The movies had a slogan at the time, to distinguish themselves from TV, that said 'movies are better than ever.'

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."

That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

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.

Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.

I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

As H.L. Mencken once said, 'nobody ever when broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.' Our show [All in the Family] countered that witticism. I think he was wrong.