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NEA LIVELY ARTS s'-XI

'Sunday Dinner'

Norman Lear looks to a new ageBy Frank Lovece

Norman Lear owned the'70s, as faras TV comedy was concerned, but hegets aggravated when he's remindedof the fact. The writer-producer,whose series like "All in the Family,""Maude" and "One Day at a Time"brought formerly unspoken subjectsto television, has been largely absentfrom the medium for the last sevenyears. Now, armed with a new CBSseries, "Sunday Dinner," about a 56-year-old man (Robert Loggia) en-gaged to a beautiful woman half hisage (Teri Hatcher), Lear is sensitiveabout his long dry spell.

"The shows we did in the '70s speakfor themselves,n he says edgily. "Itwas a time of great racism and sex-ism and other 'isms,' and nobody wastalking about it. Consequently, therewas an awful lot to write about."

Despite his best efforts, racism,sexism and other uisms" remained en-trenched in the me'first 1980s. As ifthat weren't enough to depress him,Lear also went through a bitter di-vorce from his long-time wife,Frances, in the mid-1980s. His lasttwo new TV projects - a one-month-long Paul Rodriguez sitcom, "a.k.a.Pablo," about a Mexican-Americanfamily; and "P.O.P.," an unsold NBCsitcom pilot starring Charles Durning

- were in 1984.Lear did stay busy, but not as a

writer-producer. He co-founded theConstitutional-rights group Peoplefor the American Way, a corporatecouncil called the Business Enter-prise Trust, and the production com-pany Act III, which produced suchfilms as "Stand by Me" (1986) and"The Princess Bride" (1987). And,somewhat like the protagonist of"Sunday Dinner," he married a wom-an 25 years his junior, a situation that

- as in the new series - gave hisgrown children conniptions.

Does "Sunday Dinner" mirror hisown life, just as "All in the Family"mirrored his relationship with his fa-ther and "Maude' was modeled on hisex-wife Frances?

"I can't be that objective about it,"Lear replies with a verbal shrug."There's some of me in Ben (Loggia'scharacter, printing-business patri-arch Ben Benedict), some of me inT.T. (the 30-year-old, environmentalattorney with a spiritual bent) andthere's some of me in Ben's daugh-ters. Certainly, he reminds me of mebecause he married a younger womanand he has older children."

And, just as in the new series, the"kids" were upset. 'It happens everytime," says Lear. "You can't have ithappen without those kinds of consid-erations.n It took a good two years, herecalls, before his children acceptedhis new marriage.

'The'90s are verymuch reminiscent ofthe'70s in thatthere's a vaststore of unexploredmaterial.'

Ben Benedict does have a few dif-ferences from Lear: He's engaged,not married, and he's widowed, not di-vorced. As for T.T.'s pronounced spiri-tual and religious bent, that comes,says Lear, from himself.

"This is an era of enormous spiritu-al hunger, with the same lack of con-versation about it (as the other sub-jects he has dealt with had in the '70s).The '90s are very much reminiscentof the'70s in that there's a vast storeof unexplored material. In the '90s, ithappens to be the lack of spiritual ful-fillment in life.

"I think we're waking up to thefact," he muses, "that life is about theunquantifiable, as well as the quanti-fiable. I think rve've grown tired ofthe numbers-oriented direction life

STAR VIEW

has taken, being all about winning andcharts and polls - numbers. As peo-ple begin to understand we've driftedtoo far in that direction, we seek to re-connect with the inner life."

It sounds to us like the musings of a68-year-old beginning to faee his ownmortality. "Naw," Lear says jauntily."Doesn't fly. I've been thinking aboutthese things all my life. It's the placethe culture is at that makes me seethis much more clearly."

Even so, he finds own spiritual ful-fillment "by living in the moment.There's no substitute for that - youmiss life any other way. How can youknow what you're living through ifyou're living someplace else? Ifthere's a God - and I phrase it with'if,' because some people are surethere is, some people are equally surethere's not - but if there's a God, thatGod lives in the moment. And the ulti-mate (travesty) is abandoning the mo-ment to live somewhere in the past orthe future.'

Clearly, the "Sunday Dinner" con-versation is not going to be about theweather. And as the writer of the firstepisode and the primary overseer ofthe rest of the scripts, Lear is elatedthat "in terms of subject matter, it'slike finding a new room in your house

- opening a trapdoor and finding anattic you never knew existed, with allthis amazing furniture and photo-graphs and everything you didn'tknow was there.

"We haven't spent that much time,"he says of his television brethren, uex-

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