Bud [Yorkin] broke out big when he did 'The Fred Astaire Show' and won four Emmys. His wife at the time suggested that we team up. We got a lot of press in show business papers, and a number of offers...we eventually signed with Paramount Pictures. But I always like to say, his was the horse that we rode in on. That is my favorite recollection.

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.

I think somehow I got a sense of the foolishness of the human - my favorite phrase, the foolishness of the human condition.

In one question you are expressing a world of opinion. Because it is you who thinks that America has been mistakenly starting these conflicts. I happen to agree with you, and I will repeat what your question suggested...we have mistakenly gotten into one fracas after another. Why we do that [United States has insisted on keeping up a string of enemies, and the wars associated with creating those enemies], I think it's because we're afraid to look in the mirror and understand who we are.

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 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.

Power is the goal of religion in general.