Quote

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
Working
Cared
Live
Laughed
Mind
Caring
People
Average
Minds
Harder
Early
Audience
Crossed

More quotes by Norman Lear

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Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.
Norman Lear
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Bud [Yorkin] was the kindest and dearest man, and one of the most talented directors there was.
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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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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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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My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.
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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There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.
Norman Lear
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You know, you throw rocks in the lake and scientists will tell you you're raising the level of the lake, but all you get to see is the ripple.
Norman Lear
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We had a Judeo-Christian ethic hanging around a couple thousand years that didn't help erase racism at all. So the notion of the little half-hour comedy changing things is something I think is silly.
Norman Lear
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Success is how you collect your minutes.
Norman Lear
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We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.
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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'All in the Family' took ten weeks to take off in 1971, and we were lucky to start in January, because if it had started in the regular fall season of 1970, I don't know if we would have lasted. The ratings didn't take off until the end of that fall season, when the other two networks ran out of fresh shows.
Norman Lear
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Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.
Norman Lear
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I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.
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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You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
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