“This is, flat out, one of the best Hollywood memoirs ever written… An absolute treasure,” raves Booklist in a starred review of Norman Lear’s memoir, Even This I Get to Experience.
The creator of such iconic and unprecedented hit shows as “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” Lear reinvented television comedy in the ‘70s. At one point, he had nine shows on the air, and at their peak, his programs were watched by 120 million people a week.
Now, Lear is telling his story, from his Depression-era days growing up with a dad sent to jail for scheming to sell fake bonds, to becoming the highest-paid comedy writer in the country, working for Danny Thomas, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Martha Raye, and George Gobel. A member of a B-17 bomber crew in WWII, Lear made it onto Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” and was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President Clinton.
Dave Itzkoff, writing about Even This I Get to Experience in the New York Times, cites Lear’s influence on Roseanne Barr, Rob Reiner, and Trey Parker. Itzkoff quotes Parker, creator and producer of “South Park” with Matt Stone, as saying that Lear’s work “had an immeasurable impact on that show and its satirical, scared-cow-slaughtering sensibility.”
Now, in his book out today from Penguin Press, we all can read of the events and people that had an immeasurable impact on Norman Lear, and shaped his sensibility.
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Buster Keaton was a master at physical comedy but I felt sadness that he was still at the same antics so many years after have made his claim to fame. He could have progressed into another acting form or retired from the acting. I hope that I will continue to evolve in the art that I do so that I do not become static. There is no doubt he was a dynamic man until his later years when physical comedy is stressing even to young healthy guy, I just think he could have dedicated his time into cooking up something else than the proverbial gag or comical feat that he was known for all over the world.
There are others who don’t change their art form and ride on the coattails of an earlier success. Physical comedy takes precise timing something that Jerry Lewis used to incorporate in his movie the errand boy. The antics of him putting up a billboard poster when he would fall over himself was his mark, he was the clumsy poster boy and also clumsy on the Hollywood set he got himself into. But after many years Jerry has had some guest appearances and largely taken up his time with fund raising. Recently I saw him chewing on a pencil as a guest on a talk show, and although I remember him doing something similar years ago, it was funny then. I thought he could have done something more fitting with the times. I don’t think he got much of a laugh from the audience on that count. Maybe it was a question of timing or the gag was out of place.
So physical comedy is somehow ageless. Keaton did a comical sketch of a trip across Canada in his later years on in Canadian National emergency train car. He did not have to move around as much by being limited to a small space so one could not see that he did not have he same energy he had when he was in his prime. Then he would be climbing engine cars and going from one car to the next while it was in motion in an escape scene.
Today there are artists who emulate Keaton, Lewis and the others and are making short films for the web and short film festivals. I wish them well in their endeavor to keep this art form alive; the gag in itself will never age.
Buster Keaton was a master at physical comedy but I felt sadness that he was still at the same antics so many years after have made his claim to fame. He could have progressed into another acting form or retired from the acting. I hope that I will continue to evolve in the art that I do so that I do not become static. There is no doubt he was a dynamic man until his later years when physical comedy is stressing even to young healthy guy, I just think he could have dedicated his time into cooking up something else than the proverbial gag or comical feat that he was known for all over the world.
There are others who don’t change their art form and ride on the coattails of an earlier success. Physical comedy takes precise timing something that Jerry Lewis used to incorporate in his movie “The Errand Boy.” The antics of him putting up a billboard poster when he would fall over himself was his mark, he was the clumsy poster boy and also clumsy on the Hollywood set he got himself into. But after many years Jerry has had some guest appearances and largely taken up his time with fund raising. Recently I saw him chewing on a pencil as a guest on a talk show, and although I remember him doing something similar years ago, it was funnier then. I thought he could have done something more fitting with the times. I don’t think he got much of a laugh from the audience on that count. Maybe it was a question of timing or the gag was out of place.
So physical comedy is somehow ageless yet the actor’s physicality peaks in his younger years. Keaton did a comical sketch of a trip across Canada in his later years on in Canadian National emergency train car. He did not have to move around as much by being limited to a small space so one could not see that he did not have he same energy he had when he was in his prime. Then he would be climbing engine cars and going from one car to the next while it was in motion in an escape scene.
Today there are artists who emulate Keaton, Lewis and the others and are making short films for the web and short film festivals. I wish them well in their endeavor to keep this art form alive; the gag in itself will never age.
