Norman Lear, Sitcom King Who Changed TV -- And America

 Norman Lear appears during the "American Masters: Norman Lear" panel at the PBS Summer TCA Tour on Aug. 1, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP)
Norman Lear appears during the "American Masters: Norman Lear" panel at the PBS Summer TCA Tour on Aug. 1, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP)
TT

Norman Lear, Sitcom King Who Changed TV -- And America

 Norman Lear appears during the "American Masters: Norman Lear" panel at the PBS Summer TCA Tour on Aug. 1, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP)
Norman Lear appears during the "American Masters: Norman Lear" panel at the PBS Summer TCA Tour on Aug. 1, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP)

Norman Lear was television's prolific genius whose trailblazing sitcoms in the 1970s and 1980s revolutionized US entertainment -- and helped change the way a nation saw itself.

With boundary-breaking shows like "All In the Family" and "The Jeffersons," Lear -- who has died aged 101 -- helped millions of viewers confront their deepest fears, frailties and prejudices, as well as their aspirations, with humor and humanity.

Among his milestones was creating the first African American nuclear family regularly appearing on television: the Evans clan on "Good Times," beginning in 1974.

He injected the sensitive subjects of race, class, inequality and politics like the anti-war movement into his work, breaking the sitcom mold and beaming modern visions of family life into millions of US households.

Lear abandoned the idealistic representation of American families seen on shows like "Leave It to Beaver" (1957-1963) and adopted a more real-world depiction -- and in so doing, he changed the face of television.

"What was new was that we were engaging in reality," the famed creator said in the 2016 documentary "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You."

Fellow comedy star Mel Brooks hailed Lear as "the bravest television writer, director and producer of all time."

Lear's family, in announcing his death, said Wednesday their patriarch wrote about real life, "not a glossy ideal."

"At first, his ideas were met with closed doors and misunderstanding. However, he stuck to his conviction that the 'foolishness of the human condition' made great television, and eventually he was heard."

In the mid-1970s, at the height of his eight-decade career, Lear had five sitcoms airing in prime time -- an era before cable or streaming, when Americans watched television collectively.

Broadcaster CBS estimated at the time that a staggering 120 million Americans watched Lear programming each week.

The six-time Emmy Award winner wrote, produced, created or developed roughly 100 specials and shows including 1980s mega-hit "The Facts of Life" and the long-running "One Day at a Time."

His revolutionary comedy also earned him a spot on President Richard Nixon's so-called enemies list.

Blue-collar comedy

Lear's most explosive creation was "All In the Family," a blue-collar comedy so audacious that its first episode, in 1971, came with a disclaimer.

The half-hour show featured abrasive patriarch Archie Bunker, lovably irascible but bigoted, narrow-minded and clashing with his liberal relatives.

It marked a TV paradigm shift.

"Television can be broken into two parts, BN and AN: Before Norman and After Norman," writer and producer Phil Rosenthal said in the 2016 documentary.

Lear, donning his trademark porkpie hat, also produced or funded such big-screen classics as "The Princess Bride" and "This is Spinal Tap."

But television was his magic medium.

Never far from the surface in Lear's shows were the issues gnawing at American society: misogyny, racism, women's rights and political division.

He dug deep into the exigencies of Black life. And while "Good Times" was intended as a white audience's window into Black America, "The Jeffersons" represented the American Dream for Black people.

Over 253 episodes from 1975 to 1985, "The Jeffersons" portrayed African American success through an unapologetically Black couple "movin' on up" in New York society.

'Enemy' of the family?

Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27, 1922, into a Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut.

His mother emigrated from Russia, and his father was a salesman who served time in jail and had a bigoted streak that embarrassed his son -- but also served as source material.

Lear attended Emerson College in Boston but dropped out to enlist in the US Army, flying 37 World War II bombing sorties as a radio operator and gunner.

By 1949 he moved to Los Angeles, where he found success writing for TV variety shows.

He also produced films including 1963's "Come Blow Your Horn" starring Frank Sinatra, and in 1967 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for "Divorce American Style."

With "All In the Family" and the TV shows that followed, Lear's influence skyrocketed.

So did his concern about the mix of politics and religion.

Criticism from conservative circles poured in, with televangelist Jerry Falwell calling Lear "the number one enemy of the American family."

Lear pushed back against the burgeoning religious right, and in 1981 founded People For the American Way, a group promoting civic engagement and freedom of expression and religion.

Lear's work ethic was legendary. After his 100th birthday, he collaborated with TV host Jimmy Kimmel on "Live in Front of a Studio Audience!" specials in which star-studded casts performed remakes of classic Lear shows.

A pioneer on multiple fronts, Lear's portrayal of true-to-life traumas sealed his reputation.

In a watershed 1972 episode of "Maude," the title character agonizes over terminating her pregnancy, a plotline that brought the abortion fight to prime time one year before the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abortion.

Half a century later, Lear -- who married three times and had six children -- told "E! Insider" the issues his sitcoms addressed carry equal resonance today.

"The culture has shifted and changed... but the way families experience life is pretty much the same," he said.



Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
TT

Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.