3. Attracting Attention
52 “My mother would say”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
52 “Some really great toilets”: Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of the Stand-Up Comics (Morrow, 1975; Limelight Editions, 1985), 138.
54 “We didn’t work very hard”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
56 “I can remember doing the supper show”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
56 “Since I have always been able to detect”: Steve Allen, More Funny People (Stein and Day, 1982), 104.
57 “I was good and juiced”: Sound recording included in Ronald K. L. Collins and David M. Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2002).
57 “sorta grabbed me by the collar”: Collins and Skover, Trials of Lenny Bruce, 147.
58 “Someday everybody’s going to know your name”: Appearance on 20/20 (ABC), February 5, 1999.
59 “an extravaganza of patchwork”: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, (Simon & Schuster, 2005), 10-12.
60 “What kind of place you running here?” Berger, Last Laugh, 142.
60 “In 1963, the Village was alive”: Richard Pryor with Todd Gold, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences (Pantheon Books, 1995), 70.
61 “You break it down by talking about it”: Collins and Skover, Trials of Lenny Bruce, 47-51.
62 “It’s one of them numbers”: Collins and Skover, Trials of Lenny Bruce, 203.
64 “The future seems so precarious”: “The Sickniks.”
64 “I wasn’t very well-educated”: Goodman, “George Carlin Feels Funny.”
65 “Jester and savant must both”: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (Macmillan, 1964), 28.
65 “spontaneous flash of insight”: Koestler, Act of Creation, 45.
65 “The jester makes jokes, he’s funny”: Jay Dixit, “George Carlin’s Last Interview,” Psychology Today, www.psychologytoday.com
67 “Anything that was challenging verbally”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
67-68 “It was a standard fish-out-of-water gimmick”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
69 “I didn’t get a lot of attention”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
4. Values (How Much Is That Dog Crap in the Window?)
77 “There were a couple of monologues they cut”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
79 “One last four-letter word”: Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, (Playboy Press, 1966), 240.
80 “Lenny’s perception was magnificent”: Judy Stone, “Carlin: Lenny Bruce Was His Idol,” New York Times, May 28, 1967.
80 “let me know there was a place to go”: Appearance on Make ’Em Laugh (PBS), 2009.
85 “high-fidelity ear”: “Pop of the News,” Newsweek, January 9, 1967.
85 “were dead. Just dead people”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
89 “I became known as a reliable prime-time variety show comedian”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
90 “I found out I can’t do this shit”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
90 “A man who tries to be everything but himself”: Esar, Esar’s Comic Dictionary, 4.
91 “The music was protest”: Unmasked with George Carlin (XM Radio), 2007.
93 “nearly as admirable for potent simplicity”: Paul Krassner, The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner (Seven Stories Press, 1996), 15.
94 “rule-bender and lawbreaker since first grade”: Quoted in Paul Krassner, “Remembering George Carlin,” Huffington Post, June 27, 2008.
5. The Confessional
98 “The crime wave is not a subject for levity”: George Carlin, FBI file, released January 23, 2009 (per request no. 1123179-001).
98 “an individual named George Carlin”: FBI file.
98 “it was obvious that he was using”: FBI file.
99 “thinks that the Director is one of the greatest”: FBI file.
99 “tonight our mouths fell open”: FBI file.
99 “What do we know of Carlin?”: FBI file.
100 “That’s the kind of sick material”: Lenny Bruce, “The Tribunal,” The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 2 (sound recording) (Fantasy, 1991).
100 “I was opening for—try not to smile”: Hendra, p. 251.
100 “O.J. Simpson has already received”: George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, (Hyperion, 2004), 207.
101 “I was more or less flabbergasted”: Hendra, Going Too Far, 252.
100-102 “Presumably the local constables wink”: “Legit Profanity a Problem to Brit Café Comics,” Variety, November 4, 1970.
102 “New York’s heart-quarters for great stars”: Mickey Podell-Raber with Charles Pignone, The Copa: Jules Podell and the Hottest Club North of Havana (Collins, 2007), 93.
102 “The Copa was a tough room”: Nachman, Raised on Radio, 26.
102 “If Jules wanted attention”: Podell-Raber with Pignone, The Copa, 116.
103 “I hated that fuckin’ place”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
103 “I’d say, ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar’”: Esquire
103 “He would never fire me, that fuck”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
103 “It was very artistic, very cinematic”: Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge, 18.
104 “Three weeks I had of that”: Berger, Last Laugh, 48.
104 “swinging from the chandeliers”: Zoglin,Comedy at the Edge, 47.
104 “My days of pretending to be as slick”: Pryor and Gold, Pryor Convictions, 93-94.
105 “dazzling states of heightened awareness”: “LSD,” Time, June 17, 1966
105 “It opened my eyes”: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shalin, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (Grove Weidenfeld, 1985), 181.
106 “Those drugs served their purpose”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
106 “He has the ability to couch them in jargon”: Variety, July 29, 1970.
107 “come up a modish contemporary fellow”: Variety, September 9, 1970.
107 “I’d wake up in the morning”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
108 “Virginia Graham was a real shit-stirrer”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
108 “They did the job for me”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
108 “I never went over to Don Adams’s house”: Stu Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair,” Rolling Stone, August 17, 1972.
109 “I sold grass in the mailroom on the side”: David Rensin, The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (Ballantine, 2003), 113.
112 “George made a gesture”: Berger, Last Laugh, 205.
112 “I’ve only had three people walk offstage”: Dan Plutchak, “George Carlin’s First and Last Show in Lake Geneva,” Walworth County Today, July 15, 2008.
112 “where they walk toward you”: Nachman, Raised on Radio, 404.
112 “Hefner is saying to me”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
113 “routine about materialism in American society”: “Comic George Carlin Much Too Successful in ‘Arousing’ Audience,” Variety, December 2, 1970.
113 “it never occurred to me”: Diahann Carroll with Ross Firestone, Diahann! An Autobiography (Little, Brown, 1986), 60.
115 “Everyone had come there to see George Carlin”: Berger, Last Laugh, 206-7.
116 “a nice, new, mainstream car”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
116 “You were just talking to him”: Donald Liebenson, “David Brenner at Zanies: ‘This Is What Comedy Was Meant to Do,’” Huffington Post, November 20, 2008.
118 “Oddest censorship I ever experienced”: Unmasked with George Carlin.
118 “sloppy and hippy character”: Berger, Last Laugh, 222.
119 “just trying to make it less fearsome”: Ap
pearance on The Mike Douglas Show (syndicated), May 15, 1971.
120 “I’d never done a real college-audience-in-the-Sixties kind of thing”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
120 “I killed”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
6. Special Dispensation
123 “trying to cash in on the hippie craze”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
124 “now being thought of as hokey”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
125 “They weren’t on my side totally”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
125 “It’s natural for people to distrust”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
126 “They’d heard about it in show business”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
126 “I went over to explain to him”: Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge, 32.
126 “It’s an opportunity for George”: Appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (NBC), February 29, 1972.
127 “I don’t know about ‘better’”: Appearance on The Mike Douglas Show (syndicated), Feburary 18, 1972.
128 “After twenty years of that”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
129 “That was really the capper”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
130 “She didn’t know it had reached this level”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
131 “He takes seven expletives”: Henry Edwards, “Their Satire Is Kid Stuff,” New York Times, April 28, 1974.
132 “marijuana smoke was so thick in the area”: Dave Tianen, “Summerfest: Gig Has Had Many High Notes,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 28, 2007.
133 “I couldn’t believe my ears”: Jim Stingl, “Carlin’s Naughty Words Still Ring in Officer’s Ears,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 1, 2007.
134 “No one said to me, you know”: Appearance on 20/20.
134 “Brenda and I laid off of everything”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
134-135 “had no idea he was like that”: Quoted in Dave Tianen, “Summerfest: The Big 40,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 24, 2007.
135 “I find it kind of funny”: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 28, 2007.
137 “Jeepers creepers, you can imagine”: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 28, 2007.
142 “use of obscene language is very simple”: Stone, “Carlin.”
142 “was the first one to make language an issue”: Carlin on Comedy.
7. Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television
143 “She’d gotten the imprimatur”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
144 “Let’s face it”: Arthur Unger, “The Nonconforming George Carlin,” Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1973.
145 “I take a perverse delight”: Werbin, “How George Carlin Showed His Hair.”
145 “and a number of others just stormed out”: Berger, Last Laugh, 226-28.
146 “Cocaine was different”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
147 “I ‘peed’ a long time on him,” Berger, Last Laugh, 229.
147 “Shit has saved my life”: Berger, Last Laugh, 232.
148 “One man’s vulgarity”: Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (Basic Books, 2007), 42-43, 131-32.
148 “was doing great damage to words”: The Carlin Case, WBAI, March 30, 1978.
150 “He played all kinds of records”: Jesse Walker, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (New York University Press, 2001), 73.
150 “Whereas I can perhaps understand”: The Carlin Case.
154 “Obnoxious, gutter language”: Marjorie Heins, Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hill and Wang, 2001), 99.
154 “simply as a matter of taste”: Matthew Lasar, Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network (Temple University Press, 1999), 141.
160 “biggest regret”: David Hochman, “Playboy Interview: George Carlin,” Playboy (October 2005).
162 “the first show in the history of television”: Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, (Back Bay Books, 2002), 22.
163 “punctual, and he fills out forms well”: Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live (Beech Tree Books/William Morrow, 1986), 84.
163 “I kept praying, ‘I hope George Carlin’”: Shales and Miller, Live from New York, 33.
163 “the major focus of the night”: Shales/Miller, Live from New York, 62.
165 “I probably didn’t have the nerve”: Shales/Miller, Live from New York,56.
8. Wasted Time
168 “It is said that every successful business”: George Mair, Inside HBO: The Billion Dollar War Between HBO, Hollywood and the Home Video Revolution (Dodd, Mead, 1988), 14.
169 “Comedians’ Bill of Rights”: Appearance on 20 Years of Comedy on HBO, 1995.
171 “I was never quite sure of it”: Tony Orlando and Patsi Bale Cox, Halfway to Paradise (St. Martin’s Griffin 2003), 153.
171 “You can’t be the hot new guy”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
172-173 “It would seem to be an American Negro invention”: Ashley Montagu, The Anatomy of Swearing (Macmillan, 1967), 313.
173-174 “a classic case of burning the house”: Heins, Not in Front of the Children, 101.
174 “because it is neither a sexual nor excretory organ”: Heins, Not in Front of the Children, 102.
175 “would risk fine or lose its license”: The Carlin Case.
175 “of nothing but farting”: Lasar, Pacifica Radio, 224.
176 “constitutionally sound but not very politically prudent”: Heins, Not in Front of the Children, 103.
177 “that’s as far as I go”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
177 “locked up in school taking sex education courses”: Nicholas von Hoffman, “Seven Dirty Words: A Cute Form of Censorship,” Washington Post, July 29, 1978.
177 “a good deal of street talk”: Les Brown, “Court’s Decision on Language Stirs Broadcasters,” New York Times, July 10, 1978.
178 “If you don’t like it”: Heins, Not in Front of the Children, 109.
178 “those transgressions suddenly seemed like small potatoes”: Merrill, “Playboy Interview.”
180 “a trip to the cemetery”: Appearance on Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo), 2004.
181 “There’ll be a lot of concert footage”: “George Carlin’s Coming of Age,” Harvard Crimson, July 25, 1978.
183 “Frankly, I feel dated”: “George Carlin’s Coming of Age.”
183 “It was like a breathing-in period”: Carlin on Comedy.
184 “By the time 1980 arrived”: Steve LaBate, “George Carlin On . . . ,” Paste, September 25, 2007.
184 “My album career had faded”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
186 “If you were in Birmingham, Alabama”: Betsy Borns, Comic Lives: Inside the World of American Stand-Up Comedy (Fireside, 1987), 47.
9. America the Beautiful
192 “The orchestra chairs are piled”: Tom Shales, “‘Carlin at Carnegie,’ A Cherishable Touch,” Washington Post, January 8, 1983.
192 “HBO didn’t kick in for me until”: Interview, Archive of American Television.
193 “It was truly like a ton of bricks”: A&E Biography: George Carlin.
194 “just fed your dissatisfaction”: A&E Biography: George Carlin.
194 “Abraham Maslow said the fully realized man”: Dixit, “George Carlin’s Last Interview.”
195 “too sane for his own good”: Robert R. Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Viking, 2000), 171.
202 “Kinison was the first guy I ever saw”: Cynthia True, American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story (HarperEntertainment, 2002), 40.
Seven Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin Page 28
