Living Legends: A Salute to Norman Lear

Carl Reiner famously said, "If you're not in the obit, eat breakfast," a statement that was so resonant, it became the title of Danny Gold's 2017 documentary about nonagenarians. They included Reiner's longtime friends Mel Brooks and Norman Lear, both of whom have continued to entertain and enlighten the world well into their nineties. In light of Reiner's recent passing at age 98, I've decided that I'd like to start celebrating some of these icons while they're still here to read our appreciations over breakfast. There are so many other living legends I'd like to honor: Cicely Tyson, Betty White, Sidney Poitier, Norman Jewison and Harry Belafonte, to name a few. I wrote a private letter to Norman, but I wanted to do more because he is such a bright light in the world. 

The following table of contents is a tribute to Norman Lear, the 98-year-old creator of "All in the Family," whom I had the great honor of inviting to Ebertfest in 2017 and awarding the very first Ebert Humanitarian award given to an individual. I have admired him for his career-long efforts at bringing diversity and enlightenment into the entertainment sphere. He continues to honor us with his compassion and moral compass on equality and the human condition, not as a response to outside forces, but as a response to his inner decency and sense of right and wrong. He has done so much in his career that it was difficult to distill the tributes down to a few, but this is a start.—Chaz Ebert

1.  

"Ebertfest 2017: 'Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You' and 'They Call Us Monsters'": This dispatch features reviews of two selections from Ebertfest 2017, where we welcomed Norman Lear, subject of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You" (reviewed by Matt Zoller Seitz) and Norman's son, Ben Lear, who directed the documentary "They Call Us Monsters" (reviewed by Matt Fagerholm).

“Their camera moves in close on Lear as he talks about his successes and controversies in American television, his collaborations with writers and actors, and his battles with network executives and censors over the political content of his shows, which resembled political debates as often as they did farcical family spats. The moviemakers shoot some of Lear’s friends and collaborators, including ‘All in the Family’ co-star and future feature director Rob Reiner and ‘Good Times’ star John Amos, with just as much affection. All the images of deeply lined faces would be powerful on their own, but when they’re juxtaposed with shots of their younger selves—often being projected on a large screen while the older versions watch—the effect is magical: cinema as time machine. At various points they are all watching what amounts to the movie of their lives. The longest one is about Lear, who trips back through his own past with the filmmakers’ guidance, riffing on memories, telling stories and tearing up at the sight of old friends who died a long time ago. The most touching sequences feature ‘All in the Family’ star Carroll O’Connor, who played the bigoted working-class Irish-American Archie Bunker. Lear acknowledges that Archie is a version of his own father, and weeps while viewing the memorable episode where Archie describes his dad, a bigot who beat his values into his son, as a great man and a loving parent.”

2. 

"Living with Our Common Humanity: A Few Words with Norman Lear": In conversation with Susan Wloszczyna.

“[Wloszczyna:] ‘You say you can see comedy in everything in the documentary. Can you see it now given recent events such as the mass killings and what is going on with the presidential campaign? Many people I know got depressed after the Orlando nightclub shooting.’ [Lear: ] ‘I did, too. Isn’t it interesting that the fellow commenting on that who has the loudest words at the moment is the biggest fool of the century?  And is running for the presidency now. Don’t think for a second I don’t appreciate how serious it is. I can’t look at a small child and not think, ‘My God.’ Just take climate change. It’s not hard to imagine there have been 500 or 5,000 other civilizations like ours that disappeared.’ [Wloszczyna: ] ‘But how do we laugh? How do we keep our sense of humor?’ [Lear:] ‘I find the foolishness of the human condition continually amusing no matter what’s going on. Think of the fucking joke of jokes. He is a terrible joke but he is a joke. As I say this, it’s unimaginable that this fool, this asshole—I have to go to that language because there are no other words. Imagine he steps off the plane in Scotland and says the things he has been saying. The sad thing is, he represents all the Paul Ryan people and they allow it. George Will left the party today. I have so much respect for him.’”

3.

"Cold Turkey": Back in 1971, Roger awarded four stars to Lear's scathing satire of the tobacco industry starring Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart.

“What we need are mean comedies, filled with mean and petty people who hate and envy each other, and exhibit the basest of human motives. Comedies like that canonized W. C. Fields, and it was Groucho Marx's fundamental hatefulness that made his stuff so much more than slapstick. Lately, though, the movie comedy has fallen on hard times in America. Until the last couple of weeks. Now there are two new comedies that I can recommend to cynics and malcontents with little fear they'll be disappointed: ‘A New Leaf,’ reviewed last week, and Norman Lear's ‘Cold Turkey.’ Both of them assume as a matter of course that the human being is powered with unworthy motives, especially greed. ‘A New Leaf’ gets a little sentimental at the end, but not too much, and ‘Cold Turkey’ ends with the scoundrels being shot by their own cigarette lighter. The movie, as everybody knows by now, concerns an attempt by a small town in Iowa to qualify for a $25 million award by signing all its citizens to a 30-day no smoking pledge. That somehow doesn't sound like the world's greatest idea for a comedy, but Lear makes it work by a brilliant masterstroke: He gets the comedy, not out of people trying to stop smoking, but out of the people themselves. So instead of lots of scenes of characters sneaking puffs, you have them preening their vanity as national television crews descend upon the town. For, of course, Eagle Rock, Iowa, has become famous overnight.”

4. 

"'One Day at a Time' Moves to Pop": This past March, Allison Shoemaker reviewed the fourth season of Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce’s acclaimed remake of Norman Lear’s classic sitcom (Lear serves as executive producer of the new show).

“That’s the most wonderful thing about the Alvarez family. Watching them is a warm and wonderful experience, the epitome of comfort food TV, and yet the world they inhabit is recognizably our own. (Now operating on a network schedule, the show closed up production this month along with the rest of Hollywood; when it returns, it’s difficult to imagine Lydia won’t have some things to say about the Coronavirus from behind those curtains.) Neither they nor their writers ignore the darkness; it is always there in some form or other. The only thing about them that’s idealized is the sense at the end of each episode that everything will be okay, but it’s not because it’s overly sunny or blindly optimistic. It’s because what matters is what they have each other, and another day to look forward to—another breakfast Lydia makes while dancing, another group therapy session with a room full of smart and quick-witted women for Penelope, another e-sports tournament for Elena or sneaker run for Alex, and some more beautiful, affectionate pathos from Schneider and Dr. B. They muddle through, as the theme song once said, one day at a time—and, you can still hear the song on YouTube, so even that loss is survivable.”