Time & Perspective Quote by Larry Hagman

A gunshot as a marketing plan: Larry Hagman talks about J.R. Ewing’s near-death cliffhanger the way a seasoned pro talks about weather - blunt, a little amused, and fully aware of how TV actually works. The intent isn’t to romanticize craft. It’s to demystify the machine. “I was shot” becomes less a plot point than a lever yanked at exactly the right moment, turning a primetime soap into a national appointment.

The subtext is even sharper: fame isn’t always earned through subtlety; sometimes it’s sparked by a stunt that captures the public’s attention and won’t let go. Hagman doesn’t claim the show’s longevity was pure gimmick, but he refuses the prestige narrative that great television rises on artistry alone. The phrase “the novelty of the situation” is a polite way of saying the audience came for spectacle, for the communal guessing game, for the social permission to care about something “trashy” because everyone else did too.

Context matters. “Who shot J.R.?” hit at a moment when broadcast TV could still create a shared culture - one cliffhanger capable of bending schedules, dominating office chatter, and making watercooler conversation feel like citizenship. Hagman is pointing to the early blueprint of modern attention economics: hook them with an event, keep them with character, and accept that the line between storytelling and stunt is not a scandal but the medium’s native language.