Quotes

Working on Good Times was real hard. All the white writers wanted to do stereotypes and I refused. Every week we'd argue and fight. They would ignore what I suggested and take all that, "Yassuh Boss," stuff to the cast and John Amos and Ester Rolle would have a fit. Then they'd give them what I wrote and the cast would like it they'd shoot it and it would go on the air. The next week it was the same fight. Originally I pictured J.J. as a street smart hustler who drove his honest, hard working parents crazy.

Norman [Lear] considered my work too controversial. I pitched, "Good Times," in 1971, it didn't go on the air until 1974. In those three years we had about 20 meetings. The one note I got in every meeting was, "Get rid of the father," a strong black man in a sit com won't work. In 1974 I got the contract to write, "Cooley High." When AIP sent the cast to Chicago to shoot the movie, I quit Norman's company. The following year he came out with The Jefferson's.

I've never been one to obey the rules unless they made sense to me. If I had it to do over again, I'd do less arguing and more negotiating. I'm just happy to be alive.

My living in the shelter and my being broke, I see that as a minor inconvenience. Life is way too short for me to let some idiotic thing like that make me unhappy. Please, no, I'm not sad about anything. I love life. I'm as happy as a sissy in Boys Town. My work ain't over.

As soon as I filed that suit, all my offers dried up. Nobody in Hollywood would talk to me. I was blacklisted.

And my mother said they have never ever had a black writer in Hollywood. If they ever get one he's going to be some high-yellow black with a Harvard degree, not some high school dropout from Cabrini. I said Momma, I'm going to do this. A week later, I left with $5 and a suitcase, went out to Route 66, hitchhiked my way to Hollywood, and I had never written a word.

I was five years old and I loved cowboys - Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger - and I had this little broomstick horse. And I was running, riding around like it was a horse. And this big old white guy came up to me. Now that I look back at it, he might not have been that big or that old, but he was definitely white. And he said who are you supposed to be? And I rode back on my little broomstick horse and I said I'm the Lone Ranger. So he said you can't be the Lone Ranger, the Lone Ranger is white. So I made a vow that when I grew up I was going to make some black heroes.