Name: Robin Williams Crashes Norman Lear's Interview | Letterman
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Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robin Williams Crashes Norman Lear's Interview | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-12-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robin Williams Crashes Norman Lear's Interview | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-12-06. Transcript available.

Norman Lear must-rate as one of television's innovative pioneers.
He was the guiding force in bringing Archie Bunker to TV and all in the family.
Also the Jefferson, Sanford and Son, and Maude.
And if you had to nominate someone who shook up TV in the '70s, it says here, "It
would
be hard to--" well, I'm having trouble again.
It would be hard to omit my mouth.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure now to have with us Mr. Norman Lear.
You're gonna have to go back around.
Thank you.
You know, certainly, do whatever you like.
Just tell you something about the shoe repair windows.
I figured laughter adds time to your life.
I had two or three laughs in there watching that piece that had to add six,
seven, eight
minutes to my life.
So I thank you.
Well, that's good.
I thank you.
I'm glad we can provide that public service.
Uh, you know, when you start thinking about your television shows, you figure,
of course,
all in the family, and then Maude, and then the Jeffersons, and then before you
know it,
you've got like a pretty healthy list there.
How many, um, shows that lasted for more than a week have you been responsible
for?
Well, I think when, uh, about three years ago, I needed to stretch in other
directions creatively,
and left the half hours.
Uh, company still continues to make them, but at the time, I think we figured
that I had
been involved with 2,600 and some half hours.
Good heavens.
Good heavens.
Not 2,600 show.
Right.
But supplied that much programming.
That much programming, yeah.
And of course, uh, Mary Hartman.
Mary Hartman.
And Fernwood.
Fernwood tonight.
Yeah.
I saw a lovely mention of in connection with David Letterman.
That's right.
It was very flattering for us.
Yeah.
I loved it.
Uh, now when all in the family went on the air, it seems silly now in
retrospect that
there was such heat, negative heat involved with that show, doesn't it?
Or does it?
No, no.
It does.
But there was a, you know, HL Mencken once quipped, I hope idly, that nobody
ever lost
money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
And I never thought anything did more harm.
Somehow, television networks believed that.
Uh-huh.
So, I don't know why they thought that, uh, there'd be knee-jerk reactions in
the middle
of the country simply because you were talking about this subject or that.
And they were frightened to death.
Yeah.
And CBS was the one that was, uh, obviously, they disavowed, didn't they?
They had some kind of a disclaimer involved with the show?
At the, at the top of the show, they, I forget what they said, yeah.
That they actually said what you're about to say?
That's like putting a sign up.
Yeah.
Saying, tune in, tune in.
Yeah.
Uh, the, the point of view, I guess, uh, you had two points of view there.
You had Archie who was the, uh, quintessential conservative and then his son-in-law
who was,
uh, now which, which represented the view of the show or your view?
Well, I don't know that either did.
Each was supposed to have represented, uh, uh, Mike, as we tried to write him,
was a,
was a horse's ass of a liberal.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, and Archie was his own kind of conservative.
So, so we tried to balance it as much as we could, but we never heard from
somebody who
thought Archie was right on.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
We never heard from a real bigot in, in the tens of thousands of letters
through all the
years.
Uh, we never heard from a real prejudiced individual who didn't say somewhere
at the end of the
letter, but why do you make him such a fool each time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you, do you think that, uh, I guess this is hard to gauge that that
characterization, uh,
made people think that it was okay to have those beliefs or did they actually
see the subtlety
of how silly the guy was looking?
No, no, the lesson was not lost.
I don't think any, nothing changes anybody's mind.
I mean, I, I can't believe it.
So I don't think you took a, uh, any hardened, uh, bigot would watch all in the
family and
become, uh, a changed individual.
Yeah.
Uh, but the lesson was not lost in that they, every time they corresponded with
us, uh, they
were there to say, but why do you make him foolish?
They knew what the point of view of the show was, that it was not, uh, condoning
bigotry.
You got some, speaking of correspondence, you got some criticism from, uh,
President Nixon
at the time, didn't you, about something?
Oh, yeah.
It was one show, uh, uh, he said something about, uh, Jessica.
Well, he was one of those people who said, didn't understand why we made such a
fool of
a nice man.
Uh-huh.
And you remember the, the, uh, it was, it was a show in which, uh, uh, Archie
was accusing
a friend of Mike's of being, uh, uh, uh, gay.
And, uh, fag is what he said.
And, uh, simply because he had been to London, uh, and, and, uh, wore glasses.
And I, I remember, I remember Mike saying, just because a man wears glasses and
talks nicely,
you know, you call him a fag?
He said, no.
He said, because he wears glasses, he's a four eyes.
Because he's a fag, he's a fag.
And, uh, that was Archie.
Yeah.
Uh, and then as it turned out in the story, Archie had a play, a friend who
played football,
uh, in the bar, whom, whom the whole community knew to be gay.
And Archie learned in that particular show that, uh, that he was to his astonishment.
Yeah.
That was the show that Nixon referred to.
Uh, on other matters, and, and believe me, just on this one show, we could fill
up, uh,
endless hours of discussion.
Uh, you're, you're doing another project, and we're gonna see some videotape of
that.
If you'd tell us what we're looking at, and tell us, uh, what you're up to.
Oh, well, it's Sunday night, uh, March 21st, ABC, uh, show called I Love
Liberty, two hours.
Celebration of American, traditional American values, in a, in an entertainment.
Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Robin Williams.
I think you're gonna see, uh, one of the most incredible pieces of business.
Uh, I won't say any more about that, but it's Robin.
And, uh, Walter Matthau, Christopher Reeve, a whole host of people.
Pretty exciting.
That was, uh, you mentioned that that's a huge arena.
Yes, that, that was, uh, nine to ten thousand people.
Everywhere that camera looked, the background was a sea of American faces.
This, of course, is Robin Williams busy keeping our subways safe.
Remember, don't leave home without a segue.
We are the Guardian Comedians.
Remember, why did you just walk into a bar?
I don't know.
If someone says, "Knock, knock," know who's there.
Oh, now I feel like doing it.
Oh, Jesus.
For a dollar, not a bad prop.
No, it's pretty good.
Norman, I guess you and I can leave now, huh?
No.
They're out there, I swear to God.
Thanks for coming in here.
We're gonna go away, though.
But we'll be back.
Hi there.
Welcome back to the extravaganza, ladies and gentlemen.
Norman Lear is here, and also Mr. Robin Williams has joined us unexpectedly,
and I guess explain
why you're here unexpectedly.
Explain why you're here at all.
I really don't know.
I can't tell you.
It's unexpected to me, too.
You're visiting New York City for the purpose of?
Oh, I was just to see it to be real again.
You have people going like, "Get away!
Get off TV!
Get off TV!"
He's made a remarkable motion picture in which I hear.
He is absolutely brilliant, and they're doing some kind of a screening tomorrow
night called
"Garp," and that's why he's here.
And, hell, I just like it here.
It's so nice to have people describe themselves to you.
Oh, that's good.
You just have to keep going because some of it won't make any sense, so you
just keep moving
along.
It's like California, just talk like this, and people go, "Oh, okay.
We understand."
Yeah, sure.
So, what were you going to say, Norman, about the show, the clip we saw from?
Oh, I mean, he does five minutes of it.
Just some of the most brilliant five minutes.
I don't know.
Why don't you tell him about the rest of the show?
Sure, Dad.
Did you watch what you learned in?
Yeah, I saw it.
Tell him a little bit about it.
Well, it was scary.
There were 9,000 people, and you walk out and...
We rehearsed for about a week, and wrote it, and had pumped it up.
Mm-hmm.
You look at me like...
And say hi to Mitzi.
David, the show's doing great.
Saw the article in time.
Robin will come up in the audience and explain these to you individually.
Pass it back.
There's still a woman in the back going, "So different.
He's gained so much weight."
Even the stripes and the shirt don't help.
They want to run the other way, Robin.
They want to run the other way.
You know what I wanted to...
I wanted to ask you, Norman.
It was about the mail that you got on that one particular show, "All in the
Family."
I found a burning copy of Watchtower on my lawn after that.
Two people going, "Mr. Williams, we'd like to talk to you about this.
You're going to rot in hell for what you did."
Okay, now...
If we could just wait until we're called on...
Anyway, the mail that you got on "All in the Family."
There's some interesting things.
You mentioned that folks write, but what would they tell you about where they
worked and so on?
Oh, you know, a finished production always looks so simple.
Anything you do on television looks so simple.
And everybody feels they can write.
Don't you all feel you can write something for television?
Yeah.
So, you know, you run into people constantly or you get a letter.
Mr. Lee, next time you're in Hartford, Connecticut, you stop into the John Irving
shoe store.
You want to see funny, we'll show you funny.
Things go on here you can't believe.
Yeah.
Or the post office or the drug store.
Yeah.
There's a situation comedy.
There probably is a situation comedy in everything.
That, in fact, Dick Cavett mentioned something similar in his book.
And I'm sure that Robin has had this.
You get a lot of mail from people saying, "Gosh, I'd love to meet you.
If you're ever in Wichita Falls, Texas, call us."
Call me and Billy Bob.
We'd love to hurt you.
That's right.
We'd like to drag you behind the truck for a few years.
And Cavett had a fantasy.
He said, "It would be really interesting to see what happened if one weekend,
"he just went to Wichita, Texas."
Shut up.
Hi, I'm Dick Cavett.
I do the talk show out of New York to see what would happen.
Spend the weekend with these poor folks.
Oh, we forgot we wrote that letter.
Slam.
Yeah.
Who is it?
Ghost.
Of the series of shows that you were involved in with All in the Family,
which one was, or maybe none of them,
but was there one that was really tough to wrestle on the air,
to get past CBS or whomever?
Well, in the early days, they all were.
I mean, we did a show.
Rob, Mike Stivik was impotent.
He was working hard and studying for his examinations.
And didn't know what his problem was.
Didn't realize the anxiety was causing him the impotence.
And Gloria and he were concerned about it.
And just the subject.
I must say, it was a terrific show.
And the subject frightened the network to the point where, well, I was going to
fire everybody
and send everybody home or put the show on the air because the network would...
Oh, I don't want to talk about that.
Everything is so happy and peaceful.
They're nice people, really.
Hi, how are you?
And they are.
And they are.
I mean, everybody's doing their thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that was...
I mean, it's history.
You got a chair there in the Smithsonian from the...
It's my father's chair, you know.
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
No.
Well, it isn't really.
It's Archie's, but my father had a red leather chair that we...
Sunday nights was radio night in those days.
You guys wouldn't remember when there was no till.
We remember?
No, you wouldn't remember when there was no till.
Do you remember when I used to have people pounding on drums?
We used to sit around this red leather chair pounding on drums and listening to
the radio.
And my father controlled the dial from his red leather chair.
Territorial imperative.
Nobody could go near that chair.
I'd sneak into it when he wasn't there, of course.
So I see the signal, too.
And I can do this story in about four seconds.
Okay.
What does this mean?
It's not what we did all in the family.
There's another guy over there.
You also work at the airport, I see.
Well, that's the four seconds.
We'll be right back.
All right.
We have to go.
We're out of time.
Ruth Norman, the cosmic visionary, the lady who lived on Mars, will not be here.
I'm awfully sorry.
I want to thank everyone who was here.
John Waters and Divine.
Mr. Norman Lear.
Thank you very much, sir.
Our surprise guest, Robin Williams.
Monday.
Gloria Steinem.
Author, umpire, Ron Luciano.
A look at medical aids and a special late-night report on everyone named Jimmy.
Have a good weekend, folks.
Bye-bye.

Robin Williams Crashes Norman Lear's Interview | Letterman

Norman Lear must-rate as one of television's innovative pioneers.
He was the guiding force in bringing Archie Bunker to TV and all in the family.
Also the Jefferson, Sanford and Son, and Maude.
And if you had to nominate someone who shook up TV in the '70s, it says here, "It
would
be hard to--" well, I'm having trouble again.
It would be hard to omit my mouth.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure now to have with us Mr. Norman Lear.
You're gonna have to go back around.
Thank you.
You know, certainly, do whatever you like.
Just tell you something about the shoe repair windows.
I figured laughter adds time to your life.
I had two or three laughs in there watching that piece that had to add six,
seven, eight
minutes to my life.
So I thank you.
Well, that's good.
I thank you.
I'm glad we can provide that public service.
Uh, you know, when you start thinking about your television shows, you figure,
of course,
all in the family, and then Maude, and then the Jeffersons, and then before you
know it,
you've got like a pretty healthy list there.
How many, um, shows that lasted for more than a week have you been responsible
for?
Well, I think when, uh, about three years ago, I needed to stretch in other
directions creatively,
and left the half hours.
Uh, company still continues to make them, but at the time, I think we figured
that I had
been involved with 2,600 and some half hours.
Good heavens.
Good heavens.
Not 2,600 show.
Right.
But supplied that much programming.
That much programming, yeah.
And of course, uh, Mary Hartman.
Mary Hartman.
And Fernwood.
Fernwood tonight.
Yeah.
I saw a lovely mention of in connection with David Letterman.
That's right.
It was very flattering for us.
Yeah.
I loved it.
Uh, now when all in the family went on the air, it seems silly now in
retrospect that
there was such heat, negative heat involved with that show, doesn't it?
Or does it?
No, no.
It does.
But there was a, you know, HL Mencken once quipped, I hope idly, that nobody
ever lost
money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
And I never thought anything did more harm.
Somehow, television networks believed that.
Uh-huh.
So, I don't know why they thought that, uh, there'd be knee-jerk reactions in
the middle
of the country simply because you were talking about this subject or that.
And they were frightened to death.
Yeah.
And CBS was the one that was, uh, obviously, they disavowed, didn't they?
They had some kind of a disclaimer involved with the show?
At the, at the top of the show, they, I forget what they said, yeah.
That they actually said what you're about to say?
That's like putting a sign up.
Yeah.
Saying, tune in, tune in.
Yeah.
Uh, the, the point of view, I guess, uh, you had two points of view there.
You had Archie who was the, uh, quintessential conservative and then his son-in-law
who was,
uh, now which, which represented the view of the show or your view?
Well, I don't know that either did.
Each was supposed to have represented, uh, uh, Mike, as we tried to write him,
was a,
was a horse's ass of a liberal.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, and Archie was his own kind of conservative.
So, so we tried to balance it as much as we could, but we never heard from
somebody who
thought Archie was right on.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
We never heard from a real bigot in, in the tens of thousands of letters
through all the
years.
Uh, we never heard from a real prejudiced individual who didn't say somewhere
at the end of the
letter, but why do you make him such a fool each time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you, do you think that, uh, I guess this is hard to gauge that that
characterization, uh,
made people think that it was okay to have those beliefs or did they actually
see the subtlety
of how silly the guy was looking?
No, no, the lesson was not lost.
I don't think any, nothing changes anybody's mind.
I mean, I, I can't believe it.
So I don't think you took a, uh, any hardened, uh, bigot would watch all in the
family and
become, uh, a changed individual.
Yeah.
Uh, but the lesson was not lost in that they, every time they corresponded with
us, uh, they
were there to say, but why do you make him foolish?
They knew what the point of view of the show was, that it was not, uh, condoning
bigotry.
You got some, speaking of correspondence, you got some criticism from, uh,
President Nixon
at the time, didn't you, about something?
Oh, yeah.
It was one show, uh, uh, he said something about, uh, Jessica.
Well, he was one of those people who said, didn't understand why we made such a
fool of
a nice man.
Uh-huh.
And you remember the, the, uh, it was, it was a show in which, uh, uh, Archie
was accusing
a friend of Mike's of being, uh, uh, uh, gay.
And, uh, fag is what he said.
And, uh, simply because he had been to London, uh, and, and, uh, wore glasses.
And I, I remember, I remember Mike saying, just because a man wears glasses and
talks nicely,
you know, you call him a fag?
He said, no.
He said, because he wears glasses, he's a four eyes.
Because he's a fag, he's a fag.
And, uh, that was Archie.
Yeah.
Uh, and then as it turned out in the story, Archie had a play, a friend who
played football,
uh, in the bar, whom, whom the whole community knew to be gay.
And Archie learned in that particular show that, uh, that he was to his astonishment.
Yeah.
That was the show that Nixon referred to.
Uh, on other matters, and, and believe me, just on this one show, we could fill
up, uh,
endless hours of discussion.
Uh, you're, you're doing another project, and we're gonna see some videotape of
that.
If you'd tell us what we're looking at, and tell us, uh, what you're up to.
Oh, well, it's Sunday night, uh, March 21st, ABC, uh, show called I Love
Liberty, two hours.
Celebration of American, traditional American values, in a, in an entertainment.
Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Robin Williams.
I think you're gonna see, uh, one of the most incredible pieces of business.
Uh, I won't say any more about that, but it's Robin.
And, uh, Walter Matthau, Christopher Reeve, a whole host of people.
Pretty exciting.
That was, uh, you mentioned that that's a huge arena.
Yes, that, that was, uh, nine to ten thousand people.
Everywhere that camera looked, the background was a sea of American faces.
This, of course, is Robin Williams busy keeping our subways safe.
Remember, don't leave home without a segue.
We are the Guardian Comedians.
Remember, why did you just walk into a bar?
I don't know.
If someone says, "Knock, knock," know who's there.
Oh, now I feel like doing it.
Oh, Jesus.
For a dollar, not a bad prop.
No, it's pretty good.
Norman, I guess you and I can leave now, huh?
No.
They're out there, I swear to God.
Thanks for coming in here.
We're gonna go away, though.
But we'll be back.
Hi there.
Welcome back to the extravaganza, ladies and gentlemen.
Norman Lear is here, and also Mr. Robin Williams has joined us unexpectedly,
and I guess explain
why you're here unexpectedly.
Explain why you're here at all.
I really don't know.
I can't tell you.
It's unexpected to me, too.
You're visiting New York City for the purpose of?
Oh, I was just to see it to be real again.
You have people going like, "Get away!
Get off TV!
Get off TV!"
He's made a remarkable motion picture in which I hear.
He is absolutely brilliant, and they're doing some kind of a screening tomorrow
night called
"Garp," and that's why he's here.
And, hell, I just like it here.
It's so nice to have people describe themselves to you.
Oh, that's good.
You just have to keep going because some of it won't make any sense, so you
just keep moving
along.
It's like California, just talk like this, and people go, "Oh, okay.
We understand."
Yeah, sure.
So, what were you going to say, Norman, about the show, the clip we saw from?
Oh, I mean, he does five minutes of it.
Just some of the most brilliant five minutes.
I don't know.
Why don't you tell him about the rest of the show?
Sure, Dad.
Did you watch what you learned in?
Yeah, I saw it.
Tell him a little bit about it.
Well, it was scary.
There were 9,000 people, and you walk out and...
We rehearsed for about a week, and wrote it, and had pumped it up.
Mm-hmm.
You look at me like...
And say hi to Mitzi.
David, the show's doing great.
Saw the article in time.
Robin will come up in the audience and explain these to you individually.
Pass it back.
There's still a woman in the back going, "So different.
He's gained so much weight."
Even the stripes and the shirt don't help.
They want to run the other way, Robin.
They want to run the other way.
You know what I wanted to...
I wanted to ask you, Norman.
It was about the mail that you got on that one particular show, "All in the
Family."
I found a burning copy of Watchtower on my lawn after that.
Two people going, "Mr. Williams, we'd like to talk to you about this.
You're going to rot in hell for what you did."
Okay, now...
If we could just wait until we're called on...
Anyway, the mail that you got on "All in the Family."
There's some interesting things.
You mentioned that folks write, but what would they tell you about where they
worked and so on?
Oh, you know, a finished production always looks so simple.
Anything you do on television looks so simple.
And everybody feels they can write.
Don't you all feel you can write something for television?
Yeah.
So, you know, you run into people constantly or you get a letter.
Mr. Lee, next time you're in Hartford, Connecticut, you stop into the John Irving
shoe store.
You want to see funny, we'll show you funny.
Things go on here you can't believe.
Yeah.
Or the post office or the drug store.
Yeah.
There's a situation comedy.
There probably is a situation comedy in everything.
That, in fact, Dick Cavett mentioned something similar in his book.
And I'm sure that Robin has had this.
You get a lot of mail from people saying, "Gosh, I'd love to meet you.
If you're ever in Wichita Falls, Texas, call us."
Call me and Billy Bob.
We'd love to hurt you.
That's right.
We'd like to drag you behind the truck for a few years.
And Cavett had a fantasy.
He said, "It would be really interesting to see what happened if one weekend,
"he just went to Wichita, Texas."
Shut up.
Hi, I'm Dick Cavett.
I do the talk show out of New York to see what would happen.
Spend the weekend with these poor folks.
Oh, we forgot we wrote that letter.
Slam.
Yeah.
Who is it?
Ghost.
Of the series of shows that you were involved in with All in the Family,
which one was, or maybe none of them,
but was there one that was really tough to wrestle on the air,
to get past CBS or whomever?
Well, in the early days, they all were.
I mean, we did a show.
Rob, Mike Stivik was impotent.
He was working hard and studying for his examinations.
And didn't know what his problem was.
Didn't realize the anxiety was causing him the impotence.
And Gloria and he were concerned about it.
And just the subject.
I must say, it was a terrific show.
And the subject frightened the network to the point where, well, I was going to
fire everybody
and send everybody home or put the show on the air because the network would...
Oh, I don't want to talk about that.
Everything is so happy and peaceful.
They're nice people, really.
Hi, how are you?
And they are.
And they are.
I mean, everybody's doing their thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that was...
I mean, it's history.
You got a chair there in the Smithsonian from the...
It's my father's chair, you know.
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
No.
Well, it isn't really.
It's Archie's, but my father had a red leather chair that we...
Sunday nights was radio night in those days.
You guys wouldn't remember when there was no till.
We remember?
No, you wouldn't remember when there was no till.
Do you remember when I used to have people pounding on drums?
We used to sit around this red leather chair pounding on drums and listening to
the radio.
And my father controlled the dial from his red leather chair.
Territorial imperative.
Nobody could go near that chair.
I'd sneak into it when he wasn't there, of course