I stop and look at traffic accidents. I won't hang around, but when I hear something is terrible, as bad as it is, I've gotta look at it.
I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.
Bud [Yorkin] was the kindest and dearest man, and one of the most talented directors there was.
I was writing for live television. And I said to myself, someday, soon as I can, I have got to do a situation comedy.
I was the laziest white kid my dad ever met.
When I got married for the third time, and I had children from my other marriage there, that's what I said when it came time in the ceremony for me to say something. I said, "I'm grateful to everybody that participated, everybody that participated in my life that got me to this moment. And everything was dead-right because everything is right now."
I don't know how you can look back with regret if you're at a moment when everything seems fine.
We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.
But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.
The evidence seems clear that those business which actively serve their many constitutencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also, over the long run, serve their shareholders best. Companies do, infact, do well by doing good.
The establishment uses that rationale all the time, and that's why we do what we do. But leadership requires some understanding that you can say no. People have base instincts, but the transcendent also appeal to them.
The people responsible for the dollars that will buy the sex and violence so many deplore, don't even know what's going - well, of course they know. But they're comfortably ensconced in their country clubs and churches, and very far removed from the decisions that are made on their behalf.
Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.
Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.
You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
... For all our alarm, it is clear that the religious right is responding to a real hunger in our society... a deep-seated yearning for stable values... When conservative Christian groups talk of failures in our educational system, the erosion of our moral standards, and the waste of young lives, they are addressing real and legitimate concerns... Among secularists, the aversion toward discussion of moral values, let alone religion, can reach absurd extremes.
We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.
The complete control of one party over everything - I would, I think, feel the same way if it were [the Democrats in charge]. It's not the American way.
I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.
Ed Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.
In this nation, leadership is dollars.
When we went on the air, I didn't want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain.
As a matter of fact, when people ask where my 'point of view' comes from, it was there in one of the first sketches we wrote for [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis.
The movies had a slogan at the time, to distinguish themselves from TV, that said 'movies are better than ever.'
We mocked that concept ['movies are better than ever'] by doing a sketch that was about a theater trying to get one customer to come in...and that customer was Jerry Lewis. It generated so much controversy that Dean [Martin] and Jerry [Lewis] had to apologize in a full page ad in Variety.
