In the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom in Hollywood – and make no mistake: the only wisdom to be found in Hollywood is the conventional kind – was that comedy was dead. Audiences, it was decided, just didn’t want to watch sitcoms anymore. They had grown tired of the typical family-gathered-around-the-sofa setups, the hackneyed jokes, the retreaded storylines about the trials of raising children. Americans had grown sophisticated and worldly during the politically tumultuous 1960s and the culturally libertine 1970s, and no longer had a taste for tame, feel-good comedies.
So Hollywood stopped making them. By the early 1980s, it was tough to find a sitcom on the air, let alone a successful one. And then, suddenly, in September of 1984, the low-rated and desperate American television network NBC took a chance. It went against the conventional wisdom and put on a family comedy and hoped for the best. That’s the way Hollywood – and probably every other business – works. Imminent bankruptcy has a way of encouraging risk-taking.
It was a good thing, too. The Cosby Show premièred to a gigantic rating. Americans, it seemed, weren’t aware of the conventional wisdom. They didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to have an appetite for a fairly conventional sitcom about a family, which gathers around a sofa to deal with the trials of raising children. More spectacularly, Bill Cosby was black! White Americans – according to the masterminds behind network television – could never love a show about an upper-middle class African-American family. But the audience, as usual, didn’t follow the rules. What they saw when they turned on the television on September 20, 1984 was a large and loving family, ruled with firm good-nature by one of their favourite celebrities. They loved it. The Cosby Show was one of America’s favourite shows – often its most favourite show – for eight years.
Bill Cosby, the star and executive producer, had been a movie and television star for almost 30 years. He was one of America’s most trusted salesmen for everything from soft drinks to packaged pudding. In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine that anyone thought The Cosby Show was much of a risk. But that’s the way Hollywood – and probably every other business – works. Things seem impossible until someone does them, at which point they seem inevitable.
The Cosby Show reignited the comedy business. Suddenly, every television network was developing and producing family comedies. The demand for television comedy writers soared – as did their paycheques. A few years after The Cosby Show premièred, the ripple effect reached universities on the east coast, where a directionless and otherwise totally unskilled student (me, in case you’re wondering) took a chance and drove out to Los Angeles to seek his fortune in television comedy writing.
Fortunes, of course, are a matter a perspective. But it’s not too much of a stretch to say that I owe Bill Cosby my career. The first job I had in television, as a young staff writer on the hit sitcom Cheers, was a direct result of the rising-tide effect of The Cosby Show. We were broadcast on NBC on Thursdays at 9pm. Cosby was on at 8pm. He brought a massive audience to the network and all we had to do was keep it. Bill Cosby is the reason I didn’t have to go to law school.
Bill Cosby is also, according to the accusations of almost two-dozen women, is also a serial predator and assaulter of women. In story after story, women have recounted the ways in which he threatened, drugged and raped them.
All of this happened years ago, is what people who love Bill Cosby – me included – are saying about the 77-year-old comedy legend. We all owe him so much it’s temptingly easy to brush aside the 20 (and counting) women who insist that he assaulted them. All of these stories, we tell ourselves, are from the distant past. Can’t we concentrate on Cosby’s epic accomplishments? His 50-year career in show business, his single-handed racial integration of the television industry, his billion-dollar successes, his record of firm paternal leadership (much like his television character) in the African-American community?
The conventional wisdom 30 years ago – and, to be frank, pretty much routine behaviour in Hollywood since its birth – was that powerful men are allowed to use and manipulate younger and less-powerful women. It was one of the perks that came with a male-centred business world. But conventional wisdom, as everyone knows, only lasts a little while. Sooner or later it changes, usually into its opposite. Bill Cosby, comedy genius and television legend, made his fortune by bucking the trends and pushing against the often racist, always risk-averse minds that ran the entertainment industry.
But in one way, at least, he was old fashioned. In one way, he followed the conventional wisdom. The way he treated women was strictly old school. I’ll always be grateful for the success of The Cosby Show and its effects. But I’ll always be heart-broken by the man behind it.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
