Last interview with Larry Gelbart – “Let’s write for ourselves” + videos

Vanity Fair writer Mike Sacks ended up with one of the last interviews ever with Larry Gelbart, the comedy writing great, creator of the television adaptation of M*A*S*H and the movie Tootsie, Gelbart died September 11, 2009. The interview is amazing, Gelbart mentions that the show was never supposed to have a laugh track and that makes so much sense, don’t you think? This quote also jumped out at me, a bit of tactical info on how great work can be achieved, and a light moment in a story with a lot of constraint and frustration.:

We didn’t tell ourselves, “Let’s be a comedy classic.” We just thought, Let’s write for ourselves. I didn’t hear the word “demographic” until I was fifty. We were the decision-makers. Our sponsors didn’t interfere. Affiliates didn’t interfere. The network might have interfered, but on a level that we were not conscious of, because Sid was the show’s owner/producer. Sid handled all of those affairs at that level. We just had fun. The writers didn’t have to worry about anything except doing the best that we could do.