SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Chances are Chuck Lorre has made you laugh lots of times.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BIG BANG THEORY")
JIM PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) How can I ever repay you?
RIKI LINDHOME: (As Ramona Nowitzki) Well, would you consider naming it the Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem?
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Who's Nowitzki?
(LAUGHTER)
LINDHOME: (As Ramona Nowitzki) I'm Nowitzki.
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Oh, you want me to share credit.
LINDHOME: (As Ramona Nowitzki) Uh huh.
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Get out.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Chuck Lorre has been the creator, the writer, producer, director of - in no special order - "The Big Bang Theory," "Dharma & Greg," "Two And A Half Men," "The Kominsky Method," and my personal favorite, "Young Sheldon." He was even briefly on the staff of "My Little Pony" - aw - and helped bring the world this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES THEME")
TREVOR MCNEVAN: (Singing) Teenage mutant ninja turtles, teenage mutant ninja turtles, teenage mutant ninja turtles. Heroes in a half-shell. Turtle power.
SIMON: Ah, turtle power. Chuck Lorre has now written a memoir, and it's called "Sitcom." Chuck Lorre joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
CHUCK LORRE: Thanks for the invite.
SIMON: And yet, you don't like the word sitcom, do you?
LORRE: Well, I think I explained it at the beginning of the book that for many years, I hated the word. I thought it diminished my great efforts. I outgrew that eventually, which is why I was able to put the word on the cover of the memoir, as a signal to myself, I guess, that I might have outgrown that low self-esteem issue that didn't like the word.
SIMON: I say this with respect. There is a part of me, as I read this memoir, that surprised you're still here to talk about it.
LORRE: (Laughter) Would I be deceased? What did you think I would be?
SIMON: Well, yes. All the drink, drugs - how much of your life did they consume?
LORRE: A considerable part. But, thankfully, the last several decades have been free and clear, so I'm a very lucky man.
SIMON: Did your success, in a way, help fool yourself that you didn't really have a problem?
LORRE: Oh, absolutely. I think it's not uncommon for any - I'm a boomer, so men in my generation, we were taught by example that to succeed in this world would be to become fulfilled, to be - find peace of mind and contentment. And the great, mysterious fact that they don't tell you is that's not true, that emptiness inside is not solved by success. So now what do you do?
SIMON: I read a list of some of your greatest successes at the top. May I run a few other names by you?
LORRE: Go ahead.
SIMON: "Frannie's Turn," "Venus On The Hard Drive," "Nathan's Choice," "Dirty Girls," "Two Families," "Three Cinderellas."
LORRE: Failures. Some of them never got in front of the camera. They just became compost, landfill, what have you. They were the best I could do at the time, and that wasn't much.
SIMON: You still have a feeling for them?
LORRE: You know, if I get nostalgic about things, it's for shows that I've done that I felt ended too soon, that I really loved doing and I would have loved to have continued doing. The shows that didn't work - they didn't work for many reasons, and I'm comfortable with that.
SIMON: OK. "Two And A Half Men," Charlie Sheen, John Cryer...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TWO AND A HALF MEN")
CHARLIE SHEEN: (As Charlie Harper) Oh, boo-hoo. You want a real fun time? Try finding an extra-small Ben Franklin costume at 9 o'clock in the morning.
SIMON: ...Fabulous success, popular in millions of households around the world. Then Charlie Sheen began to call in sick or say that his BIC lighter had somehow exploded and burned off his eyelashes. What was happening?
LORRE: Well, in retrospect, we know what was happening. It's clear now that, you know, Charlie was circling the drain with drugs and alcohol. And my participation was, I was in staunch denial that that was happening. I chose to believe that everything was fine. And that's what was happening. It's not complicated. It's - it doesn't matter how successful or talented or how wealthy a person is. It's - addiction doesn't really care about, you know, how well you've done. It doesn't discriminate.
SIMON: You two had, I guess, a 10-year estrangement. That's been repaired?
LORRE: Absolutely. Yeah. There came a time when I woke up one day and all the anger and resentment and bewilderment, all of that stuff, all the emotion that swirled around that dark two years where I was being attacked on a regular basis, it was all gone. There were no buttons to press anymore. And I was really grateful for that, because I was able to reach out to Charlie and ask him to work together again. And he was in a good place, as well. And we did work together, and I love the results. I was just - we had a blast on a show called "Bookie" with Sebastian Maniscalco.
SIMON: Yeah. You compare sitcoms to handkerchiefs, not Kleenex. How so?
LORRE: What I tried to do was make something that lasts. That was my dream when I was trying to be a songwriter. I just - see if I can make something that has shelf life, that carries on, that doesn't come and go overnight. It didn't happen for me in music, although, you might argue that "Heroes In A Half-Shell" (ph) is my legacy in music. But I liken that effort to making a handkerchief, as opposed to a Kleenex tissue, which is used once and tossed away. A handkerchief can be washed, and it can be folded and ironed and used over and over and over again. And that was the inept analogy that I used for trying to make a situation comedy that has legs that lasts.
And that has occurred, to a large extent, with "The Big Bang Theory" and "Young Sheldon." And kids that are watching "Young Sheldon" now - they never watched "The Big Bang Theory." In fact, they don't know what CBS is. Yeah. That's telling, but that was our goal. We wanted to make a show that would last and stand on its own, and that's what's happened.
SIMON: Do you ever think about how people carry around in their minds stories you've told, jokes you've written?
LORRE: You know, I think what stays with me is the characters, not the stories. That's why I fell in love with half-hour comedies as a viewer - forget about what I do for a living. I actually - if you ask somebody what their favorite comedy was, they'd probably be hard-pressed to tell you one plot, but they could tell you about the characters. Stories - you know, the stories were great, but they're not what sticks.
SIMON: Chuck Lorre. He's written a memoir called "Sitcom." Thanks so much for being with us.
LORRE: It was nice talking to you. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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