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Norman Lear, Common, Shonda Rhimes To Explore Inequality In Epix Documentary Series

Norman Lear, Common, Shonda Rhimes To Explore Inequality In Epix Documentary Series

By Meredith Blake, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Super-producers Norman Lear and Shonda Rhimes will team with celebrities including Amy Poehler and Common for a documentary series on Epix exploring inequality, the network announced Tuesday.

The series, America Divided, will feature celebrity correspondents including Lear, Common, Poehler, Zach Galifianakis and America Ferrera investigating aspects of social, economic and political division. The series will premiere on the premium cable network in fall 2016.

“We thought this was an amazing opportunity to help raise the level of the dialogue and focus the conversation on the inequities that exist in our country,” Epix Chief Executive Mark S. Greenberg told The Times.

“It’s all of deep concern and paramount interest,” added Lear, the producer behind such socially conscious, provocative sitcoms as All in the Family, Good Times and Maude. “The whole subject is a great part of my life.”

Lear and Common will executive produce with Rhimes. The series was created by Lucian Read, Solly Granatstein and Richard Rowley, who previously collaborated on Showtime’s climate change documentary series Years of Living Dangerously.

The series will air in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, but Lear, long associated with liberal politics, insists it is not advancing any particular agenda.

“I never think of myself as coming at it from any place but love of America,” he told The Times. “I’m not there to doubt anybody’s patriotism and I don’t think I have to wear a button to prove I’m an American and I care. This kind of involvement says much more than that button.”

The series will be made available at a later date on Hulu, Amazon and Sony Vue, widening its reach beyond the Epix subscriber base, Greenberg said.

©2016 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Norman Lear at Vicki Abelson’s Women Who Write. Louise Palanker via Flickr

Late Night Roundup: A Beer With Norman Lear

Late Night Roundup: A Beer With Norman Lear

Larry Wilmore sat down with the legendary Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family — and he even set up some of Archie and Edith’s chairs for the occasion, along with a nice friendly beer.

Larry asked: “Do you feel kind of responsible for having Archie Bunker running for president right now?”

The Daily Show‘s Jordan Klepper spoke with a government watchdog who says the Federal Election Commission is completely ineffectual at enforcing federal election laws and maintaining any public trust in the system: Federal Election Commission chairwoman Ann Ravel. The big question: Is the FEC even as useful as men’s nipples?

Stephen Colbert previewed this Saturday’s Democratic debate, by talking with CBS’ Face The Nation host and debate moderator John Dickerson. Stephen asked John some key questions, such as: Who is that third guy on the stage with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? (The answer: Martin O’Malley. Ouch.)

James Corden and bandleader Reggie Watts looked at the latest numbers from the presidential race — though the numbers didn’t have to actually make any sense.

‘They’re Going To Kill You’: Why Norman Lear Founded People For the American Way

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of People for the American Way by Norman Lear, the legendary “All in the Family” producer, who still bristles when anyone insists on “progressive” instead of liberal. In a conversation with The National Memo, Lear recalled how he became increasingly furious watching TV evangelists like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. What could he do?

“I started to write a film, titled ‘Religion,’ a satire, like Paddy Chayefsky’s ‘Network.’ But then I heard Jimmy Swaggart one morning, calling on his listeners to pray for the ‘removal’ of a Supreme Court Justice — and it scared the shit out of me.” He wanted to do something more, and fast.

“I’ve got to find my replacement,” Lear soon told associates at his production company, because he intended to focus all his creative energy on the threat to freedom represented by the religious right. “I’m going to do some commercials.” Somebody warned him, “Norman, you’re a Jew from Hollywood. They’re going to kill you if you go after the religious right.” Perhaps that spurred him to go ahead and make the original TV spot featuring “a middle-aged guy,” a forklift operator who is troubled because “here come these ministers telling him he’s a good Christian and his wife is a bad Christian, based on political criteria…and he says, ‘That’s not the American way.'” The commercial ran only on a local Washington, D.C. station, but as Lear anticipated, it was swiftly featured on all of the network evening news programs, and CBS ran the entire spot.

For all the achievements of People For, as his group has come to be known, including the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and the defense of Sonia Sotomayor, Lear understands that the nation faces an even more implacable brand of conservatism than when Reagan was president. “The chief contender for the Republican nomination is Mitt Romney,” he says, “and there is Romney on a stage with Bryan Fischer,” currently a powerful figure on the religious right, who has said, among other outrageous remarks, that gays were “responsible for the Holocaust…he’s a lunatic!” And of course the Romney campaign has brought Bork on board, to benefit from his dubious wisdom on the judiciary.

Back in those days, Lear believes, decency was more likely to prevail between political opponents. He was quite friendly with the Reagans, despite political clashes during his presidency, and flew up to the recent debate at the Reagan Library with the late president’s widow Nancy. “The fact is, I had some very positive dealings with him,” said Lear, something he can scarcely imagine with today’s aggressive Republican leaders.

Now working on a personal memoir and other projects, Lear is no longer at the helm of People For, which is led by president Michael Keegan and a board that includes Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. But the exceptionally vital 89 year-old seems proud, if mildly astonished, that the group he founded in fear and frustration has grown into a preeminent liberal presence, spanning three decades. “I would never wake up any morning in my life thinking that this is what I would be doing,” he said. Today Americans who cherish liberty can be thankful he did.