year-old kid who has two siblings who are much younger and a mother who has to work her (expletive) off to keep a roof over their heads.
“It’s all about family and the human condition — the foolishness of the human condition.”