George Carlin

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George Carlin
File:GCarlin.jpg
George Carlin
Born (1937-05-12) May 12, 1937 (age 86)
United States Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
MediumStand-Up
Television
Film
NationalityUnited States American
Years active1957 – Present
GenresBlack Humor
Observational Humor
Satire
Subject(s)Obscenity
Freedom of Speech
Politics
Websitewww.georgecarlin.com

George Dennis Carlin (born May 12, 1937 in New York, New York)[1] is a Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, and author.

Carlin is especially noted for his irreverent attitude and his observations on language, psychology, and religion along with many taboo subjects. In fact, Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's right to regulate Carlin's act on the public airwaves.

George Carlin's most recent stand up routines are primarily focused attacking the flaws in modern day America. He often takes on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirizes the excesses of American culture.

He is considered by many to be a successor to the late Lenny Bruce and was described by Comedy Central as the second greatest stand-up comedian of all time behind Richard Pryor.[2]

Biography

Born in New York, New York, George Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said he and his friends called "White Harlem", because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name, "Morningside Heights". He was raised by his mother, who left his father when Carlin was two years old. At age 14, Carlin dropped out of high school and later joined the United States Air Force, training as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana. During this time he began working as a disc jockey on KJOE, a radio station based in the nearby city of Shreveport. He did not complete his Air Force enlistment. Labelled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957.

At the age of 18, he and Jack Burns, a new announcer at the station, assembled a comedy routine and began booking nightclubs. Soon the act broke up, but Carlin continued to work as a stand-up comic.

In the 1960s, Carlin began appearing on television variety shows, notably The Ed Sullivan Show. His most famous routines were:

  • The Indian Sergeant ("You wit' the beads... get outta line")
  • Stupid disc jockeys ("Wonderful WINO...") — "The Beatles' latest record, when played backwards at slow speed, says 'Dummy! You're playing it backwards at slow speed!'"
  • Al Sleet, the "hippie-dippie weatherman" — "Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark tonight, turning to partly light in the morning."
  • Jon Carson — the "world never known, and never to be known"

Variations on the first three of these routines can be found on Carlin's 1967 debut album Take Offs and Put Ons, recorded live the previous year at The Roostertail in Detroit, Michigan.[3]

In 1961, Carlin married Brenda Hosbrook (born June 12, 1939, died May 11, 1997), whom he had met while touring the previous year, in her parent's living room in Dayton, Ohio. The couple had a daughter, Kelly, in 1963. In 1971, George and Brenda renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During this period, Carlin became more popular. He became a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era, becoming one of Carson's most frequent substitutes during the host's three-decade reign. Carlin was also cast on Away We Go, a 1967 comedy show.

Eventually, Carlin changed his routines, and his appearance. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely, sporting a beard and earrings, but regained his popularity as the public caught on to his sense of style.

In this period he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", recorded on Class Clown, a routine which offended some. Carlin was arrested in 1972 at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing this routine. In 1973, a man complained to the FCC that his son had heard a later, similar routine, "Filthy Words", from Occupation: Foole, broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC, which sought to fine Pacifica for allegedly violating FCC regulations which prohibited broadcasting "obscene" material. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action, by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene", and the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience. F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

The controversy only increased Carlin's fame (or notoriety). Carlin eventually expanded the dirty-words theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance (ending with his voice fading out in one HBO version, and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982-83 season), and a set of 49 web pages [3] organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words". Ironically, the court documents contain a complete transcript of the routine, perhaps validating what Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said: "You cannot define obscenity without being obscene." [4]

File:Georgecarlinmugshot.jpg
George Carlin's 1972 arrest photograph
(arrest report: [1] [2])

Carlin was the first-ever host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, debuting on October 11, 1975. (He also hosted SNL on November 10, 1984.) The following season, 1976-77, Carlin also appeared regularly on CBS Television's Tony Orlando & Dawn variety series.

In the 1970s, Carlin became known for unpredictable performances. He would walk off if no one laughed, verbally insult the audience, or simply not appear.

Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years, he rarely appeared to perform stand-up, although it was at this time he began doing specials for HBO as part of its "On Location" series. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978. It was later revealed that Carlin had suffered the first of his three heart attacks during this layoff period.

In 1981, Carlin returned to the stage, releasing A Place For My Stuff, considered by many to be his best album since Class Clown, and making a triumphant return to HBO (and to his hometown) with the Carlin at Carnegie special videotaped at Carnegie Hall and airing during the 1982-83 season. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or every other year over the following decade and a half, and became as identified with the cable network's comedy offerings as the performer whose specials practically inaugurated the network, Robert Klein. All of Carlin's albums from this time forward are the HBO specials.

By 1989, Carlin had become popular with a new generation of teens when he was cast as Rufus, the mentor of the titular characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and reprised his role in the film sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey as well as the first season of the cartoon series. In 1991, he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, a role he continued until 1998. Also in 1991, Carlin had a major supporting role in the movie Prince of Tides along with Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand. He played "Mr. Conductor" on the PBS children's show Shining Time Station from 1991 to 1993.

Carlin began a weekly sitcom, The George Carlin Show, cast as "George O'Grady", a New York City cab driver, for the Fox Network in 1993. He quickly included a variation of the "Seven Words" in the plot. The show lasted 27 episodes before being canceled in December 1995.

In 1997, a day before his sixtieth birthday, Brenda Carlin died of liver cancer. Also in 1997, his second book, entitled Brain Droppings, was released, which had sold over 750,000 copies as of 2001.

In 1999, Carlin returned with an appearance in Kevin Smith's film Dogma as a greedy Roman Catholic cardinal. He worked with Smith again with a cameo appearance in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and in an unusual change, Carlin portrayed a prominent, serious role in Jersey Girl as the blue collar dad of Ben Affleck's character.

In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards.

In December 2003, California U.S. Representative Doug Ose introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's seven "dirty words", including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)". (The bill omits "tits", but includes "ass" and "asshole", which were not part of Carlin's original routine.)

In December 2004, Carlin announced that he would be voluntarily entering a drug rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for his dependency on alcohol and painkillers.

In 2004, George Carlin was ranked #2 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest standups of all time list, just behind Richard Pryor.[2]

For years, Carlin performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas, but in the spring of 2006 decided to end his performing there. He began a tour through the first-half of 2006, and had a new HBO Special on November 5, 2005 entitled Life is Worth Losing. - [5], which was shown live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Topics covered included suicide, natural disasters (and the impulse to see them escalate in severity), cannibalism, genocide, human sacrifice, threats to civil liberties in America, and how an argument can be made that humans are inferior to animals. The tour's original title of "I Kinda Like it When a Lotta People Die" was changed because of the Hurricane Katrina disaster which occurred 2 months before the tour started.[citation needed]

On February 1, 2006, Carlin mentioned to the crowd, during his Life is Worth Losing set at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, that he had been discharged from the hospital only six weeks previously for "heart failure" and "pneumonia", citing the appearance as his "first show back".

Carlin provided the voice of Fillmore, a character in the Pixar animated feature Cars, which opened in theatres on June 9, 2006. The character Fillmore is a VW Microbus, whose front license plate reads "51237" — Carlin's birthday — and is also the zip code of a town in Iowa named George.

During a show on December 2, 2006 at the the North Fork Theatre Carlin stated that he had "been a little sick for the past month, I've been in the hospital twice, about three or four days each time". He again stated he was there for "heart failure" and "breathing problems".

Religion

As a staunch atheist, Carlin has often denounced the idea of God in interviews and performances, most notably with his "Invisible Man in the Sky" and "There Is No God" routines. In mockery he invented the parody religion Frisbeetarianism for a newspaper contest. He defined it as the belief that when one dies "his soul gets flung onto a roof, and just stays there", and cannot be retrieved.

Carlin has also facetiously stated he worships the Sun, because he can actually see it, but prays to Joe Pesci because "he's a good actor", and "looks like a guy who can get things done!", and praying to him has approximately the same 50% success rate as praying to God.[4]

"Here for the show"

Carlin openly communicates in his shows and in his interviews that his purpose for existence is entertainment, that he is "here for the show". He acknowledges that this is a very selfish thing, especially since he includes large human catastrophes as entertainment.

In a late-1990s interview with Art Bell, he remarked about his view of human life: "I think we're already 'circling the drain' as a species, and I'd love to see the circles get a little faster and a little shorter."

In the same interview, he recounts his experience of a California earthquake in the early-1970s as: "...an amusement park ride. Really, I mean it's such a wonderful thing to realize that you have absolutely no control... and to see the dresser move across the bedroom floor unassisted... is just exciting." Later he summarizes: "I really think there's great human drama in destruction and nature unleashed and I don't get enough of it."

A routine in Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased focusing on airport security leads up to the statement: "Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! ... most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one."

Carlin has always included politics as part of his material (along with the wordplay and sex jokes), but by the mid-1980s had become a strident and perceptive social critic, in both his HBO specials and the book compilations of his material. His HBO viewers got an especially sharp taste of this in his take on the Ronald Reagan administration during the 1988 special What Am I Doing In New Jersey? broadcast live from the Park Theatre in Union City, New Jersey.

Quotations

Wikiquote has quotations related to George Carlin.
  • "When you're born in this world, you're given a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America you're given a front row seat."[6]
  • "I think I figured out why Americans are so stupid. Think about how stupid the Average American is. Well, HALF of 'em are stupider than THAT!"
  • "They're superstitious, they have these beliefs, these primitive, you know, people believe in a... I mean they're just really kind of credulous, and gullible. People believe in, for instance, hell and angels, okay, these are very primitive, very, very backward to me, backward sounding beliefs, these are child-like, and that's the key, because they get you when you're a kid, they get you when you're little, and they tell you there's a God, and if you can make people believe, I believe this, if you can make someone believe that there's an invisible man, living in the sky, who's watching everything you do, and keeping count of everything you do, which is good and which is bad, then you can make that person believe anything after that, you can add anything you want, the 4th of July shit just rolls right in, land of the free, home of the brave, the press is fair and impartial, justice is blind, all men are created equal, your vote is important, the United States government is on your side, the army is here to keep the peace, the police are on your side...Oh, and freedom of choice, this is the big one, the illusion of choice, we're led to feel free by the exercise of meaningless choices. There are, for instance, important things — not too many choices, unimportant things-ice cream flavors, what do you want, we've got 31, the flavor of the week, the flavor of the month, but political parties-we're down to two, jeez. Sources of information, media companies down to five, banks, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, chemical companies, oil companies-used to be seven, down to three, pretty soon it's gonna be two. But if you’re lookin' for a bagel or a fuckin' donut, hey, what do you want-pineapple supreme, hazelnut; we've got everything you want. Cereals, I counted, personally in the store counted 192 different cereal choices, 192. 140 different cat foods, I counted, and that includes a tartar-control cat food for senior citizen cats, okay?"

- George Carlin, appearance on Dennis Miller Live; [response to why Americans are so easily influenced by advertising]

  • "I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate."

- George Carlin, Brain Droppings

  • "This is a group of social criminals, these people in the space program. NAS(A)holes, I call them. In case you haven't heard, the latest disaster for the rest of the universe is that the United States is gonna go to Mars. Okay? Ah, yeah. We're gonna go to Mars. And then of course we're gonna colonize deep space. With our microwave hot dogs and plastic vomit, fake dog shit and cinnamon dental floss, lemon-scented toilet paper and sneakers with lights in the heels. And all these other impressive things we've done down here. But let me ask you this: what are we gonna tell the intergalactic council of ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers throws their newborn baby into a dumpster? How are we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? And what are they gonna think when they find out, its just a local custom, that over 80 million women in the Third world have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasure so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up?"

- George Carlin, Complaints and Grievances

  • "Things that you want to change in the world have to start inside yourself. You can't just acquiesce. You can't be at the mall, with a fannypack on, scratching your nuts, buying sneakers with lights in them. You have to be thinking. You have to be resisting. You have to be talking."

- George Carlin, interview in Conversations on The Edge of The Apocalypse by David Jay Brown

Collection of works

Discography

Occupation: Foole album cover
Life Is Worth Losing album cover

Filmography

File:Carlin affleck.jpg
George Carlin and Ben Affleck in Jersey Girl

Home Box Office specials

Bibliography

Cover to Napalm and Silly Putty

Television

Trivia

  • Carlin hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live.
  • Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. According to legend the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, and asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government issued IDs, he was arrested and rode to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle. [citation needed]
  • He is good friends with actor Joe Pesci whom he mentioned in his bit "There Is No God", found in the 1999 album You Are All Diseased.
  • Doesn't vote and often criticizes elections as an illusion of choice. Said he last voted for George McGovern, who ran for President in 1972.
  • In his special You Are All Diseased (1999), he verbally attacks children, and comments "This is Mr. Conductor talking; I know what I'm talking about." This is a reference to Carlin's role as Mr. Conductor on the children's show Shining Time Station.
  • The book Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse by David Jay Brown features an interview with George along with Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake and others.

See also

References

  1. ^ Milwaukee Police Department Report (date of birth)
  2. ^ a b In 2004, George Carlin was voted #2 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standups of all time, second only to Richard Pryor
  3. ^ http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/home.html George Carlin's official site (see Timeline) (accessed August 14, 2006)
  4. ^ "There Is No God", You Are All Diseased

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to George Carlin.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
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