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everything and he’ll go crazy. How did he get to be this star? We don’t know, but we’re gonna stop that right now.’ So they send in all these C-grade people.” (referring to the people the network appoints to intentionally sabotage the work of his TV show)
Coming off The Cosby Show, the series that skyrocketed NBC and kicked the actor’s net worth into the stratosphere, Cosby executive-produced Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s spin-off, Here and Now. The show, about a graduate student counseling at a youth center, was given a poor time slot and was panned by the critics. Cosby, who was starring in the listless remake of You Bet Your Life, was fingered for Here and Now‘s preachiness and poor humor.
“It is my belief that the show was circumvented by the people at the network,” he defends. And I kept saying [to the network], ‘I don’t think these guys [the writers] really understand what it is I want.’ And by the time it got to airtime, the battle of who was in charge became very, very nasty.”
Cosby [then] made several bids over the past year to buy NBC. Clearly, many thought, this was the attack of the killer ego, a delusionist who thinks he can play with the big boys. “What you have to understand is, I wasn’t the only one,” Cosby explains. “I was the only one as far as the press was concerned, and then finally they had to name the other partners. The excitement of it was this entertainer, who is an African-American, was out to try and raise money to run a network. And then it comes down to, ‘Can he run a network?’ Well, what is the question really?’”
Given a reply that most network heads are guys in suits and not performers, he hammers, “They’re white. That’s the issue. What makes an entertainer any dumber than some executive? I mean, can you even tell me why they keep saying TV is the way it is and now an entertainer decides to try and run a part of the network and he’s gonna do worse? You tell me I can’t run a network? Bring me an old wreck that’s beat up and you say, ‘You can’t run this?’ The question should be, ‘Why would you want to?’”
Power, yes — but not just for power’s sake. “There are people, regardless of race, color, creed, who are not being seen, heard, mainly because they don’t fit into the C-grade media mold,” he says. “If a guy wants to sell pop or beer [on TV], he doesn’t care what the IQ is of the woman or man who buys it. So it leaves [programming] open for people with no particular moral convictions.”
“You cannot tell me that television doesn’t impress people,” Cosby says emphatically. “That a show where people are ugly in mind, mean in mind, doesn’t make an impression for some people to follow through with. Why do you put a commercial on television that tries to sell beer with people in tight jeans or women bouncing around if it doesn’t make an impression? I’m not talking about censorship per se, but an executive who says, ‘The Midwest will never understand,’ who keeps nothing but C-grade writers and recycles them, is censoring good writers who are somewhere in this world doing something other than writing. And that,” he adds, “is the kind of censorship we don’t need.”
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Source: AuthorsGuild
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