Meet the Men Who Turned Us Into Couch Potatoes

When TV titans Garry Marshall, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner and Sherwood Schwartz gathered at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Wednesday for a lunch hosted by rerun haven “Nick at Nite,” it was one of those “pinch me” experiences. The creators of “The Brady Bunch,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “All in the Family,” “Happy Days” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” are the reason so many highly functioning people have turned into couch potatoes. In other words, they are gods.

The four men had just finished filming interviews for a “Nick at Nite” 15th anniversary special to air on July 23, before breaking bread with a small group of friends and reporters.

“My life passes before me every time I watch ‘Nick at Nite’ because all my children have been in the shows,” Marshall told the 40 or so guests. “What can I say? I’m addicted to nepotism.”

But the characters created by Marshall and the others--Marcia, the Bunkers, the Fonz and Laura Petrie--feel like members of everybody’s family.

Marshall, 65, said he was glad that he was able to create shows in a simpler time.

“If ‘Happy Days’ were on today, Ritchie would have to smoke pot and masturbate, and Erin Moran would be a lesbian for sure.”

Schwartz, 83, found his inspiration for “The Brady Bunch” in the L.A. Times. “I read one of those column filler items in 1965 that said 39% of people who married that year had children from a previous marriage, and I realized there was a sociological change happening.”

The show, which has been on somewhere in the world since it debuted in 1969, has lasted so long, he said, because “it’s kid-driven. We never did more than four episodes involving the parents.”

Schwartz, who also created “Gilligan’s Island,” said he loves when students write papers claiming to have discovered that the “real meaning” of the show is that it’s a microcosm of society.

“Of course it’s a social microcosm!” he said good-naturedly. “As if I just stumbled on this while writing funny.”

Lear, 77, creator of the groundbreaking “All in the Family,” said he chalks up the series’ success to the cast (Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton . . . and Meathead, of course) and that he is thrilled to run into young people who are still watching “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons.”

I sat at Marshall’s table, and I have to say dining with him is funnier than anything on TV right now.

Someone asked him whether it was true that he was contemplating making a movie based on “Laverne & Shirley.” “I doubt it will happen,” he said. “But we had a great opening shot: The girls are on the street doing ‘schlemiel, schmozzle’ and they run out of breath because they’re old!”

He also said he doubts that a sequel to “Pretty Woman” is in the stars. There is a script, he admitted, but nobody’s interested--including Richard Gere, with whom he had just spoken by phone the day before. Marshall said that he and Gere, whose girlfriend recently gave birth to their first child, swapped stories about proud papa moments. (Marshall’s proudest, he said, was when he watched a rough cut of the upcoming “Spin Cycle,” his son Scott’s first film.)

Marshall also told us about how he knew the instant he met his wife, Barbara, that she was the one for him. At the time, she was a nurse in the intensive care unit at what is now Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“She jumped on Peter Sellers’ chest and pumped him back to life,” said Marshall, who has been married since 1963. “I’ve always thought she was a friend to comedy.”

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Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.