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It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.

Norman Lear

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Norman Lear
Age: 102
Born: 1922
Born: July 27
Actor
Businessperson
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Showrunner
Television Producer
Television Writer
New Haven
Connecticut
Norman Milton Lear
People
Average
Minds
Harder
Early
Audience
Crossed
Working
Cared
Live
Laughed
Mind
Caring

More quotes by Norman Lear

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I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.
Norman Lear
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Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.
Norman Lear
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Maybe they continued to agree with Archie Bunker - as I said earlier, you can't change people's minds, but you can get them to think.
Norman Lear
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The evidence seems clear that those business which actively serve their many constitutencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also, over the long run, serve their shareholders best. Companies do, infact, do well by doing good.
Norman Lear
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I get a kick out of the fact that people will pick on the writers in California for being responsible for the content. The people seriously responsible for the content are the people who buy it.
Norman Lear
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I got a call from an agent to come to New York City, and write for the 'Ford Star Revue.' Because at the time there wasn't much 'national television'.
Norman Lear
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The complete control of one party over everything - I would, I think, feel the same way if it were [the Democrats in charge]. It's not the American way.
Norman Lear
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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
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We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.
Norman Lear
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I think for television generally, the question that often arises is, Does television lead, or does it follow? You know, does it lead the conversation, or culture, or does it follow what's going on? And I think it does both.
Norman Lear
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My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.
Norman Lear
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I think what's dangerous is 24 hours a day, 335 channels, or whatever the hell there is. Too much is too much.
Norman Lear
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The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.
Norman Lear
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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
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I think somehow I got a sense of the foolishness of the human - my favorite phrase, the foolishness of the human condition.
Norman Lear
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If there was a sense of - a bigger sense of responsibility in the various leadership positions in America, things would be not as grotesquely overly done as they are now.
Norman Lear
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Culturally, I think 'All in the Family' was universal enough to have good timing at any time.
Norman Lear
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We mocked that concept ['movies are better than ever'] by doing a sketch that was about a theater trying to get one customer to come in...and that customer was Jerry Lewis. It generated so much controversy that Dean [Martin] and Jerry [Lewis] had to apologize in a full page ad in Variety.
Norman Lear
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I guess the story that best defines us [with Bud Yorkin] and our relationship goes back to the [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis show. The four stage managers on that show became major TV creators and directors - John Rich, Jack Smight, Arthur Penn and Bud Yorkin.
Norman Lear
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The movies had a slogan at the time, to distinguish themselves from TV, that said 'movies are better than ever.'
Norman Lear