Word: yorkin
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...With "Family," "Sanford" and "Maude" going for them, Yorkin and Lear have emerged in a big way from the twilight of anonymity behind the scenes in TV. Johnny Carson was barely exaggerating when he introduced this year's Emmy, Award ceremonies as "an evening with Norman Lear." After Lear had collected one of the seven Emmys won by "Family," Carson quipped: "I understand Norman has just sold his acceptance speech as a new series...
...course it isn't just the recognition; it's the money. Yorkin and Lear's profits from their three shows this year could reach $5,000,000, not counting the take from books, records and other byproduct merchandising. With offers of further projects pouring in, their Tandem headquarters is the hottest TV production office in Hollywood. So busy are the partners nowadays that they rarely get a chance to be in the office. They run the business by remote control, communicating with each other by memo. Occasionally they rendezvous for a quick huddle in the parking lot of a studio...
...Lear, who spends most of his time at CBS as executive producer of "Family" and "Maude," is a dapper, droopy-mustached man of 50 with the comedy writer's congenital air of melancholy, like a sensitive spaniel; he tends to be the spokesman for the team. Yorkin, 46, who concentrates on being executive producer of "Sanford" at NBC, is a beefy, genial soul with a flushed face and a habit of punctuating his speech with a stabbing thumb that one senses could easily become a fist. Both men, in their divergent styles, bear down hard on their staffs to achieve...
...Each of their shows run before a live audience. Yorkin and Lear then leads the cast through a ruthless rehash session, and another performance is taped before a second audience. The show that eventually goes on the air combines the best of the two performances. This system provides a TV equivalent of the Broadway theater's "tryout experience," says "Family" Producer John Rich "We're doing a play a week and we're trying to be entertaining every minute. We don't have a Hartford or a Boston for tryouts...
...shows on TV are more heavily rewritten than Yorkin and Lear's. Whether a script originates with their staff or is one of the 60 percent that come from freelancers, Yorkin and Lear usually see that it gets torn to pieces. The story line acquires new twists, the dialogue is recast, sometimes new characters are added...