Tonight's guests are Norman Lear on the Daily Show and President Barack Obama on The Colbert Report.
Norman Lear is a television writer and producer. He is best known for the shows All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude and for founding People For the American Way. Tonight he is on to promote his book
Even This I Get to Experience
Norman Lear’s work is legendary. The renowned creator of such iconic television programs as All in the Family; Maude; Good Times; The Jeffersons; and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Lear remade our television culture from the ground up. At their peak, his programs were viewed by 120 million people a week, with stories that dealt with the most serious issues of the day—racism, poverty, abortion —yet still left audiences howling with laughter. In EVEN THIS I GET TO EXPERIENCE, Lear opens up with all the candor, humor, and wisdom to be expected from one of America’s greatest living storytellers.
But TV and politics are only a fraction of the tale. Lear’s early years were grounded in the harshness of the Great Depression, and further complicated by his parents’ vivid personalities. The imprisonment of Lear’s father, a believer in the get-rich-quick scheme, colored his son’s childhood. During this absence, Lear’s mother left her son to live with relatives. Lear’s comic gifts were put to good use during this hard time, even as they would be decadeslater during World War II, when Lear produced and staged a variety show for his fellow airmen in addition to flying fifty bombing missions.
After the war, Lear tried his hand at publicity in New York before setting out for Los Angeles in 1949. A lucky break had a powerful agent in the audience the night Danny Thomas performed a nightclub routine written by Lear, and within days his career in television began. Before long his work with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (and later Martha Raye and George Gobel) made him the highest-paid comedy writer in the country, and he was spending his summers with the likes of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. Movies followed, and soon he was making films starring Frank Sinatra, Dick Van Dyke, and Jason Robards. Then came the ’70s, and Lear’s unprecedented string of TV hits.
Married three times and the father of six children ranging in age from nineteen to sixty-eight, Lear’s penetrating look at family life, parenthood, and marriage is a volume in itself. A memoir as touching, funny, and remarkable as any of Lear’s countless artistic creations, EVEN THIS I GET TO EXPERIENCE is nothing less than a profound gift, endlessly readable and characteristically unforgettable.
Now that he has reflected on the totality of his life — including incarnations as a member of a B-17 bomber crew in World War II, a novice press agent and a sketch writer for stars like Danny Thomas and Jerry Lewis — he says he better understands why he was in no hurry to complete the task.
It required him to reckon with an unsettled legacy and to draw some tough connections between his present and past, a time he says was far more enjoyable to live through than to write about.
Recounting the creation of his book over a recent breakfast in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Lear said, “I began to realize how hard it had been to be a human being.”
With a wry, what-can-you-do chuckle, he added: “Eventually, I came to enjoy how hard it had been. I wish I had known it at the time.”Those Were the Days, Not Simple or All Sweet
I am generally not a fan of celebrity biographies, however this one actually sounds interesting.
Barack Obama is the current president of The United States (like I needed to tell you that.) :D
My guess is that they will be discussing Obama's immigration reform among other things since Republicans are still outraged over the head of the executive branch instructing an executive agency on what to do.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Tu 12/9: Kathryn Bigelow, Juan Zarate
We 12/10: Suki Kim
Th 12/11: Mick Foley
THE COLBERT REPORT
Tu 12/9: James Corden
We 12/10: Sarah Koenig
Th 12/11: TBA