George Carlin's American Dream (2022) - full transcript
Interviews with George Carlin's family and friends, material from his stand-up specials and footage from his personal archive.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE CARLIN: (NARRATING)
In my personal little world,
I can't worry
about offending someone
because that's flinching.
You can't flinch.
If you mean what you're saying.
GEORGE: (ONSTAGE)
A lot of these cultural crimes
can be blamed on
the baby boomers.
Whiny, narcissistic,
self-indulgent people
with a simple philosophy,
-"Give me that, it's mine!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Give me that, it's mine!"
(NARRATING) The line exists.
(ONSTAGE) These people
were given everything.
(NARRATING)
There'll always be taboos.
(ONSTAGE)
Everything was handed to them.
(NARRATING) Always be things
that if you don't handle them
a certain way,
people will reject you.
And they took it all.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
And they stayed loaded
for 20 years
and had a free ride.
But now, they're staring down
the barrel of middle-age burnout
and they don't like it,
so they turn self-righteous.
And they want to
make things hard
on younger people.
As for the rock and roll,
they sold that
for television commercials
a long time ago.
But I always mean
what I'm saying,
and I just go for it.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-They're cold, bloodless people.
It's in their slogans,
it's in their rhetoric,
"No pain, no gain."
"Just do it."
"Life is short, play hard."
"Shit happens. Deal with it."
"Get at a life." These people
went from, "Do your own thing,"
-to, "Just say no."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They went from,
"Love is all you need,"
to, "Whoever winds up
with the most toys wins."
And they went from
cocaine to Rogaine.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-They did.
Fuck these boomers.
Fuck these yuppies,
and fuck everybody
now that I think of it.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
♪ (EPIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Here's George Carlin!
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
CHIEF JUSTICE: I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...
RONALD REAGAN: I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...
-How you doing, doc?
-I'm doing great there, Georgie.
REAGAN: ...that I will
faithfully execute the office
of President
of the United States.
We just got back from the, uh,
inaugural festivities
in Washington.
Thank God for a president
who agrees in totality
of what we morally
stand for here.
MAN: We must have
not only a government
that defends freedom.
We must have a government
that defends the right to life.
(CHANTING)
Fight back, fight AIDS!
REPORTER: Falwell's July issue
of Moral Majority Report
charges the American family
is now threatened
by the AIDS epidemic.
REAGAN: Protect and defend
the Constitution
of the United States.
Well, it's a wait-and-see
for some folks,
you know,
but he's the only one we got.
That's what
I keep hearing people say,
"Well, he's the only president
we have."
-So help you God.
-So help me God.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY CARLIN: In the early '80s,
he was still very disconnected
as a human being.
He was fully aware that he was
always compartmentalizing
his head from his heart.
Like he'd say,
"I live from here up," you know.
I think in some ways
it's all he knew how to do
was go on the road
and get on a stage.
After Mom was sober,
she said to my dad,
"You cannot bring cocaine
in the house ever again."
And he absolutely abided
by that rule.
But my dad wasn't quite ready
to quit
and didn't quit.
And he would have these binges.
He would disappear
for two or three days.
Twice I remember that happening.
A terrifying two or three days,
him gone,
have no idea where he is.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
JERRY HAMZA: He had to
have a buzz going all the time.
But he always got
through his shows.
He got through his shows.
Sometimes he would stop on stage
and forget a line,
but the people were always
very forgiving with him and...
God, you'd look
at the stage afterwards,
there'd be 20 joints
on the stage.
They'd just throw them up
on stage. (LAUGHS)
He took them sometimes too.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
JERRY: He loved his work,
and that's where
he really lived, in the trees.
He lived in his own head.
Thank you very much,
ladies and gentlemen.
My name is George Carlin,
and I am
a professional comedian.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
As opposed to the kind
you run into at work
-all day long.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: Even though the albums
in that time period
were subsiding,
he used to do
the Johnny Carson Show maybe
six days a year,
you know, as a fill-in.
What you do is you pump out
30 pounds of pressure.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-And then you keep, you see--
And it keeps...
You see what it does.
-I love that.
-And it keeps the--
I want one of those.
JERRY: And between that
and what was left of the albums,
-we could do business.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: But I thought
there was a lot more there.
I always thought
there was a lot more there.
Say, that doesn't feel bad,
you know?
-Oh, yeah. Yeah.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And what's really funny is,
I think about George
so many times telling me,
"I'm really practical."
And every time he'd say that,
I almost laughed
right in his face.
I think a lot of us
who sat in the movie theaters
of America as kids,
when we decided we wanted
to be in show business,
-we thought of movies...
-JERRY: Anyway,
what had happened was this.
He had been trying to do a movie
called
The Illustrated George Carlin.
So now I'm finally
taking that step for myself.
I, uh, I have a film idea,
it's called
The Illustrated George Carlin.
We're doing it
outside of the studios.
We're not--
We haven't fooled with them.
We have money independently.
And I says, "Well, how much
money have you raised so far?"
And he says, "None."
When are you going to
have this together?
Should take
another eight months or so.
(CHUCKLES) This was after
three years of paying salaries
and everything
that goes with it.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And then he didn't pay
his taxes properly
for like three years.
Well, let me tell you something.
You figure it out
with your accountant,
and you start adding
the penalties and interests
and everything else.
Plus, the new money
and the taxes on that.
Plus, he was supporting
three families.
He was supporting
his daughter's family,
his brother's family,
and, uh, his own family.
So it was a struggle.
♪ (SLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE: I think Jerry
didn't tell me the awful truth.
Boy, it really looks
fucking bleak
and it's getting worse.
And I have walked away
from this
Illustrated George Carlin thing.
That whole thing collapsed
in flames,
and I cried on the phone
to Brenda.
"I said, "It's over,
I can't do this.
It's not going to work."
And I'm driving down
to Dayton from Toronto,
and I drank a lot of beer
on the way.
And I finally crashed my car
into a fucking pole,
completely demolishing my nose.
I'm working on a new nose.
You might have heard that.
I redesigned a Volvo last month.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: I never did quite
get through that windshield
like they said in the paper.
But, uh, they're working
on the nose for me.
Next year, they're gonna
shine it and buff it
-and do something to it.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: It's my new nose
and I promise this time
not to blow it. Okay?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JERRY: By now,
the business was in the sewer.
So, shit, we were lucky to
go out and pay for the flights
and pay the opening act.
And I'd get on the phone
to get an interview,
and what do you think
they wanted to talk about?
Only one thing. Drugs.
HOST:
You made a reference earlier
-to your drug history.
-Yeah.
HOST: Are you...
Is that all gone completely?
Absolutely. Yeah. And, uh,
well, it was only the one drug,
you know. (CHUCKLES)
-The cocaine.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Uh, and occasionally, you'd take
a little something else with it,
but I was never, uh,
a person who did anything
but as much cocaine as there was
in the immediate
three-county area
-at that time.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE:
But, you know, all you can do
is talk about the truth
because it happened to you.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
COMMENTATOR:
As he sort of checked himself,
David Huff at the defense.
JERRY:
I had tickets to see the Mets,
who George loved,
play the Dodgers, who he hated.
I need one. Fernando!
JERRY: And Fernando Valenzuela
was pitching.
"George told me, "Jerry, I got
a little something in my chest.
I don't know
what the hell it is.
"Maybe it was those hot dogs.
We better get out of here."
Los Angeles fans are notorious
for leaving early,
but because they were winning,
they stuck around.
And I'm glad they did.
'Cause we went downstairs,
got in a limo,
and by now,
George is going like this.
He's stretching his chest.
He's opening his shirt.
And the driver, I says,
"You better go like hell to
the hospital in Santa Monica."
We were doing 110 miles an hour.
And he got us there,
thank goodness.
He was almost dead.
KELLY: They were really not sure
those first 48 hours
what was going to go down,
what was going to happen.
And my mom was told
to go say goodbye to my dad.
I think
that scared the shit out of him.
That heart attack really
put the cocaine in its place.
Because he knew he had
a ticking time bomb
in his chest
His father did drop dead.
JERRY: It was pretty horrible
because he was taking
all these blood thinners.
He'd show up on a plane and,
you know,
his hands would be purple.
And he had a hammer
hanging over his head.
HOST: Here's George Carlin.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
(CHEERING STOPS)
-(DEVICE CLICKING)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This is one
of the new artificial hearts,
which I was given
following my recent illness.
They just... (CLICKS TONGUE)
...put them right in.
And for those of you at home
who are do-it-yourselfers,
these are available
at RadioShack.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I just thought
I'd bring you up to date
on the comedian's
health sweepstakes.
I am now ahead of Richard Pryor
in heart attacks. Two to one.
And Richard is ahead of me
on burning yourself up.
Richard is leading on that.
See, the way it happened
was, uh,
first, Richard
had a heart attack,
uh, then I had a heart attack,
and then Richard
burned himself up.
And then I said, "I think
I'll have another heart attack."
-(CHUCKLES)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Are you happy, George Carlin,
at, what is it, 45?
GEORGE: Well,
I'm happier than I was, say,
a year ago,
or even six months ago.
Uh, since the heart attack,
I've had to take
a very close look
at how I manage stress,
how I handle it,
and apparently,
not very well in the past.
I'm one of those people
who denies feelings.
"No, that's not happening.
Couldn't be. No, never mind."
"What, they did that to me?
No sweat."
"There's another day tomorrow."
And I never expressed my anger
or my sadness.
You really did feel it.
I mean,
all of that stuff coming out
was just so much of a guise?
I got so good at it. No,
but you get so good at it
that you don't know
you're doing it.
Do you ever look back
at the George Carlin
that was eight years ago
and wonder who he was? No?
Well, he's great. He was fine.
He was just a little crazier.
Just a little...
Didn't know what he was doing.
Didn't know what he needed,
you know.
We had-- We had tough years
to go through together.
I'm talking for my wife
and me now, together.
And I was just responding
to being a hit, an overnight.
You know, suddenly, here's
all this stuff happening to me,
and I had this money.
And that takes some adjustment,
you know, so...
He was fine. He was who
he needed to be at that time.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HOST:
You've got some dates coming up.
GEORGE: Yeah, well,
I'm gonna do Carnegie Hall
and we're taping it that night
for my own production company.
And it's going to be
our first cable release.
-HOST: Fantastic.
-GEORGE: So I'm in business
for myself
with my partner, Jerry Hamza.
For a change, I'm going to
get to keep some of this stuff.
I just want to say
I'm really happy
to be here in Carnegie Hall.
Andrew Carnegie is dead,
but I figure fuck him.
We've just found out
that everyone
is in the wrong seat.
Would you please change places
with the person two seats over
and four seats down?
Now, there are also you people
that are sitting
in what is known as the boxes.
I don't want you
to get horny on anything,
'cause... Work out something
about the word boxes.
You'll think of it, George,
you're a clever guy.
Do a stand-up about--
Take the thing
about a place for your stuff,
your house, your home.
And take it from there
and do a whole thing
about what's in the house
and what's in the home.
That's where keep your stuff,
that's where you
keep your stuff.
And you start in talking
about what stuff is in what room
and how you keep it.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Hi there. How are you?
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
How you doing?
How are you doing?
Good evening, everybody.
Hello there. Thank you.
KEVIN SMITH: I remember
when we finally got HBO
in our neck of the woods,
and they announced
Carlin at Carnegie.
It was so early in the days
of HBO and having cable
that we didn't have
the terminology for it.
My father one day
came in to me and he goes,
"George Carlin is going to be
telling jokes
on HBO for over an hour."
I'd like to begin our show
with a prayer.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
A little prayer
that I wrote myself.
Our Father who art in Heaven
and to the republic
for which it stands.
(LAUGHS)
Please God, let me
do a good show tonight.
-Don't let me be an asshole.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Don't let anyone yell,
"too late."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Let the people
really enjoy my jokes tonight.
Let me arrive safely
back at my hotel.
Help me find some shoes
I really like.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Help me also to find
a nymphomaniac coke connection
who owns a Ferrari dealership.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
KEVIN: Nobody was allowed
to curse in our house,
but George Carlin was allowed.
And when he was laughing
with George Carlin,
Dad went away
and there was Don Smith,
some motherfucker I didn't know,
but then my mother fucked.
You know?
So in those moments,
I really got to see
who he was,
and what he found funny.
I was, uh, gonna say to you,
in fact, I'm going to
say that I was awfully nervous
and a little tight too.
I guess that's the same thing,
you know.
I'm just glad to be home
and I'm glad to be...
(VOCALIZING) ...in New York
and back in the borough...
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-...and saying, "Hello!
How are you?"
This is my office.
That's what it is, my office.
Let's face it.
If this is my job,
shit, this has gotta be
my office.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: Actually, this is
just a place for my stuff.
It's all you need, really
is a place for your stuff.
That's what life's all about,
when you think about it,
trying to find a place
to keep your stuff.
Everybody's got to have
a little place
to keep their stuff.
That's why you have pockets.
That's why you have
glove compartments.
That's why they have lockers
at the bus station.
That's all your house is,
really, when you think about it.
That's all your house is,
it's a place for your stuff.
Hey, if you didn't have
so much goddamn stuff,
-you wouldn't need a house.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: Sometimes,
you go to someone else's house,
first thing you notice
in someone else's house
is you don't quite feel
a 100 percent at home.
You know why?
-No room for your stuff.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Someone else's shit
is on the table.
Have you noticed
that their stuff is shit
-and your shit is stuff?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-"Get it off!"
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
"Get that shit off of there
and let me put my stuff down."
JERRY SEINFELD:
A place for my stuff
is highly intellectual
if you look at the skill level,
the brainpower it takes
to break that down.
That is, you know, I don't know,
maybe to some comedians,
that's just a...
observational comedy bit.
To me, it's the elevation
of the ordinary
and the disassembling
of the ordinary.
And that's... There's no better
example of that than that bit.
In essence, it seems like this
light-hearted,
superficial analysis
of, like, the way people value
their own belongings
and how they display them
and those types of things.
But, "My shit is stuff,
and your stuff is shit"
really is the through-line
for the lack of empathy
of people.
Like, even when you think
about cancel culture,
things like that,
"My opinion is valid
but your opinion
is cancel culture and bullshit,"
like, "My thoughts are stuff
and your thoughts are shit."
And it's just this little bit
that he did
on shit you put on your dresser.
-Thank you very much. Goodnight.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And I hope I see you
another time.
Good night, all.
Have a good time, you. Bye-bye.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Thank you.
-Thank you very much.
-JERRY: After the show,
George was in tears
in the dressing room.
See you later.
JERRY: Because he thought,
"Oh, it could have been
so much better
if I could've had two shows."
"There were so many
little things
that I could have changed."
But the show came out
and it exploded.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And that's
what got it going again.
GEORGE: Hello, good morning.
How are you?
What's going on?
What's new? What's happening?
Good evening. Hello.
How is it going?
And what the fuck's
new with you?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: But he still was the guy
whose back
is up against the wall
with the government.
And I used to get a call
every Tuesday
from this guy at the IRS,
"How did we do
over the weekend?"
I think a lot of you know
that I've been through
-several changes in my career.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: He couldn't catch up.
I'm just hoping
you'll hang in there
with me one more time.
A lot of comedians
tell you what they did.
Well, you know, I went--
I was down...
HBO fed the box office
all across the country.
You can tell by listening,
this guy has never been
near a psychiatrist.
So, I was able to keep touring,
and earn money.
If I tell you
something happened,
-it fucking happened, okay?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: And slowly,
I was just learning
how to produce more material,
because I had a need,
I had to stay out there.
Have you ever been
talking to someone
and a little bit of spit
flies off your tongue...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...and lands
right on the man's nose?
Do you ever pour glue on a bird?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Of course not.
You don't have to.
You ever been
sitting in the movies?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: But I wasn't really
going anywhere in my thinking.
Here's something you don't know.
I never fucked a ten,
but one night,
I fucked five twos.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: I had to find my voice.
Some guys will fuck anybody.
Not me. Not anymore.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Not since herpes and AIDS
are going around.
In fact,
just to be on the safe side,
I'm not even
jerking off anymore.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Well, I don't know
where I've been.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
KELLY: He was a road comic
till the day he died.
It was his art form.
It's how he made his living.
And he had an enormous amount
of financial pressure.
So he really had no choice.
Because the IRS threatened
to take their house away
all the time.
That was the leverage.
And that house was everything
to my mother.
And then my mom was alone
all the time.
She didn't have
her life partner.
She didn't have her guy.
And she was like,
"You need to
figure this out differently
because we need to
have a life together."
So they started
going out on dates
and having lunches together.
And then he actually began
taking vacations.
GEORGE: I'm coming in
on you now.
-Zeroing in.
-I am too.
GEORGE: Just perfect.
Brenda.
What?
GEORGE:
Looks great. What a good shot.
KELLY: When all of the noise
of the drugs and alcohol left
and all of the noise
of the career stuff...
GEORGE: Hey, Brenda.
KELLY:
...there was this really nice
little honeymoon period
for them,
where they got to
know each other again.
GEORGE: Okay, that's nice.
KELLY: We had survived so much,
and there was this
incredible love
and an incredible adventure
we'd been through together.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY: And the three of us,
were the only people
on the planet
who really fucking got it.
GEORGE: I am very disturbed
that my actions in the 1970s
concerning my money
and other behaviors
have put me in the position
where I have to be
away from Brenda.
That Brenda is left alone
so much.
I tell her, I say,
"I'm working on our retirement."
I'm trying to
set some things in place
"that will put us
ahead of this game."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
PATTON OSWALT: Comedy is
about the present and the now.
And then life changes
and you hopefully,
as a comedian,
change and evolve with it.
But if you solidify and calcify
and go,
"This is as far
as I'm going to go
and damn it I'm still going to
say these words,"
then you're not engaging
with the world anymore.
You're engaging
with a certain moment in time
that you have decided
to live in forever.
And George ran that risk
for a while in the '80s
of becoming irrelevant.
KLIPH NESTEROFF:
Carlin saw some of the trends
that were happening in stand-up.
Other comedians
are coming along,
they're starting
to do laps around him.
Comedy clubs are opening up.
He paved the way,
but they're not booking him.
He's getting older.
I'm like anybody else
on the planet
I'm very moved
by world hunger...
KLIPH: Sam Kinison
bursts onto the scene
loud and angry.
Yeah, I watch these things on TV
and I see those commercials
and I look at it, I go,
"God, how cruel," you know.
To see a little kid out there,
and I go, "Fuck,"
I know the film crew could
give this kid a sandwich.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
PATTON: So, part of Sam Kinison
inspired George Carlin,
but part of him
scared him a little bit.
But, like any true artist,
if something scares you,
you have to run towards it.
There's a director
five feet away going,
-"Don't feed him yet!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Get that sandwich out of here!
It doesn't work
unless he looks hungry!"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
You want to send them something?
You want to help?
Send them U-Hauls.
Send them U-Hauls, some luggage.
Send them a guy
out there that goes, "Hey!"
(CHUCKLES) "You know,
we've been driving out here
every day with your food
for the last, I don't know,
34 years."
"We've been driving out here
every day across the desert
and it occurred to us
there wouldn't be world hunger
if you people would live
where the food is!"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-"Get out of the desert!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You understand that
you live in a fucking desert?"
GEORGE:
I remember consciously thinking,
"This motherfucker is good,
and he's got ideas."
Without wanting to wipe him out,
I want to raise my level
to where
I'm not lost in his dust.
I've always been
very competitive about this.
And I know that
it gave me the feeling
of run a little faster,
work a little harder.
You know, it's not accumulated
credits here, George.
It's what did you do last week?
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(GEORGE VOCALIZING)
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
♪ Cherry, cherry pie... ♪
The sanctity of life.
Abortion has always been wrong.
It will always be wrong.
GEORGE: And those Reagan years
really represented the rise
to supremacy of darkness
in a way,
the ascendancy of ignorance.
Rock lyrics have turned from,
"I can't get no satisfaction"
to, "I'm going to force you
at gunpoint to eat me alive."
(SHOUTING, CHEERING)
GEORGE: So, my reaction
to the climate
was one of storing up
ammunition.
And the notes began to almost
be exclusively about issues.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI:
The misuse of federal funds,
the embezzlement of funds,
and the stealing...
Shocked by the fact that
a former Secretary
of the Treasury
of such high standing
had failed to file
his tax returns. (SCOFFS)
GEORGE: (SINGING)
♪ Like little Jack Horner ♪
♪ Just sittin' in that corner ♪
♪ Oh, he was eatin' his cherry
Cherry, cherry, cherry pie... ♪
OLIVER NORTH:
Absolutely no recollection
of destroying
any document which...
A few months ago,
I told the American people
I did not
trade arms for hostages.
My heart, to my best intentions,
still tell me that's true.
GEORGE: So now, I said,
I'm beginning to find
my own way to say these things
and to let loose.
My mind wanted now
to produce this other stuff.
My mind just called
all the shots.
My mind and heart said,
"This is what we're doing now."
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Hello, Union City, New Jersey!
Without any further ado,
it gives me
a great deal of pleasure
to introduce a gentleman
who needs no introduction.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
BILL BURR: In 1988,
one of the guys I worked with
was into stand-up.
And we heard on the radio
that they were advertising
George Carlin.
So we ended up
going to the show.
We got tickets because
we were going to go there
to actually,
I can't believe this,
to laugh at him.
That he was this older comic
who is still doing all these
old bits that we heard
and I remember the whole week,
he just kept going,
"More stuff!"
And I kinda bought into it.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-Hey there, we doing all right?
Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
BILL:
And George Carlin came out...
Hello. Hiya. Thank you.
...with like a howitzer.
I really haven't seen this
many people in one place
since they took
the group photographs
of all the criminals
and lawbreakers
in the Ronald Reagan
administration.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-BILL: It was like...
Two-hundred and twenty-five
of them so far.
"...Who is this guy?"
See, that's what
you got to remember.
This is the Ronald Reagan
administration
we're talking about. These are
the law-and-order people.
These are the people
who are against street crime.
They want to put
street criminals in jail
to make life safer
for the business criminals.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They're against street crime.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Keep in mind,
these Reagan people
are the ones that were going to
get government off our backs.
Remember that?
That was the rhetoric
of the 1980 campaign.
We'll get government
off your backs
and out of your lives.
Yeah, but they still want to
tell you what magazines
you can read.
And they still want to tell you
what rock lyrics
you can listen to.
And they still want to force
your kids to pray in school.
And they still want to tell you
what you can say on the radio.
So, these Reagan people,
these right wingers, in general,
they're against homosexuality.
They're against pornography.
They're against sex education.
They're against abortion.
Yeah, they're going to
get government off your back,
but they're going to tell you
how to live your sex life.
And let me ask you this,
how would they know
anything about it?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Have you ever
taken a look at those people?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
No wonder they're afraid
of their bodies.
Take a look at them.
Doesn't it strike you
as mildly ironic
that most of the people
who are against abortion
are people you wouldn't
want to fuck in the first place?
Does that strike you
a little strange?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
Hey, I'm the first one to say
it's a great country,
but it's a strange culture.
This is a country
where gun store owners
are given a list
of stolen credit cards,
but not a list
of criminals and maniacs.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And now they're thinking
about banning toy guns
and they're going to
keep the fucking real ones!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
BILL: I would say it was
like a Miles Davis thing.
George has like, one,
two, three, four,
five distinct periods of growth
where he would leave a segment
of his audience behind.
Like-- When he was, like,
working clean from a team
to then becoming
the counterculture guy,
to then being that guy
in the '80s,
then that dude in the '90s,
and each time,
it was like a boa constrictor.
It just got more pointed
and more like,
"Fuck, man. This guy is scaring
the shit out of me.
Where's this country going?"
Um, the courage that
that takes to do that,
that is like, "Hey, man,
I'm going in this direction."
You either come along with me
or you don't.
And I don't give a shit
if there's 3,000
or three people
listening to this.
This is what I believe.
"This is what I want to say
and I'm saying it."
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
JERRY: He developed a style
and he started talking
about things
that were more serious
and more meaningful.
First, he would come out
with a hard joke
right in the beginning.
Don't you think
it's just a little bit strange
that Ronald Reagan
had an operation on his asshole
and George Bush had an operation
on his middle finger, huh?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
He always had something
where he used to call
for the audience.
You know,
"We're going to blow up America,
but now,
here are a few fart jokes."
They were always in there.
Have you ever been
in a serious social situation
when you suddenly realize
you have to pull the underwear
out of the crack in your ass?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You take this woman
to be your lawful wedded wife?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Huh? Who? Her? Oh, hell yeah."
JERRY: When it got
about 20 minutes out,
he had a piece
that was a hammer.
And it was what he was
really doing the show for.
Sanctity of life.
You believe in it?
Personally, I think
it's a bunch of shit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Well, I mean, life is sacred?
Who said so? God?
Hey, if you read history,
you realize that
God is one of the leading causes
of death.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Has been for thousands of years.
Hindus, Muslims,
Jews, Christians,
all taking turns
killing each other
because God told them
it was a good idea.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"The sword of God,
the blood of the lamb,
vengeance is mine."
Millions of dead motherfuckers.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Millions of dead motherfuckers
all because they gave
the wrong answer
to the God question.
"You believe in God?"
"No." (BLOWS) Dead.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You believe in God?" "Yes."
"You believe in my God?" "No."
(BLOWS) Dead.
"My God has a bigger dick
than your God."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
We watched the arc
of a creative person
that just stayed with it
until they broke through
to that next evolution
that he went through,
because it felt like,
"Yes, I'm a--"
"You know me as this goofy guy
that is a wonderful wordsmith
and I can always find ways
to say things, and I'm now,
I have been pushed to the point,
by what I have seen in my years,
where none of that
is there anymore,
"and I need to tell you
exactly what is going on."
We can't get rid of this
war mentality
from our public life.
We got a war on poverty,
war on crime, war on cancer,
war on litter, war on drugs.
Did you ever notice
we don't have
a war on homelessness?
No war on homelessness.
You know why?
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-You know why?
I'll tell you why,
because there's no money in it.
There's no money
in that problem.
Nobody stands to get rich
off of that problem.
You find a solution
to homelessness
where the businessmen
and the politicians
can steal a couple
of million dollars each,
you'll see
the streets of America
begin to clear up pretty fast.
It seemed he had
another goal in mind,
which was to push your thinking.
These people need physical,
tangible structures,
low-cost housing. But
where are you going to put it?
I think that was
the biggest thing
that attracted me to him,
especially young,
because your critical thinking
is starting to really, like,
tick up a bunch.
And you're starting to
really be like,
"Why do I have to
take off my hat in class?
What's that have to do
with me learning?
It's not blocking my brain."
We got a thing
in this country called NIMBY.
N-I-M-B-Y, "Not In My Backyard."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-That's what they call it.
People don't want
anything near them,
especially if it might
help somebody else.
To then be introduced
to another, like,
critical thinker who's like,
"Hey, society,
what's up with these rules?"
"What's up with these standards?
What's up with trying to
inflict this stuff
on everybody?"
Once you hear
another perspective,
you can't unhear it,
so you do have to then decide
who you are after that.
It's just the facts.
Well, I got an idea where we can
put some low-cost housing,
golf courses.
This is just what we need.
Golf courses.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Plenty of good land.
Plenty of good land
in nice neighborhoods,
land that's devoted now
to a meaningless,
mindless activity
engaged in primarily
by White well-to-do
male businessmen
who use the game to make deals
to get together
to carve the country up
a little finer among themselves.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Golf is an arrogant--
an arrogant, elitist game
and it takes up entirely
too much room in this country.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Entirely too much room.
Listen to me. You know
much room it takes up?
Seventeen thousand golf courses,
about 150 acres each.
That's three million acres.
That's 4,800 square miles.
Two Rhode Islands and a Delaware
you could build for the homeless
on the land
that's currently devoted
to this meaningless, mindless,
arrogant, elitist, racist game.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Racist game, racist game.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
The reason I believe in blunt,
almost violent presentation
of my ideas these days,
is because what is happening to
everyone...
it is not gentle,
it is not subtle.
It is direct, hard, and violent
what is being done
to the lives of people.
The real violence goes on
every day unheard, unreported,
and it is not sufficient
to have a clever riposte,
a clever line, huh?
"Fuck you, cocksuckers,"
is my approach.
The bloodiest,
most brutal wars fought,
all based on religious hatred,
which is fine with me.
Any time a bunch of Holy people
wanna kill each other...
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
GEORGE:
One of the problems of Americans
is they can't face reality.
And that's why when it comes
crashing down,
no one's going to be prepared
to handle it,
because they're not
used to it anymore.
I mean,
everything is glossed over.
"Oh, that's not happening."
Feel-good presidents.
"That's not happening.
That's not happening.
Let's make believe
this isn't happening."
And suddenly,
we're going to have to face it.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
I remember one time
Carlin said to me...
"I'm not in show business.
I'm a comedian."
It's like,
"Oh, this is gangster."
I took it to mean
that comedians,
you know, we're thinkers,
but when you think about,
you know, the history of man,
you know,
man used to love philosophers.
We don't really have
philosophers anymore,
but we have comedians.
So, Carlin encompassed
all those things.
That's what he meant.
Like, "This is what we do.
This is the life we've chosen."
We're, you know, kind of
a secret society, in a sense.
I think... I was talking
to Seinfeld last night
and it's kind of like
the same thing.
Okay, fine. Fine.
You want the comedian
to be your lens on society?
Go. Enjoy it. But for me...
I've never heard a comic bit
that changed my opinion
on anything.
Except a great bit changes
my opinion of that comedian.
♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Hey, look out there.
It's these meaty guys.
Wayne! How ya doing, Wayne?
People sometimes say to me,
"Are you trying to
make people think?"
"I say, "No, no. That would be
the kiss of death.
What I want to do is
to let them know I'm thinking."
You have to be
somewhat of an egotist
to stand up
all your life and say,
"Listen to me.
Please pay attention."
And that's fine. I can
live with that about myself.
But if I'm going to
call attention to myself,
I want to show them something
a little different
from time to time.
I want to find a voice
that isn't like all the others.
So I like to find out
where their line may be
and deliberately cross it,
and then make them glad
they came.
Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya,
you got some Brown people
in your country.
Tell them to watch the fuck out
or we'll goddamn bomb them.
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
That's-- If they're laughing
or at some point
when they extend the laugh,
or they begin to applaud
one of those lines,
I'll be filling that time
by going...
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
HOST:
If you were a new comic today,
if you came along
right as you are right now,
you had never made a record,
no one had ever heard of you.
GEORGE:
I'd kill. I'd absolutely kill.
I'm doing my very best work
right now.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-Yeah. Okay.
It's been a little while.
It's been a little while
since I've been here,
and a couple of things
have happened in that time.
I'd like to talk a little bit
about the war
-in the Persian Gulf.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Big doings in the Persian Gulf.
You know my favorite part
of that war?
It's the first war we ever had
that was on every channel
plus cable.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the war got
good ratings too, didn't it?
Got good ratings.
Well, we like war.
We like war.
We're a war-like people.
We like war
because we're good at it,
and it's a good thing we are.
We're not very good
at anything else anymore.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Huh? Can't build a decent car.
Can't make a TV set
or a VCR worth a fuck.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Got no steel industry left.
Can't educate our young people.
Can't get healthcare
to our old people,
but we can bomb the shit
out of your country, all right.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
We can bomb the shit
out of your country, all right.
-(CHEERING)
-(GEORGE IMITATING EXPLOSIONS)
Especially, if your country
is full of Brown people.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Oh, we like that, don't we?
That's our hobby.
That's our new job in the world,
bombing Brown people.
Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya,
you got some
Brown people in your country.
Tell them to watch
the fuck out...
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-...or we'll goddamn bomb them.
Well, when's the last
White people
you can remember that we bombed?
Can you remember
the last White...
Can you remember
any White people
we've ever bombed?
The Germans,
those are the only ones,
and that's only because
they were trying to
-cut in on our action.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They wanted to
dominate the world.
Bullshit,
that's our fucking job.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-That's our fucking job!
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
Well, you know,
Jammin' In New York,
he always-- When he talked about
Jammin' In New York,
he said the reason
that it was so profound for him
was that it was the first time
that he felt like
he was a real writer.
That show was a life changer
for me in 1992.
It made me realize I was more
of an artist than a performer.
You know, for another comedian
to hear that,
it's like, "Wow. Okay, sure.
Whatever you say, you weren't
a real writer until then. Okay."
I'm a stand-up comic.
It's a vulgar art.
It's the people's art.
I'll always be that.
I'm nothing but a vulgar,
stand-up comedian performer,
show business guy,
but I'm a writer, too.
There's an artist at work
in here.
There's an artist at work
alongside the performer,
and that made me feel different.
Jammin' In New York
was the first time
that those values showed
in the piece called,
The Planet is Fine.
The People Are Fucked.
We're so self-important.
So self-important.
Everybody's gotta save
something now. Save the trees.
Save the bees. Save the whales.
Save those snails.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the greatest arrogance
of all, save the planet. What?
Are these fucking people
kidding me? Save the planet?
We don't even know how to
take care of ourselves yet.
We haven't learned how to care
for one another.
We're going to save
the fucking planet?
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-I'm getting tired of that shit.
Tired of that shit, tired.
I'm tired of fucking Earth Day.
I'm tired of these
self- righteous
environmentalists.
These White bourgeois liberals
who think the only thing wrong
with this country
is there aren't enough
bicycle paths.
People trying to make
the world safe for their Volvos.
Besides, environmentalists
don't give a shit
about the planet.
They don't care
about the planet.
Not in the abstract, they don't.
Not in the abstract, they don't.
You know what
they're interested in?
A clean place to live.
Their own habitat.
They're worried that
someday in the future,
they might be personally
inconvenienced.
Narrow,
unenlightened self-interest
doesn't impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong
with the planet.
Nothing wrong with the planet.
The planet is fine.
-The people are fucked.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Difference. Difference.
The planet is fine.
Compared to the people,
the planet is doing great.
It's been here four
and a half billion years.
Do you ever think
about the arithmetic?
The planet has been here
four and a half billion years.
We've been here what,
100,000? Maybe 200,000,
and we've only been engaged
in heavy industry
for a little over 200 years.
Two hundred years
versus four and a half billion,
and we have the conceit to think
that somehow we're a threat.
That somehow
we're going to put in jeopardy
this beautiful little
blue-green ball
that's just a-floating
around the sun.
The planet has been through
a lot worse than us.
Been through all kinds of things
worse than us.
Been through earthquakes,
volcanoes, plate tectonics,
continental drift, solar flares,
sunspots, magnetic storms,
the magnetic reversal
of the poles.
Hundreds of thousands of years
of bombardment by comets
and asteroids and meteors,
worldwide floods, tidal waves,
worldwide fires, erosion,
cosmic rays,
recurring ice ages and we think
some plastic bags...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
...and some aluminum cans
are going to make a difference?
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-The planet... the planet...
the planet isn't going anywhere.
We are.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
We're going away.
Pack your shit, folks.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-We're going away
and we won't leave
much of a trace either.
Thank God for that.
Maybe a little Styrofoam, maybe.
A little Styrofoam.
Planet will be here.
We'll be long gone.
Just another failed mutation.
Just another
closed-end biological mistake,
an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
The planet will shake us off
like a bad case of fleas.
A surface nuisance.
-(BLOWS)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
That haunting sound effect
of the Earth
just shaking us off, he goes...
(BLOWS) And I remember
I-- I-- like--
I felt like a jolt in my chest,
you know, when you lean back
on a chair or something,
when he did that,
of the way
he so brutally and eloquently
showed the insignificance
of human beings and humanity.
To be fair, the planet probably
sees us as a mild threat.
Something to be dealt with,
and I'm sure
the planet will defend itself...
BILL: A lot of the stuff
that he was saying,
it was hard for some people
to listen to it,
because it was so searingly
and brutally honest.
What would you do
if you were the planet
trying to defend
against this pesky,
troublesome species? "Let's see.
What might... Hmm, Viruses."
Viruses might be good.
They seem vulnerable
to viruses.
And viruses are tricky,
always mutating
and forming new strains,
"whenever a vaccine
is developed."
The thing that
is so key with George
is he's not afraid of silence.
And so I think
when your comedian
has a specific agenda,
especially one that is
so explicitly political,
and so explicitly, like,
"I'm going to
confront the things
that you think
you don't want me to confront,"
you have to be able to
keep your back stiff.
Because if the audience
sees you back off,
then they got you.
Pro-life conservatives
are obsessed with a fetus
from conception to nine months.
After that, they don't want to
know about you.
They don't want to
hear from you. No nothing.
No neonatal care, no daycare,
no Head Start,
no school lunch, no food stamps,
no welfare, no nothing.
If you're preborn, you're fine.
If you're preschool,
-you're fucked.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-You're fucked.
-(LAUGHING, CHEERING)
Conservatives don't give
a shit about you
until you reach military age.
Then they think
you are just fine.
Just what they've been
looking for.
Conservatives want live babies
so they can raise them
to be dead soldiers.
Pro-life, they're not pro-life.
You know what they are?
They're anti-woman.
Simple as it gets,
anti-woman.
They don't like them.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Here's another question I have.
How come when it's us,
it's an abortion,
and when it's a chicken,
it's an omelet?
Are we so much better
than chickens all of a sudden?
Name six ways
we're better than chickens.
See, nobody can do it.
You know why? Because
chickens are decent people.
Is a fetus a human being?
This seems to be
the central question.
Well, if a fetus
is a human being,
how come the census
doesn't count them?
Just looking for
a little consistency here
in these
anti-abortion arguments...
No one is ever more himself
than at that moment
when he laughs
because it's very Zen-like,
that moment.
You are completely yourself
when the message hits that brain
and you understand it
and then the laugh begins.
If a new idea slips
into that moment,
it gets in and has a place
to start to grow a little.
At the same time,
you've had to surrender yourself
to that moment,
and it's a perfect union.
It's a genuine,
momentary communion.
They wouldn't have
experienced it without you,
and you wouldn't have
experienced it without them.
Maybe it's one of the things
that you seek
by following this path
is to have some power like that.
To be able to say,
"Stop in your tracks
and consider me."
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
I'm speaking to my friends,
the Catholics,
when John Cardinal O'Connor
of New York
and some of these
other cardinals
and bishops have experienced
their first pregnancies
and their first labor pains
and they've raised a couple
of children on minimum wage,
then I'll be glad to hear
what they have to say
about abortion.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-I'm sure it'll be interesting.
Enlightening, too. But... but...
in the meantime,
what they ought to be doing
is telling these priests
who took a vow of chastity
to keep their hands off
the altar boys.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
When Jesus said,
"Suffer the little children,
"come unto me," that's not what
He was talking about.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This will be the best fair ever!
-Mr. Conductor?
-Look what I won at the fair!
Besides winning
all these prizes,
I had a whole baked bean.
HASAN MINHAJ: Like most kids,
my introduction to comedy
was my freshman year of college.
I was one of those kids where
I only knew Carlin
as the dude
from Shining Time Station.
Honestly, he was just the dude
from Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventure.
Greetings, my excellent friends.
ALEX WINTER:
The Rufus that you see
is the Carlin
that we knew off-camera.
Right, it was this gentle,
paternal...
It wasn't like, "Hey, now
I'm doing my thing." You know.
And I think
everyone expected that.
Like, no one complained
about this.
I'm not like going to
create some mythology.
I'm only telling you
what the set vibe was.
And that was
what the set vibe was.
♪ (MID-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ALEX: One of the things
I respected about him so much,
and I think one of the things
that drew me to him
when I was young,
there was a kind of
open-heartedness to him.
-Gentlemen...
-ALEX: And front and center
-were his values.
-...we're history.
Whoa!
Hi, Tom. Hot baked goods.
KELLY:
I don't think he ever gave up
on the Danny Kaye dream.
Well, hello, Susan.
You look fabulous this morning.
I'm so glad you both got laid.
He loved doing
Shining Time Station.
He loved being Rufus.
Then he calls me up.
He said, "I got a TV show."
I said, "Oh, how cool is that?"
Hey, don't buy any book
by a stand-up comedian
who's got a sitcom.
They don't know
what they're talking about.
He says,
"Yeah, you're on the payroll."
I said, "What's my job?"
And he says, "To help maintain
my New York attitude."
With a broomstick!
HOST: George Carlin stars
in The George Carlin Show
on Sunday nights.
He plays George O'Grady.
If I was willing to apologize,
I could have
stayed in the altar boys,
the Boy Scouts, the choir,
three Catholic schools,
and the Air Force.
First of all, my acting bug
has never been satisfied,
and I had Sam Simon.
Sam's credentials include Taxi,
Cheers, Tracy Ullman,
and The Simpsons.
I thought at 56, maybe
I owe Brenda, my wife,
and me a shot
at a real home run.
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
I've always been an outsider
and a loner,
in my life and in my career.
Onstage, out there alone,
you've written
everything yourself,
you deliver it yourself,
you're directing and producing.
It's a complete solo act.
And I just think
there's a part of me
that wants to belong,
that wants to be
a part of a group
that wants to collaborate.
And that's what acting is,
the ultimate collaborative art.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
My dad did it... because
he wanted to stay at home
and spend time with my mom
and get off the fucking road.
He was tired.
He was sold the idea
that you can stay home
and have a life.
But Dad started working
14-hour days
and realizing that
he was not home with my mom.
And he was exhausted.
And irritated and at war
with his other
executive producer.
SAM SIMON: At the time,
this is when Seinfeld
was looking at 250 million
dollars from his show.
And he said it,
he felt he owed it to his family
to hit a home run,
but they wanted to change
the tone of the network.
So, in spite
of pretty good numbers,
the show was canceled.
He's a guy that wrote
all his own material
and got on the stage by himself,
and just the nature of what
we were doing isn't that.
So it's just weird
that he considers it
this black mark and this failure
'cause you just go,
"Well, that's TV."
That's why most comedians fail.
We're not good collaborators,
obviously. (CHUCKLES)
Why the hell are you
up there by yourself?
Because that's how
you feel comfortable.
I remember
somebody asking me once,
"Would you ever consider
doing a Broadway play?"
And I went, "You mean
where I would have to wait"
till someone else
finishes talking before I talk?
"Why would I do that?"
That's when you have to
melt yourself down
and pour yourself into
a different bottle,
to collaborate.
Hey, the streets are safer
with you behind bars.
GEORGE:
When they called me...
Well, I won't be in here long!
...and told me
it had been canceled...
They haven't made the jail
that can hold George O'Grady.
...I said, "Thank you."
It was a detour that
I had to make one final time.
And there'll be a trial
of dead screws behind me.
CALLER: Hi, George.
I'm a big fan of yours.
I loved your show.
It didn't make it.
Are we going to
see you on TV again?
No, I'm very happy
that it didn't make it
because I really didn't fit
in that kind of
commercial comedy setting.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
GEORGE: Trouble is it was fun
on the stage,
it wasn't fun in the offices,
and that's fine.
I'm happy
to be doing what I love
and that is my stand up.
This next piece of material
is real simple.
It's called
"Free-Floating Hostility."
Cultural items I'm bored with,
tired of, and pissed at.
People who make quote marks
in the air with their fingers.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-What about these people
who tell you
their needs aren't being met?
What about these guys
who tell you,
"I heard that."
Too many vehicles.
White guys who wear
their baseball hats backwards?
What is all this shit
about angels?
What the fuck do White people
have to be blue about?
Something else
I don't understand,
-motivation tapes.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGH)
Banana Republic
ran out of khakis?
Now suddenly,
everyone is walking around
with their own
personal bottle of water.
When did we get
so thirsty in America?
Three out of four people
now believe in angels.
-What, are you fucking stupid?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Besides, if you're motivated
enough to go to the store
to buy a motivation book,
aren't you motivated enough
to do that?
So you don't need the book.
Put it back, tell the court,
"Fuck you. I'm motivated.
I'm going home.
-I'm going home."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I'm getting a little tired
of hearing
that after six policemen
get arrested
for shoving a floor lamp
up some Black guy's ass
and ripping his intestines out,
the Police Department announces
they're going to
have sensitivity training.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I say, "Hey, if you need
special training to be told"
not to jam a large
cumbersome object
up someone else's asshole,
maybe you're too fucked up
to be on the police force
in the first place.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe not. I don't know.
You know what they oughta do?
They oughta have
two new requirements
for being on the police,
intelligence and decency.
You never can tell.
It might just work.
It certainly
hasn't been tried yet.
(CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
REPORTER: George Carlin,
the hippy-dippie weatherman,
turned 60 this month, 60,
and this ninth-grade dropout...
Yeah, Cardinal Hayes...
REPORTER: ...I know.
I didn't believe it either,
somewhere along the way
fell in love with ideas
and words and has just written
his first book,
Braindroppings, which questions
some of the major issues
of our time.
When it comes to bullshit,
truly Major League bullshit,
you have to
stand back in awe,
in awe of the all-time
heavyweight champion
of false promises
and exaggerated claims,
religion.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Organized religion,
it's no contest.
Religion easily, easily,
has the best bullshit story
of all time. Think about it.
Religion has convinced people
that there's an invisible man
living in the sky
who watches everything you do
-every minute of every day.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the invisible man
has a list
of ten specific things
-he doesn't want you to do.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And if you do
any of these things,
he will send you
to a special place...
of burning and fire and smoke
and torture and anguish
for you to live forever
and suffer and burn and scream
until the end of time.
-But he loves you.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-He loves you.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
He loves you and he needs money.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
He always needs money.
He's all-powerful, all-present,
all-knowing, and all-wise.
-Just can't handle money.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Do you feel your place
in comedy now?
Do you feel that place?
Is that...
That is growing on me.
I think longevity
is a wonderful thing.
Sometimes you get applause
just for not being dead
-when you say...
-(LAUGHS)
It's true. When you say,
"I'm going to be 60,"
they applaud that.
Wonderful, he's not dead, 60.
Uh, so, but,
but I'm getting a sense of it.
You know, when you're in planes
three days a week.
I go out every Friday,
I come home every Monday.
It's three different cities,
three different nights,
airports, hotel lobbies,
and people are wonderful.
People-- I love individuals.
I hate groups of people.
I hate people who have
a group of people
with a common purpose,
because pretty soon
they have little hats...
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-...you know, and armbands,
and fight songs,
and a list of people
they're going to visit
at 3:00 a.m.
So, I dislike
and despise groups of people,
but I love individuals.
And so, cumulatively,
I have gotten the feeling
that I'm in this big family.
A family life I never had,
by the way,
this so to say, extended family
of people who feel like
you're their cousin.
Just like,
"Georgie, in 1961, I saw you.
Hey, remember that?" "Yes."
"Oh, and you know
what you said?" I said, "Did I?"
"Oh, yes." It's just great.
And so, cumulatively,
you say, "Well,
I guess I'm in the family.
I guess it's okay."
JOURNALIST:
He's there, George! George.
GEORGE: I met my wife, Brenda,
35 years ago in a nightclub
in Dayton, Ohio.
And she has taken every step
of this trip with me.
In the beginning,
she sat back
of those bad nightclubs
and had to watch my second show
when the 12 people
in the audience
had already seen my first show
and I was forced to do
the B material.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
She gave birth to our
miraculous daughter, Kelly,
who once slept
on the stage right near me
all through a show I did
at a college in Georgia.
She was nine years old.
Kelly, not Brenda.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Then, in 1970, when I discovered
I had to follow my heart
and go from a suit and tie
to a beard and jeans,
and take a pay cut
of about 80 percent,
Brenda never blinked.
Never blinked.
Even though
it meant walking away
from the purchase
of our very first home,
which was in escrow at the time.
And you know what she said?
When I told her
what I wanted to do,
she said, "I'm going to make up
your new press kit."
She's the best
I could ever have wished for.
So, Brenda, thank you.
-Thank you.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And Brenda,
as they say on these occasions,
half of this belongs to you.
I promise you, later on,
when we sell this thing...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...I'll split the money
with you.
Thanks, everybody,
very, very much. Thank you.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CROWD: Surprise!
(CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
HOST:
You've had a long, successful,
-happy marriage.
-GEORGE: Yes, sir.
HOST: In a society
where that's unusual,
in a profession
where it's very unusual.
GEORGE: Brenda and I were lucky
to have found one another.
We had our problems
as everyone has.
We had to get past
some bad things,
but we always had
our senses of humor.
And we always had
a kind of loyalty to each other.
"I think there's
a little aspect of, "You know,
we did this and here we are.
"It's us. It's not you and me.
It's us."
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY: When my mom got sick...
from liver cancer,
the oncologist said to us
she has maybe
three months to live.
And so he was in denial a bit
about it. I certainly was.
We have a family meeting,
and we were going to have
a big 60th birthday
for my dad. And my dad says,
"We're not going to
do this birthday party.
Let's do it when Mom stabilizes
in a few months."
And none of us are talking about
what's actually going on,
which is my mother's not
going to be alive in six months.
Nobody's talking about it.
And then my dad says,
"I have to go on the road."
And it's like a ten-day trip
he's got to go on the road.
And I'm like, "What?"
I'm furious inside,
and at the same time,
stupefied by my own inability
to say, "You have to stay home."
JEFF ABRAHAM: You know,
he had his first book
coming out, Braindroppings.
And he had this press tour.
You know, we had started
probably about a month or so
just prior to that.
And he would go out,
do a couple dates,
race home, see Brenda.
And he was all set
to do Letterman.
You know, he flew to New York
"and he got the call, "Brenda's
probably not going to make it
through the weekend."
JERRY:
I don't know if she was dead
when he walked in the room
or not,
but I do remember
that she had a teardrop.
And George took a Kleenex
and wiped her eye
and saved that Kleenex
till the day he died.
Brenda.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
KELLY: She died on Mother's Day.
But to watch my dad...
take her, um...
face in his hands,
and he was just like,
"Oh, Brenny. Oh, Brenny.
I'm so sorry."
And it was just like...
you know,
they loved each other so much,
and, um...
it was such a fucked way
for it to end.
I just pretty much after that
dedicated myself, you know,
"I'm not going to
pretend anymore.
I'm not pretending
with my dad anymore."
My dad and I actually,
after that, we were like,
"All right, we need to learn
how to talk to each other."
Because we got
how fucked up it all was.
LARRY KING: Tragedy came into
George Carlin's life recently
after a long
and very happy marriage,
the death of his wife.
And this book wasn't--
-You didn't time it this way.
-GEORGE: No.
So you're committed
to this tour.
I'm sure
you wouldn't be out on it.
Brenda was ill at the time
the book tour was being booked.
And I like to say,
Brenda not only
was the light of my life,
she was the keeper
of my dreams.
How do you
deal with it, George?
Well, you just have to
get each day done
a little bit at a time.
And you go
from emotion to logic.
During the first few weeks,
there's so many things to do
and think about
that you bounce back and forth
between feeling and thinking.
And there are times
when you hit a low.
And there are times
when you're okay, sort of.
Do you live lots of memories
-when you have that many years?
-Oh, yes.
Every city that I've been in
on my own,
I've been in with Brenda.
Almost every one.
We drove every mile
of this country together.
Early in the marriage,
we lived out of our Dodge Dart.
It's not just sorrow and loss.
It's savoring what you had.
♪ (SORROWFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Excuse me.
Fill them pews, people.
That's the key.
Grab the little ones as well.
Hook them while they're young.
So, in 1998, we get ready
to make this picture, Dogma.
When we were casting,
they were like...
All right. Mistakes were made.
..."Who do you see
as Cardinal Glick?"
And I said, "George Carlin."
Now, we all know
how the majority and the media
in this country
view the Catholic Church.
KEVIN: One day
he came up to me on set,
"he goes, "As you know,
my wife just passed away.
I'm not ready to take off
my wedding band yet."
So what I came up with is,
if it's okay with you
and if it's okay for the movie,
if I put a Band-Aid,
if Cardinal Glick has a Band-Aid
on his finger the whole movie,
it would allow me
to keep my wedding band on
"because it's just too soon."
ROCCO URBISCI:
There's a period of healing
you have to go through,
and then you realize,
you know, you're still here.
And they would want you
to do what you do.
That's a gift you were given,
and for you not to do it
would be a sin.
So George did
what he always did,
went home...
(LIGHT TAPPING)
...and wrote.
♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
Religion tries to tell us
that there's meaning
and that there's purpose
and there's design,
and there isn't.
It is all chaos
and random and chance.
Religion takes a basic impulse
we all have,
which is a spiritual yearning.
To be reunited somehow
with the universe.
And that's what religion
exploits.
They call it God.
They say he has rules,
and I think it's cruel.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
GEORGE: I have pulled away
and I now reside out
where the Oort cloud is,
where the comets gather.
I finally decided
that I would dissociate myself,
view all of this as an absurd,
tragic comedy,
and really have a point of view
that allowed me
to say anything that felt right,
that expressed how I was
reacting to all of this,
and how it made me feel.
I sort of gave up
on the human race
and decided that
I didn't care about the outcome.
"Not caring about the outcome."
What do you mean by that?
Right. Not having
an emotional stake
in whether this experiment
with human beings works.
I really don't care.
I love people as I meet them
one by one. People are
just wonderful as individuals.
You see the whole universe
in their eyes
if you look carefully.
But as soon as they begin
to group,
as soon as they begin to clot,
when there are five of them
or ten, or even groups
as small as two,
they begin to change.
They sacrifice the beauty
of the individual
for the sake of the group.
I decided it was all
under the control of groups now,
whether it's business, religion,
political people or what.
And I would distance myself
from wishing for a good outcome.
Let it do what it's going to do
and I'll enjoy it
as an entertainment.
And not reflect on
what it is on its own?
And when you say to yourself,
"I don't care what happens."
It just gives you
a broader perspective
for the art,
for the words to emerge.
JON: The only other person
that I had a similar feeling
about was Kurt Vonnegut,
who struck me
as incredibly humanistic.
Someone with great care
for the individual,
of great empathy, but of a real
mistrust of institutions.
When you'd talk to him,
everything was so rational.
If that was his spirituality,
I think,
it was in the rational mind.
But I think he also
felt outside of life.
JERRY: He would never talk like,
"Oh, I'm going to die,"
but I think he felt that way,
that his days were numbered.
There are so many dates
that I had to cancel
because George had to
go to the hospital.
So I know he was afraid of it.
And what George needed,
you know, he couldn't be alone.
He didn't...
It was a funny combination,
he didn't really want to
interact with people,
but he wanted somebody around.
You know, if he was going to
get on the phone
after a show and call
and talk about his show,
he wanted somebody
to pick up the phone.
And, you know, he could
throw the I love you's around,
but what I think
he really wanted
was to say,
"Hey, I tried that joke."
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And then he met Sally.
SALLY WADE: One day,
I went to the bookstore
with my dog, Spot.
And the only two people in there
were George and myself.
I told myself, if he bent down
to pet Spot,
that I would say hello to him.
And he bent down
and pet Spot right away.
Our conversation
at the time was,
he was trying to transform
from being--
from doing into being
and he was tired of always doing
and he wanted to just
be who he was.
He walked me out to my car
and said that he'd call me
in eight months.
He wanted to wait.
He wanted to honor
the marriage that he'd lost.
And it would take eight months
for it to be a year.
I figured I'd never see him
again. And eight months later,
he called and asked me
if I wanted to go get a bagel.
My instincts told me
that he was a really nice guy.
And my instincts were wrong.
He was much nicer than that.
He was sweeter than that.
I mean,
he was the sweetest person
I think I've ever met.
AUTOMATED VOICE:
Thursday, 3:46 a.m.
GEORGE:
Hi, baby. How are you doing?
Well, it's over.
It went very well.
A lot of laughs.
They were a good audience.
AUTOMATED VOICE:
Saturday, 6:51 p.m.
GEORGE: We're on the air today
from Connecticut.
How do you like that?
A special broadcast
to one person.
A fine, fine girl.
Her name is Sally Wade.
Wow-ee, I say,
"Wow, look at that Sal',
she is some dish. Wow-ee."
SALLY: We just started
writing notes to each other.
And those evolved into us
being from a different planet,
and that we were just a couple
of five-year-olds
writing as very astute kids
from Jupiter.
GEORGE: The Jupiterian king
is out there goofing.
I'm out there goofing.
We were weird.
And our weirdness connected.
So we married ourselves.
We didn't have
the proper paperwork,
but we didn't think
we needed that.
Saturday, 5:18 a.m.
GEORGE: ♪ As the sun
Comes up in Baltimore ♪
♪ And the ships
Sail out to sea ♪
♪ I get out of bed
And stretch my balls ♪
♪ And I take a fucking pee ♪
There's a lovely tune for you.
I love you. Goodbye, baby.
(RECEIVER CLATTERS)
KEVIN:
So, we were sitting around,
doing rehearsal.
It was me, him, and Ben.
And he started talking
about Sally and he talked about,
he's like, "I love it.
It makes me feel young."
We play this game where
we're not really a part
of this fucking world anymore,
where we enter
the kingdom of the fairies
"and she's the fairy queen
and I'm the fairy king."
And he went on
this, like, very eloquent,
very uncharacteristic
of George Carlin,
you know, almost
fucking Ren Fest-y explanation.
I wanted to wave him off
and be like,
"Not in front of Affleck."
Um, because as soon as we left,
Ben just immediately cornered me
and was just like,
"Did you hear the part
where he's the fairy king?"
♪ (CALM MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ALLEY MILLS-BEAN:
He seemed like a little boy.
(CHUCKLES) I mean,
I don't know George from before,
so I don't know what he was like
as a man earlier in his life,
but I felt like...
both of them were like children.
GEORGE: I'm so in love...
ALLEY:
You could just see the way
that George looked at her.
He was madly in love with her.
GEORGE: ...Best baby doll
in the whole wide world,
and I love you so...
ALLEY: I never saw him angry.
I only saw him happy.
FILM CREW MEMBER:
George Carlin promo.
-B-roll, b-roll.
-SALLY: That's me.
There you go. What's your name?
-SALLY: I'm Findlay.
-No, you're not.
-SALLY: Yes, I am.
-GEORGE: Findlay?
-SALLY: Yes, that's me.
-Findlay, Ohio.
GEORGE:
Artists are on a journey.
They don't know
where it is going.
They just know
there's something else.
There's something more.
There's more in me.
There's more to talk about.
-(LAUGHS)
-Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, that's good.
It does look real.
Pablo Casals, the great cellist.
He was in his nineties,
and someone said to him,
"Master Casals,
why, at your age,
do you bother practicing
three hours a day?"
Hello.
"And he said, "Well,
I'm beginning to notice
some improvement."
It's interesting and it's true.
And that's the thing
that's in me.
I notice myself
getting better at this.
Statistics show that every year,
a million people commit suicide.
That's 2,800 a day.
One every 30 seconds.
-(FILM CREW LAUGHS)
-You know?
It's up to-- you sort of--
It's the viewer's interpretation
of that.
Like,
"Is that an invitation to them?"
-FILM CREW 1: Yeah.
-FILM CREW 2: Marking.
SALLY: The only thing
I didn't know in all of this,
until he ended up
in the hospital,
was that he did have
heart problems.
I didn't know that
in the beginning.
There were a few times when
he needed stents in his heart
and a few times when I had to
drive through every red light
there was
to get to the hospital in time.
And we were just able
to manage that somehow.
The closer you get to death,
the more you think
there's something there.
He didn't believe in a sky God,
but he was spiritual
in a way that meant magic
and positive things happening.
Like, he always had
a stage crystal with him.
And I think
most people would agree...
SALLY:
So, when he was performing,
he had that kind of magic
in his pocket.
And he could draw from that.
...I'll bet you can have
an all-suicide channel
-in this country.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I bet you. Well, shit,
they got all-golf.
-What the fuck? Goddamn.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JEFF: George was
having health problems,
checking himself into hospitals
with heart conditions.
And I remember seeing George
at the Comedy & Magic Club.
He pulled into the parking lot
at 7:00.
I pulled in like at 7:01.
So our cars were there
at the same time.
I go, "George, how you doing?"
He goes, "Oh, I just came back
from the doctor."
And he lifted up his shirt...
and it looked like
a science project.
It looked like
something out of Alien.
It was black and blue
with scars, and this is a man
who had his chest open
a number of times.
Oh, what he went through.
We're gonna start at the bottom
with the homeless people
because nobody gives a fuck
about them.
Ain't nobody
got no money for them.
They have no plans.
They got no ideas.
They got nobody. Five hundred
thousand of them are veterans,
and they still don't give a fuck
about these people...
KELLY: I hadn't seen him
for about three months.
And by the way, there's another
bunch of homeless coming soon
when the housing bubble bursts
and the dollar gets devalued
and you get a lot of
middle-class homeless assholes,
and they'll be in there too.
KELLY: And he is going to do
this big HBO special.
And he never let me see
his HBO stuff
before the actual taping.
And I walk
into his dressing room
and his back is to me
and I see this person
standing in front of me
and I think,
"Who's that elderly man?"
First thought in my head was,
"Who's that--
Who's this this old guy
in my dad's dressing room?"
And he turns around
and he is noticeably shorter,
and he is puffy,
and he's having
difficulty breathing.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
KELLY: I thought to myself,
"There's no way
he's about to go on stage
and do an HBO special.
"There's no way he's going to
make it through it."
Assassination.
You know what's interesting
about assassination?
Well, not only does it
change those popularity polls
in a big fucking hurry,
but it's also interesting
to notice
who it is we assassinate.
Do you ever notice who it is?
Stop to think who it is we kill?
It's always people
who've told us
to live together in harmony
and try to love one another.
Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln,
John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy,
Martin Luther King,
Medgar Evers,
Malcolm X, John Lennon.
They all said, "Try to live
together peacefully." Bam!
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Right in the fucking head.
It did go really dark.
He didn't think
it went really dark.
He went really dark.
And he lost me a bit at the end.
It was too dark for me.
I like things
that are excessive.
I like excessive behavior,
excessive language,
excessive violence. It's fun.
It's interesting. It's exciting.
I like it
when nature is excessive.
That's why
I like natural disasters.
All these natural disasters
that have been going on,
I fucking love them.
I can't get enough of them.
If it's a bit,
then God bless him.
For... Or whatever. Nothing
bless him, as he might prefer,
but to pursue
that level of darkness...
in the hope that actually
it would point
toward something hopeful
is expecting a lot
from your audience.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Because all you're stating
is the dark part.
For centuries now,
man has done everything he can
to destroy, defile,
and interfere with nature,
so when nature strikes back
and smacks man in the head
and kicks him in the nuts,
I enjoy that.
I have absolutely no sympathy
for human beings whatsoever.
None.
You know what makes me happy?
Watching my species
destroy itself.
I really, I take it as a sport,
as a kind of a hobby
and I root for the complete
destruction of this culture
that we live in.
I root for underdogs,
I root for nature.
Because on this planet,
at this time,
nature is the underdog.
You know the best thing
I can hear on television?
-"We interrupt this program."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
You know the worst thing
I can hear? "No one was hurt."
George's next special,
November 17th on HBO Live.
What are you calling it?
I Kinda Like It
When a Lot of People Die.
No, he did not like it
when a lot of people died.
He did like it
when a lot of people died.
GEORGE: I kinda like it
when a lot of people die.
Some people like needlepoint,
some people like miniature golf,
doing the mambo, shit like that.
-Me, I like a nice train wreck.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I always hope
things are going to get worse.
Don't you?
Don't you secretly hope
that everything gets worse?
When you see a big fire on TV,
don't you hope it spreads?
Are you on the verge of losing
your temper or are you...
-You're shaking your head.
-No, it's not that.
It's-- It's a contempt.
I really think
this species is a foolish,
failed species that has
organized itself poorly.
And I think this culture
in particular leads the way.
I think we have put property
ahead of people,
we have put competition
ahead of cooperation,
and I don't think the balance
can ever be
brought back into line.
You know, philosophers say,
"Why are we here?
What is this all about?"
I'm here for the entertainment.
Fuck these humans.
Let them do their thing.
I'll watch.
It's fun. I'm out here.
I have no stake
in the outcome anymore.
I don't care
what happens to you.
I don't care
what happens to your country.
I don't care
what happens to your species.
You can go get fucked.
Because it's fun to watch you
destroy each other.
-It's entertaining. Look at...
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
You got any dates
you want to push?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-GEORGE: Yeah, right.
I'm not interested
in the budget.
I don't care
about tax negotiations.
I don't want to know
what country
the fucking pope is in,
but you show me a hospital
that's on fire,
and people on crutches
are jumping off the roof,
and I'm a happy guy!
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-I'm a happy guy!
HASAN: One of the things I'm
still trying to figure out is,
was Carlin ultimately a nihilist
or was he an actual optimist
who was using comedy
to display a nihilist worldview?
Sirens, flames, smoke, bodies,
graves being filled,
parents weeping,
exciting shit, my kind of TV...
-HASAN: Is he the Joker?
-I just want some entertainment,
It's just the kind of guy I am!
-It's the kind of guy I am!
-HASAN: Is he happy?
(CHUCKLES) Like, shit is
unraveling in front of our eyes.
Most people won't admit
to those feelings.
Most people see something
like that on television,
they'll say, "Oh, isn't that
awful? Isn't that too bad?"
(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
Lying asshole.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Lying assholes.
GEORGE: This is what I root for.
This is my joy.
Wait till I do my next show,
you got to see the next one.
Two years from now,
tune in. It's called Fuck Hope.
That was fun.
Try to use a lot of that.
(FILM CREW LAUGHING)
GEORGE: You know,
it's just, it's how I am.
It's how I feel. It's so real.
You could tell.
It was really evident
from the first time I met him
that he was fully committed
to, like, whatever that fuse was
that he lit.
Probably back in high school,
if not before,
that he never ever stomped out.
And then over the years,
I just watched that, sort of,
get overtaken by a ferocity.
You know, it wasn't really
just a bitterness.
It was just a ferocity.
It was just like,
"This world is fucked up
and no one's doing
anything about it,"
and like, "I've tried to explore"
the human condition,
and I've come up fucking empty."
♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
-GEORGE: Gertie, Gertie.
Good girl. Yes.
The movie star Gertie.
Oh, you is a good girl.
I know you want to say,
"Is he goofy?"
SALLY: People have different
aspects of themselves.
And they have
different identities.
GEORGE: Gertrude says,
"I got to go now.
I got business downtown."
He would express all this anger
on stage,
and then walk off. That's it.
That's my anger.
Here's a big pile of it.
You guys deal with it.
I'll be your guide to this tape.
One of the patients here
has been wanting me
to make a tape for a long time.
A lot of people like to say
he got bitter when he was old
and all that shit.
Bullshit. He got tired
of the fucking people,
the fucking stupidity,
and the just hopelessness
of expecting anything from them.
He gave up. He gave up.
I'm not a shrink. (CHUCKLES)
I'm not a fucking shrink,
but I sensed the disappointment
in the human race.
And it hurt him, I'm sure.
KELLY:
It was rare moments in our life
when he would be settled,
fully present,
but we had these breakfasts
we would have,
and he would
put the world aside.
I'd been wrestling a lot
with his darker take
on humanity.
And, I finally just said to him,
I said,
"Dad, if you've really given up,
then why the fuck do you
get on stage?
Why do you bother? Like, really?
Like, is this just an ego thing?
Like, is this just about you
"satisfying yourself?
Clearly not."
And I felt like he had to
fess up to me.
He was like, "You know,
you've got me there."
I really believe
that he was always
trying to be in service
of some way
to this species, and it is hard.
It is really hard
keeping your heart open
for that.
When I listen to your comedy,
I don't get the feeling that,
you know, that you have
that no hope thing.
-I get just the opposite.
-GEORGE: Really?
HOST: I think you've got
a big defense thing going
because you really are
the hopeful guy.
I think you really are the guy
who really believes
-all the good of humanity.
-I do that. I do that.
-HOST: I know. It's all
the opposite of what you think.
-I believe as an individual.
HOST: You're coming in
a mirror way.
I know you're coming
in the back door.
All comics do it,
but I think you are
a very high spiritual person.
Well, they say
if you scratch a cynic,
you'll find
a disappointed idealist.
-HOST: Right.
-And I do cop to that.
I am that. And you're right.
That's a very intelligent
analysis.
And I've gone through that
without using the words
you used. I've gone
through that myself.
Thought about myself
in those terms,
but it's more fun this way.
STEVEN WRIGHT:
He's on the Mount Rushmore
of creative artists
in this country.
Any kind of art.
And he was always nice.
He was always very supportive.
You felt like he was your buddy.
And you were a comedian,
he's a comedian.
You're two guys
doing this thing.
You were in the same boat
with him. You were with him.
He would even mail me a joke.
He'd write it down
and mail it to me,
but he's like a...
you know, like a great painter.
Like a Rembrandt of comedy.
You know, there's Rembrandt
and then this guy's doing
a postcard of a sailboat.
(LAUGHS)
GEORGE:
This is workshop night for me.
Roll with it.
Just listen to the words.
That's what I want you doing.
I'm reading and I'm kind of
fucked up on where I'm going,
just listen to the words,
because this shit, I love it,
but I don't know it all yet,
okay?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
If you follow your heart,
if you do the right thing,
if you do what's on your mind,
and in your heart,
and in your brain,
or whatever
you want to say about it,
good things will happen from it.
Good things will come.
By the way, I'm not trying
this stuff out on you.
I'm not trying it.
I don't do that.
The audience doesn't
really figure into my plans.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Here's the way I look at it,
I'm here for me,
you're here for me
and no one's here for you.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Okay?
By just doing what pleased me
in these shows, I had an effect.
The kind of effect that I can't
have on people in Darfur.
Even if I give money, if I send
all my old sweaters to Darfur,
it will not have
the effect on them
that one person
sitting and listening
when he's 12 years old,
and I've heard them
from people of all ages,
and I've heard them
from parents.
I've heard parents say,
"My kid saw that show.
This and that.
His marks got better."
I swear to God.
I hear this kind of shit.
And that gave me such power.
I don't mean power to use,
power to have.
Gave me such a feeling of,
"Yeah, man.
I'm okay. I'm fucking okay."
DIRECTOR:
Okay. We're still rolling, guys.
And we're in the shot.
And, George.
Now, the last time
I rolled through these parts,
and I do roll through
with some frequency,
I'm a little bit like herpes,
I keep coming back,
but since the last time
I might have seen
some of you folks,
I've had my 70th birthday.
So I'm now 70 years old,
and I like 70.
Not as much as I like 69.
Well, 69 was always
my favorite number,
but now I figure I'm 69
with one finger up my ass.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
GEORGE:
What I am is an old fuck.
It's like a fat fuck.
Fat fuck, tall fuck,
skinny fuck, short fuck,
but now that I'm an old fuck,
I'm beginning to notice
there are some advantages
to putting on a few extra years.
The first one is,
you never have to carry
anything heavy ever again.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Everybody wants to
help an old fuck.
If you got a big suitcase
or something like that,
you just kinda
go like this a little bit.
You say, "Yeah,
could you help me with this?"
They say, "Yeah. Hey, how far
are you going?" "Indianapolis."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I still refer to him
all the time, which for a comic,
I mean, you know... Comedy is so
ephemeral in so many ways.
It takes him out
of the class of pop star
and puts him in the class of,
like, Bach and Beethoven,
and classicists.
People that created something
that was timeless,
because it wasn't based
on the moment,
it was based on a deeper truth.
But the best thing
about getting old is,
you're not responsible
for remembering things anymore.
Even important things.
"But it was
your daughter's funeral."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-I forgot.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Oh, every time there's some
weird psychopathic news story
that happens, people are like,
"Oh, I wish George Carlin
were here to talk about that."
(CHUCKLES) It almost seems like
the weirder things get in life,
the more you want to hear
the voice of George Carlin
talking about it.
Even God can go
on sensory overload.
That's why he wanted
one day off a week.
Christians gave him Sunday,
Jews gave him Saturday,
Muslims gave him Friday.
God has a three-day weekend.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I mean, we all love Lenny Bruce,
but nobody's sharing
a Lenny Bruce bit to explain
anything that's happening
in the culture right now.
You know,
there's lots of comedians
from even ten, 15 years ago
where we're sort of
done with their things
as being relevant to now.
There's enough bullshit
as it is...
W. KAMAU BELL:
He was still a comedian
that the culture as a whole
cared about
up until his last special.
...there's just enough bullshit
to hold things together
in this country.
Bullshit is the glue
that binds us as a nation.
Where would we be
without our safe,
familiar, American bullshit?
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
America's leading industry
is still the manufacture,
distribution, packaging
-and marketing of bullshit.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This country was founded
by a group of slave owners
who told us that all men
are created equal.
That is what's known as
being stunningly full of shit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: There's a reason
education sucks,
and it's the same reason
that it will never,
ever be fixed.
Because the owners
of this country don't want that.
This country is owned
by eight or nine hundred people
who run everything,
do everything,
control everything.
It's all one big ownership class
in this country.
We're led to feel free
by the exercise
of meaningless choices.
Ice cream flavors,
what do you want? We got 31.
Got the flavor of the week,
got the flavor of the month.
But political parties,
we're down to two.
Politicians are put there
to give you the idea
that you have freedom of choice.
You don't. You have owners.
They own you.
They own and control
the corporations.
They've long since bought
and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses,
the city halls.
They got the judges
in their back pockets,
and they own
all the big media companies,
so they control
just about all of the news
and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
It's a big club...
and you ain't in it.
Nobody questions things
in this country anymore.
Americans have been bought off
and silenced by toys and gizmos
with our microwave hot dogs
and plastic vomit,
fake dog shit,
and cinnamon dental floss,
and lemon-scented toilet paper,
and sneakers
with lights in the heels.
-♪ (UNSETTLING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(CROWD CLAMORING)
GEORGE: Millions
of semi-conscious Americans
day after day,
shopping and eating.
It is the new national pastime.
Fuck baseball. It's consumption.
So, where do people think
these politicians come from?
They come from American parents
and American families,
American homes,
American schools,
American churches,
American businesses,
and American universities,
and they're elected
by American citizens.
This is the best
we can do, folks.
This is what we have to offer.
It's what our system produces.
-Garbage in, garbage out.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: If you have selfish,
ignorant citizens,
you're going to get selfish,
ignorant leaders.
Machine gun bacon.
GEORGE:
That's what the owners count on.
They want obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough
to run the machines
and do the paperwork,
and just dumb enough
to passively accept
all these
increasingly shittier jobs
with the lower pay,
the longer hours,
the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime
and now, they want
your fucking retirement money.
-They want it back.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
So they can give it
to their criminal friends
-on Wall Street.
-♪ (MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
GEORGE: Of course,
there's a reason why
we're all drugged.
The drug companies
want it that way.
The drug industry has us
taking things to get awake,
things to go to sleep,
things to pep up,
things to forget about the grief
you had from something.
"There's a drug problem
in this country."
Where do you hear that?
At the drugstore.
-(ALL LAUGH)
-(MISSILE BLASTS)
GEORGE: You don't have to
be a political scientist
to see the bigger dick
foreign policy theory at work.
It goes something like this,
"What? They have bigger dicks?
Bomb them."
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-(BOMB BLASTS)
GEORGE:
That's our new job in the world,
bombing Brown people.
Isn't that roughly
our job everywhere?
We kind of free people
and whip industry on them
so that they can have
all the benefits of industry
that we have come to love.
Wasn't there something noble
they could do
to be helping this planet heal?
Mother Earth raped again.
Guess who.
Hey, she was asking for it.
You know there's another
bunch of homeless coming soon
when the housing bubble bursts
and the dollar gets devalued,
and you get a lot of
middle class homeless...
I said a long time ago,
when fascism comes to America,
it won't wear jackboots
and brown shirts.
It'll have on a smiley face
and a T-shirt
and designer jeans and Nikes.
CROWD: (CHANTING)
Black lives matter!
GEORGE:
You know what they ought to do?
They ought to have
two new requirements
for being on the police.
Intelligence and decency.
(POLICE SIREN WAILING)
GEORGE: You never can tell.
It might just work.
It certainly
hasn't been tried yet.
-Come on! You're full of shit!
-(SCREAMS)
CROWD: Black lives matter!
Black lives matter!
GEORGE: That's all you ever hear
about in this country,
is our differences.
Race, religion, sexuality.
That's the way the ruling class
operates in any society.
They try to divide
the rest of the people.
Anything they can do to
keep us fighting with each other
so that they can
keep going to the bank.
(INDISTINCT CHANTING)
GEORGE: But I'll tell you
what they don't want.
They don't want
a population of citizens
capable of critical thinking.
They're not interested in that.
That doesn't help them.
That's against their interests.
They don't give a fuck
about you.
They don't
give a fuck about you.
They don't care
about you at all. At all.
The table is tilted, folks.
The game is rigged.
(GRUNTS, SHOUTS)
GEORGE: Land of the free.
Home of the brave.
-(OFFICER SCREAMING)
-GEORGE: All men are equal.
-OFFICER: (SCREAMING) Help!
-GEORGE: Justice is blind.
-The good guys win.
-CROWD: USA! USA!
GEORGE: And everything
is going to be just fine.
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
GEORGE:
It's called the American dream
because you have to be asleep
to believe it.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
(WAVES CRASHING)
KELLY:
My last memory of my dad is,
I went to Hawaii and I drive up
to the Napili Kai,
which is where I had my parents
sign the UN peace treaty.
And there's no angst there,
there's no chaos,
there's no bad memories.
It's just pure, pure love.
So I call my dad, and my dad
never picks up his phone,
and he picks up the phone,
and he says, "Hey, kiddo."
I'm like, "Hey, Dad,
I was just at the Napili Kai,
and I want to tell you that
everything that happened to us
40 years ago,
all the pieces of ourselves
that we left there,
I've brought them home,
and it's done, and it's really,
really over, Dad.
It's done. There's no more.
There's no more pain
inside of me about this
"or suffering or any of that."
I can tell
my dad's very choked up
on the other end of the phone.
He can barely speak.
And, um, and he's like,
"That's... that's great."
You know.
And it was one of these moments,
it was just incredible.
I'd felt like on the phone
with my dad...
like we had met each other
in this place
that we had never met
each other before.
And I knew this was
so important to him
because I knew
the biggest regret he had
of his entire life
about everything
was what those years did to me.
And, we had this
beautiful conversation.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SALLY: He was going into
the hospital early on a Sunday.
He wasn't feeling bad.
He was just going in to get
an adjustment for his heart.
And then the hospital
called me... (SNIFFLES)
...and said...
(CLEARS THROAT)
..."Come in as soon as you can."
And, uh...
he kept telling me he was sorry.
Which he didn't have to do.
He didn't have to apologize.
And, then he stopped breathing.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE: Uh, y'all people,
this is the afterlife sergeant.
A couple of notes for you.
Just things where people
are curious about.
Hitler. Hitler is in heaven.
Listen, don't blame me.
I don't make the rules.
Technically, he was a Catholic.
He got absolution
before he died.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Yes, you're all...
you're all going to die.
Didn't mean to remind you of it,
but it is on your schedule.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Comedians don't want to die.
It's only a metaphor,
but it's so true of all of us.
We don't want to die out there.
The comics wanna die.
I don't want to die.
Geez, I was dying out there.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Of course,
if the comedian doesn't die,
you know, if he succeeds,
if he makes you laugh,
then he can say,
-"I killed them."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-"I killed them."
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
So it's either me or you,
you know?
See, I don't worry
about the little things.
I think we're part
of a greater wisdom
than we will ever understand.
A higher order.
Call it what you want.
You know what I call it?
The big electron.
The big electron. Whoa.
-Whoa. Whoa.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
It doesn't punish.
It doesn't reward.
It doesn't judge at all.
It just is, and so are we,
for a little while.
Thanks for being here with me
for a little while tonight.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
GEORGE: Take care of yourself.
Take care of yourself,
and take care of somebody else.
Thank you. Goodnight.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
♪ ("BRING ON THE LUCIE"
BY JOHN LENNON PLAYING) ♪
♪ We don't care
What flag you're waving ♪
♪ We don't even
Want to know your name ♪
♪ We don't care
Where you're from ♪
♪ Or where you're going ♪
♪ All we know it that you came ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Well, we were caught
With our hands in the air ♪
♪ Don't despair,
Paranoia's everywhere ♪
♪ We can shake it with love
When we're scared ♪
♪ So let's shout it aloud
Like a prayer ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ We understand your paranoia ♪
♪ But we don't wanna
Play your game ♪
♪ You think you're cool
And know what you're doing ♪
♪ 666 is your name ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪
GEORGE CARLIN: (NARRATING)
In my personal little world,
I can't worry
about offending someone
because that's flinching.
You can't flinch.
If you mean what you're saying.
GEORGE: (ONSTAGE)
A lot of these cultural crimes
can be blamed on
the baby boomers.
Whiny, narcissistic,
self-indulgent people
with a simple philosophy,
-"Give me that, it's mine!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Give me that, it's mine!"
(NARRATING) The line exists.
(ONSTAGE) These people
were given everything.
(NARRATING)
There'll always be taboos.
(ONSTAGE)
Everything was handed to them.
(NARRATING) Always be things
that if you don't handle them
a certain way,
people will reject you.
And they took it all.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
And they stayed loaded
for 20 years
and had a free ride.
But now, they're staring down
the barrel of middle-age burnout
and they don't like it,
so they turn self-righteous.
And they want to
make things hard
on younger people.
As for the rock and roll,
they sold that
for television commercials
a long time ago.
But I always mean
what I'm saying,
and I just go for it.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-They're cold, bloodless people.
It's in their slogans,
it's in their rhetoric,
"No pain, no gain."
"Just do it."
"Life is short, play hard."
"Shit happens. Deal with it."
"Get at a life." These people
went from, "Do your own thing,"
-to, "Just say no."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They went from,
"Love is all you need,"
to, "Whoever winds up
with the most toys wins."
And they went from
cocaine to Rogaine.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-They did.
Fuck these boomers.
Fuck these yuppies,
and fuck everybody
now that I think of it.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
♪ (EPIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Here's George Carlin!
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
CHIEF JUSTICE: I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...
RONALD REAGAN: I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...
-How you doing, doc?
-I'm doing great there, Georgie.
REAGAN: ...that I will
faithfully execute the office
of President
of the United States.
We just got back from the, uh,
inaugural festivities
in Washington.
Thank God for a president
who agrees in totality
of what we morally
stand for here.
MAN: We must have
not only a government
that defends freedom.
We must have a government
that defends the right to life.
(CHANTING)
Fight back, fight AIDS!
REPORTER: Falwell's July issue
of Moral Majority Report
charges the American family
is now threatened
by the AIDS epidemic.
REAGAN: Protect and defend
the Constitution
of the United States.
Well, it's a wait-and-see
for some folks,
you know,
but he's the only one we got.
That's what
I keep hearing people say,
"Well, he's the only president
we have."
-So help you God.
-So help me God.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY CARLIN: In the early '80s,
he was still very disconnected
as a human being.
He was fully aware that he was
always compartmentalizing
his head from his heart.
Like he'd say,
"I live from here up," you know.
I think in some ways
it's all he knew how to do
was go on the road
and get on a stage.
After Mom was sober,
she said to my dad,
"You cannot bring cocaine
in the house ever again."
And he absolutely abided
by that rule.
But my dad wasn't quite ready
to quit
and didn't quit.
And he would have these binges.
He would disappear
for two or three days.
Twice I remember that happening.
A terrifying two or three days,
him gone,
have no idea where he is.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
JERRY HAMZA: He had to
have a buzz going all the time.
But he always got
through his shows.
He got through his shows.
Sometimes he would stop on stage
and forget a line,
but the people were always
very forgiving with him and...
God, you'd look
at the stage afterwards,
there'd be 20 joints
on the stage.
They'd just throw them up
on stage. (LAUGHS)
He took them sometimes too.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
JERRY: He loved his work,
and that's where
he really lived, in the trees.
He lived in his own head.
Thank you very much,
ladies and gentlemen.
My name is George Carlin,
and I am
a professional comedian.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
As opposed to the kind
you run into at work
-all day long.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: Even though the albums
in that time period
were subsiding,
he used to do
the Johnny Carson Show maybe
six days a year,
you know, as a fill-in.
What you do is you pump out
30 pounds of pressure.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-And then you keep, you see--
And it keeps...
You see what it does.
-I love that.
-And it keeps the--
I want one of those.
JERRY: And between that
and what was left of the albums,
-we could do business.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: But I thought
there was a lot more there.
I always thought
there was a lot more there.
Say, that doesn't feel bad,
you know?
-Oh, yeah. Yeah.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And what's really funny is,
I think about George
so many times telling me,
"I'm really practical."
And every time he'd say that,
I almost laughed
right in his face.
I think a lot of us
who sat in the movie theaters
of America as kids,
when we decided we wanted
to be in show business,
-we thought of movies...
-JERRY: Anyway,
what had happened was this.
He had been trying to do a movie
called
The Illustrated George Carlin.
So now I'm finally
taking that step for myself.
I, uh, I have a film idea,
it's called
The Illustrated George Carlin.
We're doing it
outside of the studios.
We're not--
We haven't fooled with them.
We have money independently.
And I says, "Well, how much
money have you raised so far?"
And he says, "None."
When are you going to
have this together?
Should take
another eight months or so.
(CHUCKLES) This was after
three years of paying salaries
and everything
that goes with it.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And then he didn't pay
his taxes properly
for like three years.
Well, let me tell you something.
You figure it out
with your accountant,
and you start adding
the penalties and interests
and everything else.
Plus, the new money
and the taxes on that.
Plus, he was supporting
three families.
He was supporting
his daughter's family,
his brother's family,
and, uh, his own family.
So it was a struggle.
♪ (SLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE: I think Jerry
didn't tell me the awful truth.
Boy, it really looks
fucking bleak
and it's getting worse.
And I have walked away
from this
Illustrated George Carlin thing.
That whole thing collapsed
in flames,
and I cried on the phone
to Brenda.
"I said, "It's over,
I can't do this.
It's not going to work."
And I'm driving down
to Dayton from Toronto,
and I drank a lot of beer
on the way.
And I finally crashed my car
into a fucking pole,
completely demolishing my nose.
I'm working on a new nose.
You might have heard that.
I redesigned a Volvo last month.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: I never did quite
get through that windshield
like they said in the paper.
But, uh, they're working
on the nose for me.
Next year, they're gonna
shine it and buff it
-and do something to it.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: It's my new nose
and I promise this time
not to blow it. Okay?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JERRY: By now,
the business was in the sewer.
So, shit, we were lucky to
go out and pay for the flights
and pay the opening act.
And I'd get on the phone
to get an interview,
and what do you think
they wanted to talk about?
Only one thing. Drugs.
HOST:
You made a reference earlier
-to your drug history.
-Yeah.
HOST: Are you...
Is that all gone completely?
Absolutely. Yeah. And, uh,
well, it was only the one drug,
you know. (CHUCKLES)
-The cocaine.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Uh, and occasionally, you'd take
a little something else with it,
but I was never, uh,
a person who did anything
but as much cocaine as there was
in the immediate
three-county area
-at that time.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE:
But, you know, all you can do
is talk about the truth
because it happened to you.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
COMMENTATOR:
As he sort of checked himself,
David Huff at the defense.
JERRY:
I had tickets to see the Mets,
who George loved,
play the Dodgers, who he hated.
I need one. Fernando!
JERRY: And Fernando Valenzuela
was pitching.
"George told me, "Jerry, I got
a little something in my chest.
I don't know
what the hell it is.
"Maybe it was those hot dogs.
We better get out of here."
Los Angeles fans are notorious
for leaving early,
but because they were winning,
they stuck around.
And I'm glad they did.
'Cause we went downstairs,
got in a limo,
and by now,
George is going like this.
He's stretching his chest.
He's opening his shirt.
And the driver, I says,
"You better go like hell to
the hospital in Santa Monica."
We were doing 110 miles an hour.
And he got us there,
thank goodness.
He was almost dead.
KELLY: They were really not sure
those first 48 hours
what was going to go down,
what was going to happen.
And my mom was told
to go say goodbye to my dad.
I think
that scared the shit out of him.
That heart attack really
put the cocaine in its place.
Because he knew he had
a ticking time bomb
in his chest
His father did drop dead.
JERRY: It was pretty horrible
because he was taking
all these blood thinners.
He'd show up on a plane and,
you know,
his hands would be purple.
And he had a hammer
hanging over his head.
HOST: Here's George Carlin.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
(CHEERING STOPS)
-(DEVICE CLICKING)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This is one
of the new artificial hearts,
which I was given
following my recent illness.
They just... (CLICKS TONGUE)
...put them right in.
And for those of you at home
who are do-it-yourselfers,
these are available
at RadioShack.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I just thought
I'd bring you up to date
on the comedian's
health sweepstakes.
I am now ahead of Richard Pryor
in heart attacks. Two to one.
And Richard is ahead of me
on burning yourself up.
Richard is leading on that.
See, the way it happened
was, uh,
first, Richard
had a heart attack,
uh, then I had a heart attack,
and then Richard
burned himself up.
And then I said, "I think
I'll have another heart attack."
-(CHUCKLES)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Are you happy, George Carlin,
at, what is it, 45?
GEORGE: Well,
I'm happier than I was, say,
a year ago,
or even six months ago.
Uh, since the heart attack,
I've had to take
a very close look
at how I manage stress,
how I handle it,
and apparently,
not very well in the past.
I'm one of those people
who denies feelings.
"No, that's not happening.
Couldn't be. No, never mind."
"What, they did that to me?
No sweat."
"There's another day tomorrow."
And I never expressed my anger
or my sadness.
You really did feel it.
I mean,
all of that stuff coming out
was just so much of a guise?
I got so good at it. No,
but you get so good at it
that you don't know
you're doing it.
Do you ever look back
at the George Carlin
that was eight years ago
and wonder who he was? No?
Well, he's great. He was fine.
He was just a little crazier.
Just a little...
Didn't know what he was doing.
Didn't know what he needed,
you know.
We had-- We had tough years
to go through together.
I'm talking for my wife
and me now, together.
And I was just responding
to being a hit, an overnight.
You know, suddenly, here's
all this stuff happening to me,
and I had this money.
And that takes some adjustment,
you know, so...
He was fine. He was who
he needed to be at that time.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HOST:
You've got some dates coming up.
GEORGE: Yeah, well,
I'm gonna do Carnegie Hall
and we're taping it that night
for my own production company.
And it's going to be
our first cable release.
-HOST: Fantastic.
-GEORGE: So I'm in business
for myself
with my partner, Jerry Hamza.
For a change, I'm going to
get to keep some of this stuff.
I just want to say
I'm really happy
to be here in Carnegie Hall.
Andrew Carnegie is dead,
but I figure fuck him.
We've just found out
that everyone
is in the wrong seat.
Would you please change places
with the person two seats over
and four seats down?
Now, there are also you people
that are sitting
in what is known as the boxes.
I don't want you
to get horny on anything,
'cause... Work out something
about the word boxes.
You'll think of it, George,
you're a clever guy.
Do a stand-up about--
Take the thing
about a place for your stuff,
your house, your home.
And take it from there
and do a whole thing
about what's in the house
and what's in the home.
That's where keep your stuff,
that's where you
keep your stuff.
And you start in talking
about what stuff is in what room
and how you keep it.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Hi there. How are you?
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
How you doing?
How are you doing?
Good evening, everybody.
Hello there. Thank you.
KEVIN SMITH: I remember
when we finally got HBO
in our neck of the woods,
and they announced
Carlin at Carnegie.
It was so early in the days
of HBO and having cable
that we didn't have
the terminology for it.
My father one day
came in to me and he goes,
"George Carlin is going to be
telling jokes
on HBO for over an hour."
I'd like to begin our show
with a prayer.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
A little prayer
that I wrote myself.
Our Father who art in Heaven
and to the republic
for which it stands.
(LAUGHS)
Please God, let me
do a good show tonight.
-Don't let me be an asshole.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Don't let anyone yell,
"too late."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Let the people
really enjoy my jokes tonight.
Let me arrive safely
back at my hotel.
Help me find some shoes
I really like.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Help me also to find
a nymphomaniac coke connection
who owns a Ferrari dealership.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
KEVIN: Nobody was allowed
to curse in our house,
but George Carlin was allowed.
And when he was laughing
with George Carlin,
Dad went away
and there was Don Smith,
some motherfucker I didn't know,
but then my mother fucked.
You know?
So in those moments,
I really got to see
who he was,
and what he found funny.
I was, uh, gonna say to you,
in fact, I'm going to
say that I was awfully nervous
and a little tight too.
I guess that's the same thing,
you know.
I'm just glad to be home
and I'm glad to be...
(VOCALIZING) ...in New York
and back in the borough...
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-...and saying, "Hello!
How are you?"
This is my office.
That's what it is, my office.
Let's face it.
If this is my job,
shit, this has gotta be
my office.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: Actually, this is
just a place for my stuff.
It's all you need, really
is a place for your stuff.
That's what life's all about,
when you think about it,
trying to find a place
to keep your stuff.
Everybody's got to have
a little place
to keep their stuff.
That's why you have pockets.
That's why you have
glove compartments.
That's why they have lockers
at the bus station.
That's all your house is,
really, when you think about it.
That's all your house is,
it's a place for your stuff.
Hey, if you didn't have
so much goddamn stuff,
-you wouldn't need a house.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: Sometimes,
you go to someone else's house,
first thing you notice
in someone else's house
is you don't quite feel
a 100 percent at home.
You know why?
-No room for your stuff.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Someone else's shit
is on the table.
Have you noticed
that their stuff is shit
-and your shit is stuff?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-"Get it off!"
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
"Get that shit off of there
and let me put my stuff down."
JERRY SEINFELD:
A place for my stuff
is highly intellectual
if you look at the skill level,
the brainpower it takes
to break that down.
That is, you know, I don't know,
maybe to some comedians,
that's just a...
observational comedy bit.
To me, it's the elevation
of the ordinary
and the disassembling
of the ordinary.
And that's... There's no better
example of that than that bit.
In essence, it seems like this
light-hearted,
superficial analysis
of, like, the way people value
their own belongings
and how they display them
and those types of things.
But, "My shit is stuff,
and your stuff is shit"
really is the through-line
for the lack of empathy
of people.
Like, even when you think
about cancel culture,
things like that,
"My opinion is valid
but your opinion
is cancel culture and bullshit,"
like, "My thoughts are stuff
and your thoughts are shit."
And it's just this little bit
that he did
on shit you put on your dresser.
-Thank you very much. Goodnight.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And I hope I see you
another time.
Good night, all.
Have a good time, you. Bye-bye.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Thank you.
-Thank you very much.
-JERRY: After the show,
George was in tears
in the dressing room.
See you later.
JERRY: Because he thought,
"Oh, it could have been
so much better
if I could've had two shows."
"There were so many
little things
that I could have changed."
But the show came out
and it exploded.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And that's
what got it going again.
GEORGE: Hello, good morning.
How are you?
What's going on?
What's new? What's happening?
Good evening. Hello.
How is it going?
And what the fuck's
new with you?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: But he still was the guy
whose back
is up against the wall
with the government.
And I used to get a call
every Tuesday
from this guy at the IRS,
"How did we do
over the weekend?"
I think a lot of you know
that I've been through
-several changes in my career.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JERRY: He couldn't catch up.
I'm just hoping
you'll hang in there
with me one more time.
A lot of comedians
tell you what they did.
Well, you know, I went--
I was down...
HBO fed the box office
all across the country.
You can tell by listening,
this guy has never been
near a psychiatrist.
So, I was able to keep touring,
and earn money.
If I tell you
something happened,
-it fucking happened, okay?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: And slowly,
I was just learning
how to produce more material,
because I had a need,
I had to stay out there.
Have you ever been
talking to someone
and a little bit of spit
flies off your tongue...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...and lands
right on the man's nose?
Do you ever pour glue on a bird?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Of course not.
You don't have to.
You ever been
sitting in the movies?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: But I wasn't really
going anywhere in my thinking.
Here's something you don't know.
I never fucked a ten,
but one night,
I fucked five twos.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: I had to find my voice.
Some guys will fuck anybody.
Not me. Not anymore.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Not since herpes and AIDS
are going around.
In fact,
just to be on the safe side,
I'm not even
jerking off anymore.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Well, I don't know
where I've been.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
KELLY: He was a road comic
till the day he died.
It was his art form.
It's how he made his living.
And he had an enormous amount
of financial pressure.
So he really had no choice.
Because the IRS threatened
to take their house away
all the time.
That was the leverage.
And that house was everything
to my mother.
And then my mom was alone
all the time.
She didn't have
her life partner.
She didn't have her guy.
And she was like,
"You need to
figure this out differently
because we need to
have a life together."
So they started
going out on dates
and having lunches together.
And then he actually began
taking vacations.
GEORGE: I'm coming in
on you now.
-Zeroing in.
-I am too.
GEORGE: Just perfect.
Brenda.
What?
GEORGE:
Looks great. What a good shot.
KELLY: When all of the noise
of the drugs and alcohol left
and all of the noise
of the career stuff...
GEORGE: Hey, Brenda.
KELLY:
...there was this really nice
little honeymoon period
for them,
where they got to
know each other again.
GEORGE: Okay, that's nice.
KELLY: We had survived so much,
and there was this
incredible love
and an incredible adventure
we'd been through together.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY: And the three of us,
were the only people
on the planet
who really fucking got it.
GEORGE: I am very disturbed
that my actions in the 1970s
concerning my money
and other behaviors
have put me in the position
where I have to be
away from Brenda.
That Brenda is left alone
so much.
I tell her, I say,
"I'm working on our retirement."
I'm trying to
set some things in place
"that will put us
ahead of this game."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
PATTON OSWALT: Comedy is
about the present and the now.
And then life changes
and you hopefully,
as a comedian,
change and evolve with it.
But if you solidify and calcify
and go,
"This is as far
as I'm going to go
and damn it I'm still going to
say these words,"
then you're not engaging
with the world anymore.
You're engaging
with a certain moment in time
that you have decided
to live in forever.
And George ran that risk
for a while in the '80s
of becoming irrelevant.
KLIPH NESTEROFF:
Carlin saw some of the trends
that were happening in stand-up.
Other comedians
are coming along,
they're starting
to do laps around him.
Comedy clubs are opening up.
He paved the way,
but they're not booking him.
He's getting older.
I'm like anybody else
on the planet
I'm very moved
by world hunger...
KLIPH: Sam Kinison
bursts onto the scene
loud and angry.
Yeah, I watch these things on TV
and I see those commercials
and I look at it, I go,
"God, how cruel," you know.
To see a little kid out there,
and I go, "Fuck,"
I know the film crew could
give this kid a sandwich.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
PATTON: So, part of Sam Kinison
inspired George Carlin,
but part of him
scared him a little bit.
But, like any true artist,
if something scares you,
you have to run towards it.
There's a director
five feet away going,
-"Don't feed him yet!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Get that sandwich out of here!
It doesn't work
unless he looks hungry!"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
You want to send them something?
You want to help?
Send them U-Hauls.
Send them U-Hauls, some luggage.
Send them a guy
out there that goes, "Hey!"
(CHUCKLES) "You know,
we've been driving out here
every day with your food
for the last, I don't know,
34 years."
"We've been driving out here
every day across the desert
and it occurred to us
there wouldn't be world hunger
if you people would live
where the food is!"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-"Get out of the desert!"
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You understand that
you live in a fucking desert?"
GEORGE:
I remember consciously thinking,
"This motherfucker is good,
and he's got ideas."
Without wanting to wipe him out,
I want to raise my level
to where
I'm not lost in his dust.
I've always been
very competitive about this.
And I know that
it gave me the feeling
of run a little faster,
work a little harder.
You know, it's not accumulated
credits here, George.
It's what did you do last week?
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(GEORGE VOCALIZING)
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
♪ Cherry, cherry pie... ♪
The sanctity of life.
Abortion has always been wrong.
It will always be wrong.
GEORGE: And those Reagan years
really represented the rise
to supremacy of darkness
in a way,
the ascendancy of ignorance.
Rock lyrics have turned from,
"I can't get no satisfaction"
to, "I'm going to force you
at gunpoint to eat me alive."
(SHOUTING, CHEERING)
GEORGE: So, my reaction
to the climate
was one of storing up
ammunition.
And the notes began to almost
be exclusively about issues.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI:
The misuse of federal funds,
the embezzlement of funds,
and the stealing...
Shocked by the fact that
a former Secretary
of the Treasury
of such high standing
had failed to file
his tax returns. (SCOFFS)
GEORGE: (SINGING)
♪ Like little Jack Horner ♪
♪ Just sittin' in that corner ♪
♪ Oh, he was eatin' his cherry
Cherry, cherry, cherry pie... ♪
OLIVER NORTH:
Absolutely no recollection
of destroying
any document which...
A few months ago,
I told the American people
I did not
trade arms for hostages.
My heart, to my best intentions,
still tell me that's true.
GEORGE: So now, I said,
I'm beginning to find
my own way to say these things
and to let loose.
My mind wanted now
to produce this other stuff.
My mind just called
all the shots.
My mind and heart said,
"This is what we're doing now."
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Hello, Union City, New Jersey!
Without any further ado,
it gives me
a great deal of pleasure
to introduce a gentleman
who needs no introduction.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
BILL BURR: In 1988,
one of the guys I worked with
was into stand-up.
And we heard on the radio
that they were advertising
George Carlin.
So we ended up
going to the show.
We got tickets because
we were going to go there
to actually,
I can't believe this,
to laugh at him.
That he was this older comic
who is still doing all these
old bits that we heard
and I remember the whole week,
he just kept going,
"More stuff!"
And I kinda bought into it.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-Hey there, we doing all right?
Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
BILL:
And George Carlin came out...
Hello. Hiya. Thank you.
...with like a howitzer.
I really haven't seen this
many people in one place
since they took
the group photographs
of all the criminals
and lawbreakers
in the Ronald Reagan
administration.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-BILL: It was like...
Two-hundred and twenty-five
of them so far.
"...Who is this guy?"
See, that's what
you got to remember.
This is the Ronald Reagan
administration
we're talking about. These are
the law-and-order people.
These are the people
who are against street crime.
They want to put
street criminals in jail
to make life safer
for the business criminals.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They're against street crime.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Keep in mind,
these Reagan people
are the ones that were going to
get government off our backs.
Remember that?
That was the rhetoric
of the 1980 campaign.
We'll get government
off your backs
and out of your lives.
Yeah, but they still want to
tell you what magazines
you can read.
And they still want to tell you
what rock lyrics
you can listen to.
And they still want to force
your kids to pray in school.
And they still want to tell you
what you can say on the radio.
So, these Reagan people,
these right wingers, in general,
they're against homosexuality.
They're against pornography.
They're against sex education.
They're against abortion.
Yeah, they're going to
get government off your back,
but they're going to tell you
how to live your sex life.
And let me ask you this,
how would they know
anything about it?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Have you ever
taken a look at those people?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
No wonder they're afraid
of their bodies.
Take a look at them.
Doesn't it strike you
as mildly ironic
that most of the people
who are against abortion
are people you wouldn't
want to fuck in the first place?
Does that strike you
a little strange?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
Hey, I'm the first one to say
it's a great country,
but it's a strange culture.
This is a country
where gun store owners
are given a list
of stolen credit cards,
but not a list
of criminals and maniacs.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And now they're thinking
about banning toy guns
and they're going to
keep the fucking real ones!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
BILL: I would say it was
like a Miles Davis thing.
George has like, one,
two, three, four,
five distinct periods of growth
where he would leave a segment
of his audience behind.
Like-- When he was, like,
working clean from a team
to then becoming
the counterculture guy,
to then being that guy
in the '80s,
then that dude in the '90s,
and each time,
it was like a boa constrictor.
It just got more pointed
and more like,
"Fuck, man. This guy is scaring
the shit out of me.
Where's this country going?"
Um, the courage that
that takes to do that,
that is like, "Hey, man,
I'm going in this direction."
You either come along with me
or you don't.
And I don't give a shit
if there's 3,000
or three people
listening to this.
This is what I believe.
"This is what I want to say
and I'm saying it."
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
JERRY: He developed a style
and he started talking
about things
that were more serious
and more meaningful.
First, he would come out
with a hard joke
right in the beginning.
Don't you think
it's just a little bit strange
that Ronald Reagan
had an operation on his asshole
and George Bush had an operation
on his middle finger, huh?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
He always had something
where he used to call
for the audience.
You know,
"We're going to blow up America,
but now,
here are a few fart jokes."
They were always in there.
Have you ever been
in a serious social situation
when you suddenly realize
you have to pull the underwear
out of the crack in your ass?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You take this woman
to be your lawful wedded wife?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"Huh? Who? Her? Oh, hell yeah."
JERRY: When it got
about 20 minutes out,
he had a piece
that was a hammer.
And it was what he was
really doing the show for.
Sanctity of life.
You believe in it?
Personally, I think
it's a bunch of shit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Well, I mean, life is sacred?
Who said so? God?
Hey, if you read history,
you realize that
God is one of the leading causes
of death.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Has been for thousands of years.
Hindus, Muslims,
Jews, Christians,
all taking turns
killing each other
because God told them
it was a good idea.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"The sword of God,
the blood of the lamb,
vengeance is mine."
Millions of dead motherfuckers.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Millions of dead motherfuckers
all because they gave
the wrong answer
to the God question.
"You believe in God?"
"No." (BLOWS) Dead.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
"You believe in God?" "Yes."
"You believe in my God?" "No."
(BLOWS) Dead.
"My God has a bigger dick
than your God."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
We watched the arc
of a creative person
that just stayed with it
until they broke through
to that next evolution
that he went through,
because it felt like,
"Yes, I'm a--"
"You know me as this goofy guy
that is a wonderful wordsmith
and I can always find ways
to say things, and I'm now,
I have been pushed to the point,
by what I have seen in my years,
where none of that
is there anymore,
"and I need to tell you
exactly what is going on."
We can't get rid of this
war mentality
from our public life.
We got a war on poverty,
war on crime, war on cancer,
war on litter, war on drugs.
Did you ever notice
we don't have
a war on homelessness?
No war on homelessness.
You know why?
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-You know why?
I'll tell you why,
because there's no money in it.
There's no money
in that problem.
Nobody stands to get rich
off of that problem.
You find a solution
to homelessness
where the businessmen
and the politicians
can steal a couple
of million dollars each,
you'll see
the streets of America
begin to clear up pretty fast.
It seemed he had
another goal in mind,
which was to push your thinking.
These people need physical,
tangible structures,
low-cost housing. But
where are you going to put it?
I think that was
the biggest thing
that attracted me to him,
especially young,
because your critical thinking
is starting to really, like,
tick up a bunch.
And you're starting to
really be like,
"Why do I have to
take off my hat in class?
What's that have to do
with me learning?
It's not blocking my brain."
We got a thing
in this country called NIMBY.
N-I-M-B-Y, "Not In My Backyard."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-That's what they call it.
People don't want
anything near them,
especially if it might
help somebody else.
To then be introduced
to another, like,
critical thinker who's like,
"Hey, society,
what's up with these rules?"
"What's up with these standards?
What's up with trying to
inflict this stuff
on everybody?"
Once you hear
another perspective,
you can't unhear it,
so you do have to then decide
who you are after that.
It's just the facts.
Well, I got an idea where we can
put some low-cost housing,
golf courses.
This is just what we need.
Golf courses.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Plenty of good land.
Plenty of good land
in nice neighborhoods,
land that's devoted now
to a meaningless,
mindless activity
engaged in primarily
by White well-to-do
male businessmen
who use the game to make deals
to get together
to carve the country up
a little finer among themselves.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Golf is an arrogant--
an arrogant, elitist game
and it takes up entirely
too much room in this country.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Entirely too much room.
Listen to me. You know
much room it takes up?
Seventeen thousand golf courses,
about 150 acres each.
That's three million acres.
That's 4,800 square miles.
Two Rhode Islands and a Delaware
you could build for the homeless
on the land
that's currently devoted
to this meaningless, mindless,
arrogant, elitist, racist game.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-Racist game, racist game.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
The reason I believe in blunt,
almost violent presentation
of my ideas these days,
is because what is happening to
everyone...
it is not gentle,
it is not subtle.
It is direct, hard, and violent
what is being done
to the lives of people.
The real violence goes on
every day unheard, unreported,
and it is not sufficient
to have a clever riposte,
a clever line, huh?
"Fuck you, cocksuckers,"
is my approach.
The bloodiest,
most brutal wars fought,
all based on religious hatred,
which is fine with me.
Any time a bunch of Holy people
wanna kill each other...
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
GEORGE:
One of the problems of Americans
is they can't face reality.
And that's why when it comes
crashing down,
no one's going to be prepared
to handle it,
because they're not
used to it anymore.
I mean,
everything is glossed over.
"Oh, that's not happening."
Feel-good presidents.
"That's not happening.
That's not happening.
Let's make believe
this isn't happening."
And suddenly,
we're going to have to face it.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
I remember one time
Carlin said to me...
"I'm not in show business.
I'm a comedian."
It's like,
"Oh, this is gangster."
I took it to mean
that comedians,
you know, we're thinkers,
but when you think about,
you know, the history of man,
you know,
man used to love philosophers.
We don't really have
philosophers anymore,
but we have comedians.
So, Carlin encompassed
all those things.
That's what he meant.
Like, "This is what we do.
This is the life we've chosen."
We're, you know, kind of
a secret society, in a sense.
I think... I was talking
to Seinfeld last night
and it's kind of like
the same thing.
Okay, fine. Fine.
You want the comedian
to be your lens on society?
Go. Enjoy it. But for me...
I've never heard a comic bit
that changed my opinion
on anything.
Except a great bit changes
my opinion of that comedian.
♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Hey, look out there.
It's these meaty guys.
Wayne! How ya doing, Wayne?
People sometimes say to me,
"Are you trying to
make people think?"
"I say, "No, no. That would be
the kiss of death.
What I want to do is
to let them know I'm thinking."
You have to be
somewhat of an egotist
to stand up
all your life and say,
"Listen to me.
Please pay attention."
And that's fine. I can
live with that about myself.
But if I'm going to
call attention to myself,
I want to show them something
a little different
from time to time.
I want to find a voice
that isn't like all the others.
So I like to find out
where their line may be
and deliberately cross it,
and then make them glad
they came.
Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya,
you got some Brown people
in your country.
Tell them to watch the fuck out
or we'll goddamn bomb them.
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
That's-- If they're laughing
or at some point
when they extend the laugh,
or they begin to applaud
one of those lines,
I'll be filling that time
by going...
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
HOST:
If you were a new comic today,
if you came along
right as you are right now,
you had never made a record,
no one had ever heard of you.
GEORGE:
I'd kill. I'd absolutely kill.
I'm doing my very best work
right now.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-Yeah. Okay.
It's been a little while.
It's been a little while
since I've been here,
and a couple of things
have happened in that time.
I'd like to talk a little bit
about the war
-in the Persian Gulf.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Big doings in the Persian Gulf.
You know my favorite part
of that war?
It's the first war we ever had
that was on every channel
plus cable.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the war got
good ratings too, didn't it?
Got good ratings.
Well, we like war.
We like war.
We're a war-like people.
We like war
because we're good at it,
and it's a good thing we are.
We're not very good
at anything else anymore.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Huh? Can't build a decent car.
Can't make a TV set
or a VCR worth a fuck.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Got no steel industry left.
Can't educate our young people.
Can't get healthcare
to our old people,
but we can bomb the shit
out of your country, all right.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
We can bomb the shit
out of your country, all right.
-(CHEERING)
-(GEORGE IMITATING EXPLOSIONS)
Especially, if your country
is full of Brown people.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Oh, we like that, don't we?
That's our hobby.
That's our new job in the world,
bombing Brown people.
Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya,
you got some
Brown people in your country.
Tell them to watch
the fuck out...
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-...or we'll goddamn bomb them.
Well, when's the last
White people
you can remember that we bombed?
Can you remember
the last White...
Can you remember
any White people
we've ever bombed?
The Germans,
those are the only ones,
and that's only because
they were trying to
-cut in on our action.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
They wanted to
dominate the world.
Bullshit,
that's our fucking job.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-That's our fucking job!
(IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
Well, you know,
Jammin' In New York,
he always-- When he talked about
Jammin' In New York,
he said the reason
that it was so profound for him
was that it was the first time
that he felt like
he was a real writer.
That show was a life changer
for me in 1992.
It made me realize I was more
of an artist than a performer.
You know, for another comedian
to hear that,
it's like, "Wow. Okay, sure.
Whatever you say, you weren't
a real writer until then. Okay."
I'm a stand-up comic.
It's a vulgar art.
It's the people's art.
I'll always be that.
I'm nothing but a vulgar,
stand-up comedian performer,
show business guy,
but I'm a writer, too.
There's an artist at work
in here.
There's an artist at work
alongside the performer,
and that made me feel different.
Jammin' In New York
was the first time
that those values showed
in the piece called,
The Planet is Fine.
The People Are Fucked.
We're so self-important.
So self-important.
Everybody's gotta save
something now. Save the trees.
Save the bees. Save the whales.
Save those snails.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the greatest arrogance
of all, save the planet. What?
Are these fucking people
kidding me? Save the planet?
We don't even know how to
take care of ourselves yet.
We haven't learned how to care
for one another.
We're going to save
the fucking planet?
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-I'm getting tired of that shit.
Tired of that shit, tired.
I'm tired of fucking Earth Day.
I'm tired of these
self- righteous
environmentalists.
These White bourgeois liberals
who think the only thing wrong
with this country
is there aren't enough
bicycle paths.
People trying to make
the world safe for their Volvos.
Besides, environmentalists
don't give a shit
about the planet.
They don't care
about the planet.
Not in the abstract, they don't.
Not in the abstract, they don't.
You know what
they're interested in?
A clean place to live.
Their own habitat.
They're worried that
someday in the future,
they might be personally
inconvenienced.
Narrow,
unenlightened self-interest
doesn't impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong
with the planet.
Nothing wrong with the planet.
The planet is fine.
-The people are fucked.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Difference. Difference.
The planet is fine.
Compared to the people,
the planet is doing great.
It's been here four
and a half billion years.
Do you ever think
about the arithmetic?
The planet has been here
four and a half billion years.
We've been here what,
100,000? Maybe 200,000,
and we've only been engaged
in heavy industry
for a little over 200 years.
Two hundred years
versus four and a half billion,
and we have the conceit to think
that somehow we're a threat.
That somehow
we're going to put in jeopardy
this beautiful little
blue-green ball
that's just a-floating
around the sun.
The planet has been through
a lot worse than us.
Been through all kinds of things
worse than us.
Been through earthquakes,
volcanoes, plate tectonics,
continental drift, solar flares,
sunspots, magnetic storms,
the magnetic reversal
of the poles.
Hundreds of thousands of years
of bombardment by comets
and asteroids and meteors,
worldwide floods, tidal waves,
worldwide fires, erosion,
cosmic rays,
recurring ice ages and we think
some plastic bags...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
...and some aluminum cans
are going to make a difference?
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-The planet... the planet...
the planet isn't going anywhere.
We are.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
We're going away.
Pack your shit, folks.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-We're going away
and we won't leave
much of a trace either.
Thank God for that.
Maybe a little Styrofoam, maybe.
A little Styrofoam.
Planet will be here.
We'll be long gone.
Just another failed mutation.
Just another
closed-end biological mistake,
an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
The planet will shake us off
like a bad case of fleas.
A surface nuisance.
-(BLOWS)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
That haunting sound effect
of the Earth
just shaking us off, he goes...
(BLOWS) And I remember
I-- I-- like--
I felt like a jolt in my chest,
you know, when you lean back
on a chair or something,
when he did that,
of the way
he so brutally and eloquently
showed the insignificance
of human beings and humanity.
To be fair, the planet probably
sees us as a mild threat.
Something to be dealt with,
and I'm sure
the planet will defend itself...
BILL: A lot of the stuff
that he was saying,
it was hard for some people
to listen to it,
because it was so searingly
and brutally honest.
What would you do
if you were the planet
trying to defend
against this pesky,
troublesome species? "Let's see.
What might... Hmm, Viruses."
Viruses might be good.
They seem vulnerable
to viruses.
And viruses are tricky,
always mutating
and forming new strains,
"whenever a vaccine
is developed."
The thing that
is so key with George
is he's not afraid of silence.
And so I think
when your comedian
has a specific agenda,
especially one that is
so explicitly political,
and so explicitly, like,
"I'm going to
confront the things
that you think
you don't want me to confront,"
you have to be able to
keep your back stiff.
Because if the audience
sees you back off,
then they got you.
Pro-life conservatives
are obsessed with a fetus
from conception to nine months.
After that, they don't want to
know about you.
They don't want to
hear from you. No nothing.
No neonatal care, no daycare,
no Head Start,
no school lunch, no food stamps,
no welfare, no nothing.
If you're preborn, you're fine.
If you're preschool,
-you're fucked.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-You're fucked.
-(LAUGHING, CHEERING)
Conservatives don't give
a shit about you
until you reach military age.
Then they think
you are just fine.
Just what they've been
looking for.
Conservatives want live babies
so they can raise them
to be dead soldiers.
Pro-life, they're not pro-life.
You know what they are?
They're anti-woman.
Simple as it gets,
anti-woman.
They don't like them.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Here's another question I have.
How come when it's us,
it's an abortion,
and when it's a chicken,
it's an omelet?
Are we so much better
than chickens all of a sudden?
Name six ways
we're better than chickens.
See, nobody can do it.
You know why? Because
chickens are decent people.
Is a fetus a human being?
This seems to be
the central question.
Well, if a fetus
is a human being,
how come the census
doesn't count them?
Just looking for
a little consistency here
in these
anti-abortion arguments...
No one is ever more himself
than at that moment
when he laughs
because it's very Zen-like,
that moment.
You are completely yourself
when the message hits that brain
and you understand it
and then the laugh begins.
If a new idea slips
into that moment,
it gets in and has a place
to start to grow a little.
At the same time,
you've had to surrender yourself
to that moment,
and it's a perfect union.
It's a genuine,
momentary communion.
They wouldn't have
experienced it without you,
and you wouldn't have
experienced it without them.
Maybe it's one of the things
that you seek
by following this path
is to have some power like that.
To be able to say,
"Stop in your tracks
and consider me."
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
I'm speaking to my friends,
the Catholics,
when John Cardinal O'Connor
of New York
and some of these
other cardinals
and bishops have experienced
their first pregnancies
and their first labor pains
and they've raised a couple
of children on minimum wage,
then I'll be glad to hear
what they have to say
about abortion.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-I'm sure it'll be interesting.
Enlightening, too. But... but...
in the meantime,
what they ought to be doing
is telling these priests
who took a vow of chastity
to keep their hands off
the altar boys.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
When Jesus said,
"Suffer the little children,
"come unto me," that's not what
He was talking about.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This will be the best fair ever!
-Mr. Conductor?
-Look what I won at the fair!
Besides winning
all these prizes,
I had a whole baked bean.
HASAN MINHAJ: Like most kids,
my introduction to comedy
was my freshman year of college.
I was one of those kids where
I only knew Carlin
as the dude
from Shining Time Station.
Honestly, he was just the dude
from Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventure.
Greetings, my excellent friends.
ALEX WINTER:
The Rufus that you see
is the Carlin
that we knew off-camera.
Right, it was this gentle,
paternal...
It wasn't like, "Hey, now
I'm doing my thing." You know.
And I think
everyone expected that.
Like, no one complained
about this.
I'm not like going to
create some mythology.
I'm only telling you
what the set vibe was.
And that was
what the set vibe was.
♪ (MID-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ALEX: One of the things
I respected about him so much,
and I think one of the things
that drew me to him
when I was young,
there was a kind of
open-heartedness to him.
-Gentlemen...
-ALEX: And front and center
-were his values.
-...we're history.
Whoa!
Hi, Tom. Hot baked goods.
KELLY:
I don't think he ever gave up
on the Danny Kaye dream.
Well, hello, Susan.
You look fabulous this morning.
I'm so glad you both got laid.
He loved doing
Shining Time Station.
He loved being Rufus.
Then he calls me up.
He said, "I got a TV show."
I said, "Oh, how cool is that?"
Hey, don't buy any book
by a stand-up comedian
who's got a sitcom.
They don't know
what they're talking about.
He says,
"Yeah, you're on the payroll."
I said, "What's my job?"
And he says, "To help maintain
my New York attitude."
With a broomstick!
HOST: George Carlin stars
in The George Carlin Show
on Sunday nights.
He plays George O'Grady.
If I was willing to apologize,
I could have
stayed in the altar boys,
the Boy Scouts, the choir,
three Catholic schools,
and the Air Force.
First of all, my acting bug
has never been satisfied,
and I had Sam Simon.
Sam's credentials include Taxi,
Cheers, Tracy Ullman,
and The Simpsons.
I thought at 56, maybe
I owe Brenda, my wife,
and me a shot
at a real home run.
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
I've always been an outsider
and a loner,
in my life and in my career.
Onstage, out there alone,
you've written
everything yourself,
you deliver it yourself,
you're directing and producing.
It's a complete solo act.
And I just think
there's a part of me
that wants to belong,
that wants to be
a part of a group
that wants to collaborate.
And that's what acting is,
the ultimate collaborative art.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
My dad did it... because
he wanted to stay at home
and spend time with my mom
and get off the fucking road.
He was tired.
He was sold the idea
that you can stay home
and have a life.
But Dad started working
14-hour days
and realizing that
he was not home with my mom.
And he was exhausted.
And irritated and at war
with his other
executive producer.
SAM SIMON: At the time,
this is when Seinfeld
was looking at 250 million
dollars from his show.
And he said it,
he felt he owed it to his family
to hit a home run,
but they wanted to change
the tone of the network.
So, in spite
of pretty good numbers,
the show was canceled.
He's a guy that wrote
all his own material
and got on the stage by himself,
and just the nature of what
we were doing isn't that.
So it's just weird
that he considers it
this black mark and this failure
'cause you just go,
"Well, that's TV."
That's why most comedians fail.
We're not good collaborators,
obviously. (CHUCKLES)
Why the hell are you
up there by yourself?
Because that's how
you feel comfortable.
I remember
somebody asking me once,
"Would you ever consider
doing a Broadway play?"
And I went, "You mean
where I would have to wait"
till someone else
finishes talking before I talk?
"Why would I do that?"
That's when you have to
melt yourself down
and pour yourself into
a different bottle,
to collaborate.
Hey, the streets are safer
with you behind bars.
GEORGE:
When they called me...
Well, I won't be in here long!
...and told me
it had been canceled...
They haven't made the jail
that can hold George O'Grady.
...I said, "Thank you."
It was a detour that
I had to make one final time.
And there'll be a trial
of dead screws behind me.
CALLER: Hi, George.
I'm a big fan of yours.
I loved your show.
It didn't make it.
Are we going to
see you on TV again?
No, I'm very happy
that it didn't make it
because I really didn't fit
in that kind of
commercial comedy setting.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
GEORGE: Trouble is it was fun
on the stage,
it wasn't fun in the offices,
and that's fine.
I'm happy
to be doing what I love
and that is my stand up.
This next piece of material
is real simple.
It's called
"Free-Floating Hostility."
Cultural items I'm bored with,
tired of, and pissed at.
People who make quote marks
in the air with their fingers.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-What about these people
who tell you
their needs aren't being met?
What about these guys
who tell you,
"I heard that."
Too many vehicles.
White guys who wear
their baseball hats backwards?
What is all this shit
about angels?
What the fuck do White people
have to be blue about?
Something else
I don't understand,
-motivation tapes.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGH)
Banana Republic
ran out of khakis?
Now suddenly,
everyone is walking around
with their own
personal bottle of water.
When did we get
so thirsty in America?
Three out of four people
now believe in angels.
-What, are you fucking stupid?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Besides, if you're motivated
enough to go to the store
to buy a motivation book,
aren't you motivated enough
to do that?
So you don't need the book.
Put it back, tell the court,
"Fuck you. I'm motivated.
I'm going home.
-I'm going home."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I'm getting a little tired
of hearing
that after six policemen
get arrested
for shoving a floor lamp
up some Black guy's ass
and ripping his intestines out,
the Police Department announces
they're going to
have sensitivity training.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I say, "Hey, if you need
special training to be told"
not to jam a large
cumbersome object
up someone else's asshole,
maybe you're too fucked up
to be on the police force
in the first place.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
-Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe not. I don't know.
You know what they oughta do?
They oughta have
two new requirements
for being on the police,
intelligence and decency.
You never can tell.
It might just work.
It certainly
hasn't been tried yet.
(CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
REPORTER: George Carlin,
the hippy-dippie weatherman,
turned 60 this month, 60,
and this ninth-grade dropout...
Yeah, Cardinal Hayes...
REPORTER: ...I know.
I didn't believe it either,
somewhere along the way
fell in love with ideas
and words and has just written
his first book,
Braindroppings, which questions
some of the major issues
of our time.
When it comes to bullshit,
truly Major League bullshit,
you have to
stand back in awe,
in awe of the all-time
heavyweight champion
of false promises
and exaggerated claims,
religion.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Organized religion,
it's no contest.
Religion easily, easily,
has the best bullshit story
of all time. Think about it.
Religion has convinced people
that there's an invisible man
living in the sky
who watches everything you do
-every minute of every day.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And the invisible man
has a list
of ten specific things
-he doesn't want you to do.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
And if you do
any of these things,
he will send you
to a special place...
of burning and fire and smoke
and torture and anguish
for you to live forever
and suffer and burn and scream
until the end of time.
-But he loves you.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-He loves you.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
He loves you and he needs money.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
He always needs money.
He's all-powerful, all-present,
all-knowing, and all-wise.
-Just can't handle money.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Do you feel your place
in comedy now?
Do you feel that place?
Is that...
That is growing on me.
I think longevity
is a wonderful thing.
Sometimes you get applause
just for not being dead
-when you say...
-(LAUGHS)
It's true. When you say,
"I'm going to be 60,"
they applaud that.
Wonderful, he's not dead, 60.
Uh, so, but,
but I'm getting a sense of it.
You know, when you're in planes
three days a week.
I go out every Friday,
I come home every Monday.
It's three different cities,
three different nights,
airports, hotel lobbies,
and people are wonderful.
People-- I love individuals.
I hate groups of people.
I hate people who have
a group of people
with a common purpose,
because pretty soon
they have little hats...
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-...you know, and armbands,
and fight songs,
and a list of people
they're going to visit
at 3:00 a.m.
So, I dislike
and despise groups of people,
but I love individuals.
And so, cumulatively,
I have gotten the feeling
that I'm in this big family.
A family life I never had,
by the way,
this so to say, extended family
of people who feel like
you're their cousin.
Just like,
"Georgie, in 1961, I saw you.
Hey, remember that?" "Yes."
"Oh, and you know
what you said?" I said, "Did I?"
"Oh, yes." It's just great.
And so, cumulatively,
you say, "Well,
I guess I'm in the family.
I guess it's okay."
JOURNALIST:
He's there, George! George.
GEORGE: I met my wife, Brenda,
35 years ago in a nightclub
in Dayton, Ohio.
And she has taken every step
of this trip with me.
In the beginning,
she sat back
of those bad nightclubs
and had to watch my second show
when the 12 people
in the audience
had already seen my first show
and I was forced to do
the B material.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
She gave birth to our
miraculous daughter, Kelly,
who once slept
on the stage right near me
all through a show I did
at a college in Georgia.
She was nine years old.
Kelly, not Brenda.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Then, in 1970, when I discovered
I had to follow my heart
and go from a suit and tie
to a beard and jeans,
and take a pay cut
of about 80 percent,
Brenda never blinked.
Never blinked.
Even though
it meant walking away
from the purchase
of our very first home,
which was in escrow at the time.
And you know what she said?
When I told her
what I wanted to do,
she said, "I'm going to make up
your new press kit."
She's the best
I could ever have wished for.
So, Brenda, thank you.
-Thank you.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And Brenda,
as they say on these occasions,
half of this belongs to you.
I promise you, later on,
when we sell this thing...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
...I'll split the money
with you.
Thanks, everybody,
very, very much. Thank you.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CROWD: Surprise!
(CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
HOST:
You've had a long, successful,
-happy marriage.
-GEORGE: Yes, sir.
HOST: In a society
where that's unusual,
in a profession
where it's very unusual.
GEORGE: Brenda and I were lucky
to have found one another.
We had our problems
as everyone has.
We had to get past
some bad things,
but we always had
our senses of humor.
And we always had
a kind of loyalty to each other.
"I think there's
a little aspect of, "You know,
we did this and here we are.
"It's us. It's not you and me.
It's us."
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KELLY: When my mom got sick...
from liver cancer,
the oncologist said to us
she has maybe
three months to live.
And so he was in denial a bit
about it. I certainly was.
We have a family meeting,
and we were going to have
a big 60th birthday
for my dad. And my dad says,
"We're not going to
do this birthday party.
Let's do it when Mom stabilizes
in a few months."
And none of us are talking about
what's actually going on,
which is my mother's not
going to be alive in six months.
Nobody's talking about it.
And then my dad says,
"I have to go on the road."
And it's like a ten-day trip
he's got to go on the road.
And I'm like, "What?"
I'm furious inside,
and at the same time,
stupefied by my own inability
to say, "You have to stay home."
JEFF ABRAHAM: You know,
he had his first book
coming out, Braindroppings.
And he had this press tour.
You know, we had started
probably about a month or so
just prior to that.
And he would go out,
do a couple dates,
race home, see Brenda.
And he was all set
to do Letterman.
You know, he flew to New York
"and he got the call, "Brenda's
probably not going to make it
through the weekend."
JERRY:
I don't know if she was dead
when he walked in the room
or not,
but I do remember
that she had a teardrop.
And George took a Kleenex
and wiped her eye
and saved that Kleenex
till the day he died.
Brenda.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
KELLY: She died on Mother's Day.
But to watch my dad...
take her, um...
face in his hands,
and he was just like,
"Oh, Brenny. Oh, Brenny.
I'm so sorry."
And it was just like...
you know,
they loved each other so much,
and, um...
it was such a fucked way
for it to end.
I just pretty much after that
dedicated myself, you know,
"I'm not going to
pretend anymore.
I'm not pretending
with my dad anymore."
My dad and I actually,
after that, we were like,
"All right, we need to learn
how to talk to each other."
Because we got
how fucked up it all was.
LARRY KING: Tragedy came into
George Carlin's life recently
after a long
and very happy marriage,
the death of his wife.
And this book wasn't--
-You didn't time it this way.
-GEORGE: No.
So you're committed
to this tour.
I'm sure
you wouldn't be out on it.
Brenda was ill at the time
the book tour was being booked.
And I like to say,
Brenda not only
was the light of my life,
she was the keeper
of my dreams.
How do you
deal with it, George?
Well, you just have to
get each day done
a little bit at a time.
And you go
from emotion to logic.
During the first few weeks,
there's so many things to do
and think about
that you bounce back and forth
between feeling and thinking.
And there are times
when you hit a low.
And there are times
when you're okay, sort of.
Do you live lots of memories
-when you have that many years?
-Oh, yes.
Every city that I've been in
on my own,
I've been in with Brenda.
Almost every one.
We drove every mile
of this country together.
Early in the marriage,
we lived out of our Dodge Dart.
It's not just sorrow and loss.
It's savoring what you had.
♪ (SORROWFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Excuse me.
Fill them pews, people.
That's the key.
Grab the little ones as well.
Hook them while they're young.
So, in 1998, we get ready
to make this picture, Dogma.
When we were casting,
they were like...
All right. Mistakes were made.
..."Who do you see
as Cardinal Glick?"
And I said, "George Carlin."
Now, we all know
how the majority and the media
in this country
view the Catholic Church.
KEVIN: One day
he came up to me on set,
"he goes, "As you know,
my wife just passed away.
I'm not ready to take off
my wedding band yet."
So what I came up with is,
if it's okay with you
and if it's okay for the movie,
if I put a Band-Aid,
if Cardinal Glick has a Band-Aid
on his finger the whole movie,
it would allow me
to keep my wedding band on
"because it's just too soon."
ROCCO URBISCI:
There's a period of healing
you have to go through,
and then you realize,
you know, you're still here.
And they would want you
to do what you do.
That's a gift you were given,
and for you not to do it
would be a sin.
So George did
what he always did,
went home...
(LIGHT TAPPING)
...and wrote.
♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
Religion tries to tell us
that there's meaning
and that there's purpose
and there's design,
and there isn't.
It is all chaos
and random and chance.
Religion takes a basic impulse
we all have,
which is a spiritual yearning.
To be reunited somehow
with the universe.
And that's what religion
exploits.
They call it God.
They say he has rules,
and I think it's cruel.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
GEORGE: I have pulled away
and I now reside out
where the Oort cloud is,
where the comets gather.
I finally decided
that I would dissociate myself,
view all of this as an absurd,
tragic comedy,
and really have a point of view
that allowed me
to say anything that felt right,
that expressed how I was
reacting to all of this,
and how it made me feel.
I sort of gave up
on the human race
and decided that
I didn't care about the outcome.
"Not caring about the outcome."
What do you mean by that?
Right. Not having
an emotional stake
in whether this experiment
with human beings works.
I really don't care.
I love people as I meet them
one by one. People are
just wonderful as individuals.
You see the whole universe
in their eyes
if you look carefully.
But as soon as they begin
to group,
as soon as they begin to clot,
when there are five of them
or ten, or even groups
as small as two,
they begin to change.
They sacrifice the beauty
of the individual
for the sake of the group.
I decided it was all
under the control of groups now,
whether it's business, religion,
political people or what.
And I would distance myself
from wishing for a good outcome.
Let it do what it's going to do
and I'll enjoy it
as an entertainment.
And not reflect on
what it is on its own?
And when you say to yourself,
"I don't care what happens."
It just gives you
a broader perspective
for the art,
for the words to emerge.
JON: The only other person
that I had a similar feeling
about was Kurt Vonnegut,
who struck me
as incredibly humanistic.
Someone with great care
for the individual,
of great empathy, but of a real
mistrust of institutions.
When you'd talk to him,
everything was so rational.
If that was his spirituality,
I think,
it was in the rational mind.
But I think he also
felt outside of life.
JERRY: He would never talk like,
"Oh, I'm going to die,"
but I think he felt that way,
that his days were numbered.
There are so many dates
that I had to cancel
because George had to
go to the hospital.
So I know he was afraid of it.
And what George needed,
you know, he couldn't be alone.
He didn't...
It was a funny combination,
he didn't really want to
interact with people,
but he wanted somebody around.
You know, if he was going to
get on the phone
after a show and call
and talk about his show,
he wanted somebody
to pick up the phone.
And, you know, he could
throw the I love you's around,
but what I think
he really wanted
was to say,
"Hey, I tried that joke."
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERRY: And then he met Sally.
SALLY WADE: One day,
I went to the bookstore
with my dog, Spot.
And the only two people in there
were George and myself.
I told myself, if he bent down
to pet Spot,
that I would say hello to him.
And he bent down
and pet Spot right away.
Our conversation
at the time was,
he was trying to transform
from being--
from doing into being
and he was tired of always doing
and he wanted to just
be who he was.
He walked me out to my car
and said that he'd call me
in eight months.
He wanted to wait.
He wanted to honor
the marriage that he'd lost.
And it would take eight months
for it to be a year.
I figured I'd never see him
again. And eight months later,
he called and asked me
if I wanted to go get a bagel.
My instincts told me
that he was a really nice guy.
And my instincts were wrong.
He was much nicer than that.
He was sweeter than that.
I mean,
he was the sweetest person
I think I've ever met.
AUTOMATED VOICE:
Thursday, 3:46 a.m.
GEORGE:
Hi, baby. How are you doing?
Well, it's over.
It went very well.
A lot of laughs.
They were a good audience.
AUTOMATED VOICE:
Saturday, 6:51 p.m.
GEORGE: We're on the air today
from Connecticut.
How do you like that?
A special broadcast
to one person.
A fine, fine girl.
Her name is Sally Wade.
Wow-ee, I say,
"Wow, look at that Sal',
she is some dish. Wow-ee."
SALLY: We just started
writing notes to each other.
And those evolved into us
being from a different planet,
and that we were just a couple
of five-year-olds
writing as very astute kids
from Jupiter.
GEORGE: The Jupiterian king
is out there goofing.
I'm out there goofing.
We were weird.
And our weirdness connected.
So we married ourselves.
We didn't have
the proper paperwork,
but we didn't think
we needed that.
Saturday, 5:18 a.m.
GEORGE: ♪ As the sun
Comes up in Baltimore ♪
♪ And the ships
Sail out to sea ♪
♪ I get out of bed
And stretch my balls ♪
♪ And I take a fucking pee ♪
There's a lovely tune for you.
I love you. Goodbye, baby.
(RECEIVER CLATTERS)
KEVIN:
So, we were sitting around,
doing rehearsal.
It was me, him, and Ben.
And he started talking
about Sally and he talked about,
he's like, "I love it.
It makes me feel young."
We play this game where
we're not really a part
of this fucking world anymore,
where we enter
the kingdom of the fairies
"and she's the fairy queen
and I'm the fairy king."
And he went on
this, like, very eloquent,
very uncharacteristic
of George Carlin,
you know, almost
fucking Ren Fest-y explanation.
I wanted to wave him off
and be like,
"Not in front of Affleck."
Um, because as soon as we left,
Ben just immediately cornered me
and was just like,
"Did you hear the part
where he's the fairy king?"
♪ (CALM MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ALLEY MILLS-BEAN:
He seemed like a little boy.
(CHUCKLES) I mean,
I don't know George from before,
so I don't know what he was like
as a man earlier in his life,
but I felt like...
both of them were like children.
GEORGE: I'm so in love...
ALLEY:
You could just see the way
that George looked at her.
He was madly in love with her.
GEORGE: ...Best baby doll
in the whole wide world,
and I love you so...
ALLEY: I never saw him angry.
I only saw him happy.
FILM CREW MEMBER:
George Carlin promo.
-B-roll, b-roll.
-SALLY: That's me.
There you go. What's your name?
-SALLY: I'm Findlay.
-No, you're not.
-SALLY: Yes, I am.
-GEORGE: Findlay?
-SALLY: Yes, that's me.
-Findlay, Ohio.
GEORGE:
Artists are on a journey.
They don't know
where it is going.
They just know
there's something else.
There's something more.
There's more in me.
There's more to talk about.
-(LAUGHS)
-Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, that's good.
It does look real.
Pablo Casals, the great cellist.
He was in his nineties,
and someone said to him,
"Master Casals,
why, at your age,
do you bother practicing
three hours a day?"
Hello.
"And he said, "Well,
I'm beginning to notice
some improvement."
It's interesting and it's true.
And that's the thing
that's in me.
I notice myself
getting better at this.
Statistics show that every year,
a million people commit suicide.
That's 2,800 a day.
One every 30 seconds.
-(FILM CREW LAUGHS)
-You know?
It's up to-- you sort of--
It's the viewer's interpretation
of that.
Like,
"Is that an invitation to them?"
-FILM CREW 1: Yeah.
-FILM CREW 2: Marking.
SALLY: The only thing
I didn't know in all of this,
until he ended up
in the hospital,
was that he did have
heart problems.
I didn't know that
in the beginning.
There were a few times when
he needed stents in his heart
and a few times when I had to
drive through every red light
there was
to get to the hospital in time.
And we were just able
to manage that somehow.
The closer you get to death,
the more you think
there's something there.
He didn't believe in a sky God,
but he was spiritual
in a way that meant magic
and positive things happening.
Like, he always had
a stage crystal with him.
And I think
most people would agree...
SALLY:
So, when he was performing,
he had that kind of magic
in his pocket.
And he could draw from that.
...I'll bet you can have
an all-suicide channel
-in this country.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I bet you. Well, shit,
they got all-golf.
-What the fuck? Goddamn.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
JEFF: George was
having health problems,
checking himself into hospitals
with heart conditions.
And I remember seeing George
at the Comedy & Magic Club.
He pulled into the parking lot
at 7:00.
I pulled in like at 7:01.
So our cars were there
at the same time.
I go, "George, how you doing?"
He goes, "Oh, I just came back
from the doctor."
And he lifted up his shirt...
and it looked like
a science project.
It looked like
something out of Alien.
It was black and blue
with scars, and this is a man
who had his chest open
a number of times.
Oh, what he went through.
We're gonna start at the bottom
with the homeless people
because nobody gives a fuck
about them.
Ain't nobody
got no money for them.
They have no plans.
They got no ideas.
They got nobody. Five hundred
thousand of them are veterans,
and they still don't give a fuck
about these people...
KELLY: I hadn't seen him
for about three months.
And by the way, there's another
bunch of homeless coming soon
when the housing bubble bursts
and the dollar gets devalued
and you get a lot of
middle-class homeless assholes,
and they'll be in there too.
KELLY: And he is going to do
this big HBO special.
And he never let me see
his HBO stuff
before the actual taping.
And I walk
into his dressing room
and his back is to me
and I see this person
standing in front of me
and I think,
"Who's that elderly man?"
First thought in my head was,
"Who's that--
Who's this this old guy
in my dad's dressing room?"
And he turns around
and he is noticeably shorter,
and he is puffy,
and he's having
difficulty breathing.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
KELLY: I thought to myself,
"There's no way
he's about to go on stage
and do an HBO special.
"There's no way he's going to
make it through it."
Assassination.
You know what's interesting
about assassination?
Well, not only does it
change those popularity polls
in a big fucking hurry,
but it's also interesting
to notice
who it is we assassinate.
Do you ever notice who it is?
Stop to think who it is we kill?
It's always people
who've told us
to live together in harmony
and try to love one another.
Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln,
John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy,
Martin Luther King,
Medgar Evers,
Malcolm X, John Lennon.
They all said, "Try to live
together peacefully." Bam!
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Right in the fucking head.
It did go really dark.
He didn't think
it went really dark.
He went really dark.
And he lost me a bit at the end.
It was too dark for me.
I like things
that are excessive.
I like excessive behavior,
excessive language,
excessive violence. It's fun.
It's interesting. It's exciting.
I like it
when nature is excessive.
That's why
I like natural disasters.
All these natural disasters
that have been going on,
I fucking love them.
I can't get enough of them.
If it's a bit,
then God bless him.
For... Or whatever. Nothing
bless him, as he might prefer,
but to pursue
that level of darkness...
in the hope that actually
it would point
toward something hopeful
is expecting a lot
from your audience.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Because all you're stating
is the dark part.
For centuries now,
man has done everything he can
to destroy, defile,
and interfere with nature,
so when nature strikes back
and smacks man in the head
and kicks him in the nuts,
I enjoy that.
I have absolutely no sympathy
for human beings whatsoever.
None.
You know what makes me happy?
Watching my species
destroy itself.
I really, I take it as a sport,
as a kind of a hobby
and I root for the complete
destruction of this culture
that we live in.
I root for underdogs,
I root for nature.
Because on this planet,
at this time,
nature is the underdog.
You know the best thing
I can hear on television?
-"We interrupt this program."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, CHEERING)
You know the worst thing
I can hear? "No one was hurt."
George's next special,
November 17th on HBO Live.
What are you calling it?
I Kinda Like It
When a Lot of People Die.
No, he did not like it
when a lot of people died.
He did like it
when a lot of people died.
GEORGE: I kinda like it
when a lot of people die.
Some people like needlepoint,
some people like miniature golf,
doing the mambo, shit like that.
-Me, I like a nice train wreck.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I always hope
things are going to get worse.
Don't you?
Don't you secretly hope
that everything gets worse?
When you see a big fire on TV,
don't you hope it spreads?
Are you on the verge of losing
your temper or are you...
-You're shaking your head.
-No, it's not that.
It's-- It's a contempt.
I really think
this species is a foolish,
failed species that has
organized itself poorly.
And I think this culture
in particular leads the way.
I think we have put property
ahead of people,
we have put competition
ahead of cooperation,
and I don't think the balance
can ever be
brought back into line.
You know, philosophers say,
"Why are we here?
What is this all about?"
I'm here for the entertainment.
Fuck these humans.
Let them do their thing.
I'll watch.
It's fun. I'm out here.
I have no stake
in the outcome anymore.
I don't care
what happens to you.
I don't care
what happens to your country.
I don't care
what happens to your species.
You can go get fucked.
Because it's fun to watch you
destroy each other.
-It's entertaining. Look at...
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
You got any dates
you want to push?
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-GEORGE: Yeah, right.
I'm not interested
in the budget.
I don't care
about tax negotiations.
I don't want to know
what country
the fucking pope is in,
but you show me a hospital
that's on fire,
and people on crutches
are jumping off the roof,
and I'm a happy guy!
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
-I'm a happy guy!
HASAN: One of the things I'm
still trying to figure out is,
was Carlin ultimately a nihilist
or was he an actual optimist
who was using comedy
to display a nihilist worldview?
Sirens, flames, smoke, bodies,
graves being filled,
parents weeping,
exciting shit, my kind of TV...
-HASAN: Is he the Joker?
-I just want some entertainment,
It's just the kind of guy I am!
-It's the kind of guy I am!
-HASAN: Is he happy?
(CHUCKLES) Like, shit is
unraveling in front of our eyes.
Most people won't admit
to those feelings.
Most people see something
like that on television,
they'll say, "Oh, isn't that
awful? Isn't that too bad?"
(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
Lying asshole.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Lying assholes.
GEORGE: This is what I root for.
This is my joy.
Wait till I do my next show,
you got to see the next one.
Two years from now,
tune in. It's called Fuck Hope.
That was fun.
Try to use a lot of that.
(FILM CREW LAUGHING)
GEORGE: You know,
it's just, it's how I am.
It's how I feel. It's so real.
You could tell.
It was really evident
from the first time I met him
that he was fully committed
to, like, whatever that fuse was
that he lit.
Probably back in high school,
if not before,
that he never ever stomped out.
And then over the years,
I just watched that, sort of,
get overtaken by a ferocity.
You know, it wasn't really
just a bitterness.
It was just a ferocity.
It was just like,
"This world is fucked up
and no one's doing
anything about it,"
and like, "I've tried to explore"
the human condition,
and I've come up fucking empty."
♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
-GEORGE: Gertie, Gertie.
Good girl. Yes.
The movie star Gertie.
Oh, you is a good girl.
I know you want to say,
"Is he goofy?"
SALLY: People have different
aspects of themselves.
And they have
different identities.
GEORGE: Gertrude says,
"I got to go now.
I got business downtown."
He would express all this anger
on stage,
and then walk off. That's it.
That's my anger.
Here's a big pile of it.
You guys deal with it.
I'll be your guide to this tape.
One of the patients here
has been wanting me
to make a tape for a long time.
A lot of people like to say
he got bitter when he was old
and all that shit.
Bullshit. He got tired
of the fucking people,
the fucking stupidity,
and the just hopelessness
of expecting anything from them.
He gave up. He gave up.
I'm not a shrink. (CHUCKLES)
I'm not a fucking shrink,
but I sensed the disappointment
in the human race.
And it hurt him, I'm sure.
KELLY:
It was rare moments in our life
when he would be settled,
fully present,
but we had these breakfasts
we would have,
and he would
put the world aside.
I'd been wrestling a lot
with his darker take
on humanity.
And, I finally just said to him,
I said,
"Dad, if you've really given up,
then why the fuck do you
get on stage?
Why do you bother? Like, really?
Like, is this just an ego thing?
Like, is this just about you
"satisfying yourself?
Clearly not."
And I felt like he had to
fess up to me.
He was like, "You know,
you've got me there."
I really believe
that he was always
trying to be in service
of some way
to this species, and it is hard.
It is really hard
keeping your heart open
for that.
When I listen to your comedy,
I don't get the feeling that,
you know, that you have
that no hope thing.
-I get just the opposite.
-GEORGE: Really?
HOST: I think you've got
a big defense thing going
because you really are
the hopeful guy.
I think you really are the guy
who really believes
-all the good of humanity.
-I do that. I do that.
-HOST: I know. It's all
the opposite of what you think.
-I believe as an individual.
HOST: You're coming in
a mirror way.
I know you're coming
in the back door.
All comics do it,
but I think you are
a very high spiritual person.
Well, they say
if you scratch a cynic,
you'll find
a disappointed idealist.
-HOST: Right.
-And I do cop to that.
I am that. And you're right.
That's a very intelligent
analysis.
And I've gone through that
without using the words
you used. I've gone
through that myself.
Thought about myself
in those terms,
but it's more fun this way.
STEVEN WRIGHT:
He's on the Mount Rushmore
of creative artists
in this country.
Any kind of art.
And he was always nice.
He was always very supportive.
You felt like he was your buddy.
And you were a comedian,
he's a comedian.
You're two guys
doing this thing.
You were in the same boat
with him. You were with him.
He would even mail me a joke.
He'd write it down
and mail it to me,
but he's like a...
you know, like a great painter.
Like a Rembrandt of comedy.
You know, there's Rembrandt
and then this guy's doing
a postcard of a sailboat.
(LAUGHS)
GEORGE:
This is workshop night for me.
Roll with it.
Just listen to the words.
That's what I want you doing.
I'm reading and I'm kind of
fucked up on where I'm going,
just listen to the words,
because this shit, I love it,
but I don't know it all yet,
okay?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
If you follow your heart,
if you do the right thing,
if you do what's on your mind,
and in your heart,
and in your brain,
or whatever
you want to say about it,
good things will happen from it.
Good things will come.
By the way, I'm not trying
this stuff out on you.
I'm not trying it.
I don't do that.
The audience doesn't
really figure into my plans.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Here's the way I look at it,
I'm here for me,
you're here for me
and no one's here for you.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-Okay?
By just doing what pleased me
in these shows, I had an effect.
The kind of effect that I can't
have on people in Darfur.
Even if I give money, if I send
all my old sweaters to Darfur,
it will not have
the effect on them
that one person
sitting and listening
when he's 12 years old,
and I've heard them
from people of all ages,
and I've heard them
from parents.
I've heard parents say,
"My kid saw that show.
This and that.
His marks got better."
I swear to God.
I hear this kind of shit.
And that gave me such power.
I don't mean power to use,
power to have.
Gave me such a feeling of,
"Yeah, man.
I'm okay. I'm fucking okay."
DIRECTOR:
Okay. We're still rolling, guys.
And we're in the shot.
And, George.
Now, the last time
I rolled through these parts,
and I do roll through
with some frequency,
I'm a little bit like herpes,
I keep coming back,
but since the last time
I might have seen
some of you folks,
I've had my 70th birthday.
So I'm now 70 years old,
and I like 70.
Not as much as I like 69.
Well, 69 was always
my favorite number,
but now I figure I'm 69
with one finger up my ass.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
GEORGE:
What I am is an old fuck.
It's like a fat fuck.
Fat fuck, tall fuck,
skinny fuck, short fuck,
but now that I'm an old fuck,
I'm beginning to notice
there are some advantages
to putting on a few extra years.
The first one is,
you never have to carry
anything heavy ever again.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Everybody wants to
help an old fuck.
If you got a big suitcase
or something like that,
you just kinda
go like this a little bit.
You say, "Yeah,
could you help me with this?"
They say, "Yeah. Hey, how far
are you going?" "Indianapolis."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I still refer to him
all the time, which for a comic,
I mean, you know... Comedy is so
ephemeral in so many ways.
It takes him out
of the class of pop star
and puts him in the class of,
like, Bach and Beethoven,
and classicists.
People that created something
that was timeless,
because it wasn't based
on the moment,
it was based on a deeper truth.
But the best thing
about getting old is,
you're not responsible
for remembering things anymore.
Even important things.
"But it was
your daughter's funeral."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-I forgot.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Oh, every time there's some
weird psychopathic news story
that happens, people are like,
"Oh, I wish George Carlin
were here to talk about that."
(CHUCKLES) It almost seems like
the weirder things get in life,
the more you want to hear
the voice of George Carlin
talking about it.
Even God can go
on sensory overload.
That's why he wanted
one day off a week.
Christians gave him Sunday,
Jews gave him Saturday,
Muslims gave him Friday.
God has a three-day weekend.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
I mean, we all love Lenny Bruce,
but nobody's sharing
a Lenny Bruce bit to explain
anything that's happening
in the culture right now.
You know,
there's lots of comedians
from even ten, 15 years ago
where we're sort of
done with their things
as being relevant to now.
There's enough bullshit
as it is...
W. KAMAU BELL:
He was still a comedian
that the culture as a whole
cared about
up until his last special.
...there's just enough bullshit
to hold things together
in this country.
Bullshit is the glue
that binds us as a nation.
Where would we be
without our safe,
familiar, American bullshit?
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE:
America's leading industry
is still the manufacture,
distribution, packaging
-and marketing of bullshit.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
This country was founded
by a group of slave owners
who told us that all men
are created equal.
That is what's known as
being stunningly full of shit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: There's a reason
education sucks,
and it's the same reason
that it will never,
ever be fixed.
Because the owners
of this country don't want that.
This country is owned
by eight or nine hundred people
who run everything,
do everything,
control everything.
It's all one big ownership class
in this country.
We're led to feel free
by the exercise
of meaningless choices.
Ice cream flavors,
what do you want? We got 31.
Got the flavor of the week,
got the flavor of the month.
But political parties,
we're down to two.
Politicians are put there
to give you the idea
that you have freedom of choice.
You don't. You have owners.
They own you.
They own and control
the corporations.
They've long since bought
and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses,
the city halls.
They got the judges
in their back pockets,
and they own
all the big media companies,
so they control
just about all of the news
and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
It's a big club...
and you ain't in it.
Nobody questions things
in this country anymore.
Americans have been bought off
and silenced by toys and gizmos
with our microwave hot dogs
and plastic vomit,
fake dog shit,
and cinnamon dental floss,
and lemon-scented toilet paper,
and sneakers
with lights in the heels.
-♪ (UNSETTLING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(CROWD CLAMORING)
GEORGE: Millions
of semi-conscious Americans
day after day,
shopping and eating.
It is the new national pastime.
Fuck baseball. It's consumption.
So, where do people think
these politicians come from?
They come from American parents
and American families,
American homes,
American schools,
American churches,
American businesses,
and American universities,
and they're elected
by American citizens.
This is the best
we can do, folks.
This is what we have to offer.
It's what our system produces.
-Garbage in, garbage out.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
GEORGE: If you have selfish,
ignorant citizens,
you're going to get selfish,
ignorant leaders.
Machine gun bacon.
GEORGE:
That's what the owners count on.
They want obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough
to run the machines
and do the paperwork,
and just dumb enough
to passively accept
all these
increasingly shittier jobs
with the lower pay,
the longer hours,
the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime
and now, they want
your fucking retirement money.
-They want it back.
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
So they can give it
to their criminal friends
-on Wall Street.
-♪ (MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
GEORGE: Of course,
there's a reason why
we're all drugged.
The drug companies
want it that way.
The drug industry has us
taking things to get awake,
things to go to sleep,
things to pep up,
things to forget about the grief
you had from something.
"There's a drug problem
in this country."
Where do you hear that?
At the drugstore.
-(ALL LAUGH)
-(MISSILE BLASTS)
GEORGE: You don't have to
be a political scientist
to see the bigger dick
foreign policy theory at work.
It goes something like this,
"What? They have bigger dicks?
Bomb them."
-(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
-(BOMB BLASTS)
GEORGE:
That's our new job in the world,
bombing Brown people.
Isn't that roughly
our job everywhere?
We kind of free people
and whip industry on them
so that they can have
all the benefits of industry
that we have come to love.
Wasn't there something noble
they could do
to be helping this planet heal?
Mother Earth raped again.
Guess who.
Hey, she was asking for it.
You know there's another
bunch of homeless coming soon
when the housing bubble bursts
and the dollar gets devalued,
and you get a lot of
middle class homeless...
I said a long time ago,
when fascism comes to America,
it won't wear jackboots
and brown shirts.
It'll have on a smiley face
and a T-shirt
and designer jeans and Nikes.
CROWD: (CHANTING)
Black lives matter!
GEORGE:
You know what they ought to do?
They ought to have
two new requirements
for being on the police.
Intelligence and decency.
(POLICE SIREN WAILING)
GEORGE: You never can tell.
It might just work.
It certainly
hasn't been tried yet.
-Come on! You're full of shit!
-(SCREAMS)
CROWD: Black lives matter!
Black lives matter!
GEORGE: That's all you ever hear
about in this country,
is our differences.
Race, religion, sexuality.
That's the way the ruling class
operates in any society.
They try to divide
the rest of the people.
Anything they can do to
keep us fighting with each other
so that they can
keep going to the bank.
(INDISTINCT CHANTING)
GEORGE: But I'll tell you
what they don't want.
They don't want
a population of citizens
capable of critical thinking.
They're not interested in that.
That doesn't help them.
That's against their interests.
They don't give a fuck
about you.
They don't
give a fuck about you.
They don't care
about you at all. At all.
The table is tilted, folks.
The game is rigged.
(GRUNTS, SHOUTS)
GEORGE: Land of the free.
Home of the brave.
-(OFFICER SCREAMING)
-GEORGE: All men are equal.
-OFFICER: (SCREAMING) Help!
-GEORGE: Justice is blind.
-The good guys win.
-CROWD: USA! USA!
GEORGE: And everything
is going to be just fine.
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
GEORGE:
It's called the American dream
because you have to be asleep
to believe it.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
(WAVES CRASHING)
KELLY:
My last memory of my dad is,
I went to Hawaii and I drive up
to the Napili Kai,
which is where I had my parents
sign the UN peace treaty.
And there's no angst there,
there's no chaos,
there's no bad memories.
It's just pure, pure love.
So I call my dad, and my dad
never picks up his phone,
and he picks up the phone,
and he says, "Hey, kiddo."
I'm like, "Hey, Dad,
I was just at the Napili Kai,
and I want to tell you that
everything that happened to us
40 years ago,
all the pieces of ourselves
that we left there,
I've brought them home,
and it's done, and it's really,
really over, Dad.
It's done. There's no more.
There's no more pain
inside of me about this
"or suffering or any of that."
I can tell
my dad's very choked up
on the other end of the phone.
He can barely speak.
And, um, and he's like,
"That's... that's great."
You know.
And it was one of these moments,
it was just incredible.
I'd felt like on the phone
with my dad...
like we had met each other
in this place
that we had never met
each other before.
And I knew this was
so important to him
because I knew
the biggest regret he had
of his entire life
about everything
was what those years did to me.
And, we had this
beautiful conversation.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SALLY: He was going into
the hospital early on a Sunday.
He wasn't feeling bad.
He was just going in to get
an adjustment for his heart.
And then the hospital
called me... (SNIFFLES)
...and said...
(CLEARS THROAT)
..."Come in as soon as you can."
And, uh...
he kept telling me he was sorry.
Which he didn't have to do.
He didn't have to apologize.
And, then he stopped breathing.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
GEORGE: Uh, y'all people,
this is the afterlife sergeant.
A couple of notes for you.
Just things where people
are curious about.
Hitler. Hitler is in heaven.
Listen, don't blame me.
I don't make the rules.
Technically, he was a Catholic.
He got absolution
before he died.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Yes, you're all...
you're all going to die.
Didn't mean to remind you of it,
but it is on your schedule.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Comedians don't want to die.
It's only a metaphor,
but it's so true of all of us.
We don't want to die out there.
The comics wanna die.
I don't want to die.
Geez, I was dying out there.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Of course,
if the comedian doesn't die,
you know, if he succeeds,
if he makes you laugh,
then he can say,
-"I killed them."
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-"I killed them."
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
So it's either me or you,
you know?
See, I don't worry
about the little things.
I think we're part
of a greater wisdom
than we will ever understand.
A higher order.
Call it what you want.
You know what I call it?
The big electron.
The big electron. Whoa.
-Whoa. Whoa.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
It doesn't punish.
It doesn't reward.
It doesn't judge at all.
It just is, and so are we,
for a little while.
Thanks for being here with me
for a little while tonight.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
GEORGE: Take care of yourself.
Take care of yourself,
and take care of somebody else.
Thank you. Goodnight.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
♪ ("BRING ON THE LUCIE"
BY JOHN LENNON PLAYING) ♪
♪ We don't care
What flag you're waving ♪
♪ We don't even
Want to know your name ♪
♪ We don't care
Where you're from ♪
♪ Or where you're going ♪
♪ All we know it that you came ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Well, we were caught
With our hands in the air ♪
♪ Don't despair,
Paranoia's everywhere ♪
♪ We can shake it with love
When we're scared ♪
♪ So let's shout it aloud
Like a prayer ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ We understand your paranoia ♪
♪ But we don't wanna
Play your game ♪
♪ You think you're cool
And know what you're doing ♪
♪ 666 is your name ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it,
Do it, do it now ♪
♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
-♪ Free the people now ♪
-♪ Do it, do it, do it ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪