Archives for January 1, 2015

I wrote about Norman Lear’s recently published autobiography for the January issue of Commentary:

Throughout much of the 1970s, Norman Lear was the most powerful TV producer in Hollywood. He created a string of situation comedies so successful that five of them, All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Sanford and Son, were in the top 10 in the final week of the 1974–75 season. In 1983, he was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, together with Lucille Ball, Paddy Chayefsky, Milton Berle, Edward R. Murrow, William S. Paley, and David Sarnoff—a sign of how seriously he had come to be taken.

By 1985, though, all of Lear’s series had been canceled, and none of them is shown widely in syndication today. Even Archie Bunker, the working-class anti-hero of All in the Family, whose name was for years synonymous with the blue-collar prejudices that the show was created to satirize, has long since faded from the common stock of American cultural reference.

No species of fame is as fleeting as the sort bestowed by network TV. But Lear fell further, faster, and more fully than most, and it is noteworthy that he has nothing to say about this descent in his newly published autobiography, Even This I Get to Experience, in which he is fairly forthcoming about most other aspects of his long and eventful life (he is 92 years old). One might well come away with the impression that he simply lost interest in television and decided to pursue other interests were it not for the fact that between 1991 and 1994, he created and produced two more sitcoms, both of them flops that were canceled after a half-dozen episodes each.

Such, of course, is the final fate of all TV producers, no matter how successful their series may be. Sooner or later—usually sooner—they lose touch with popular taste. But Lear’s brief period of domination over the airwaves was so complete that it is worth considering why it ended when it did. Did he simply run out of creative steam? Or was American culture changing in ways that he no longer understood?…

Read the whole thing here.

Not having advanced technologically to the point of being able to suck movies from the Web, Mrs. T and I usually bring a varied assortment of DVDs with us whenever we’re going anywhere for a long stay. We’re going to be in Florida for two months, so we decided that it might be wise to pack a larger-than-usual selection this year. Here’s what I stowed in the suitcase. As was the case with the books I brought on our trip, some of these films are new to me and some not:

Baby, the Rain Must Fall (since Horton Foote has been on my mind of late)

Children of Paradise

Frances Ha

Ghost World

The Grand Budapest Hotel and Letter from an Unknown Woman (to suit my Stefan Zweig mood)

Honeymoon in Vegas (for homework—I’ve never seen the film and I’m prepping to review the Broadway stage version)

Junebug

Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming

The Last Picture Show

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (David Mamet’s favorite movie, which we watched with undiminished pleasure on New Year’s Eve)

Local Hero

Margaret (in honor of the Broadway run of Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth)

Me and Orson Welles (a continuation of our Zoe Kazan film festival)

Moonrise Kingdom

Henry Bromell’s Panic (one of the most underrated films of the past quarter-century)

Passion Fish

Silver Linings Playbook

Sunshine State (we’re in Florida, right?)

There Will Be Blood

Between that stash (which I’ll replenish as needed when I fly up to New York later this month) and TCM, I’d say we’re good for at least a month.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, all performances sold out last week, closes Mar. 29, reviewed here)
• The Elephant Man (drama, PG-13, contains partial nudity, virtually all performances sold out last week, closes Feb. 22, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• On the Town (musical, G, contains double entendres that will not be intelligible to children, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.:
• My Old Lady (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 11, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• This Is Our Youth (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”

Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices