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being with my friends in New York, so there were five of us driving all over Harlem looking for grass because we knew where to hang out. 30 50 was the beginning. We had certain stops we could make to buy grass and we were driving around in this thing that says on the outside, it's us, NBC News, you know, and we're looking for grass and we're all dressed up. I was in my early 20s, so it was a lot of fun, but I got fired from there, was out of work for a while, and then got called up to Fort Worth.

We were another radio guy and in Shreveport we had moved to a sales director and he wanted me for his station in Fort Worth, so he took me there, so station number one they gave me the 7:00 to midnight duty shift , they answered all my own phones, took all my requests and dedications and suddenly one day Jack Byrnes showed up from Boston, he says. He says he's going to give Hollywood one last chance for me, that was his attitude, that's the way he looked at things, and his tires were bald, so luckily a job in news opened up that day and he got that job and he was my late-night journalist and you know, the rest of us went to a late-night comedy venue that was actually a coffee shop called the Celler in Fort Worth and we did improv sketches every night, improv skits and two-man stuff and it was so successful, We left radio, we said screw it, you know, we had great jobs, we were making like 300,400 a week since 1960 and we're in Fort Worth, a good market and we could have gone from there, but we decided to leave radio because we're going to Hollywood and we're going to become stars because we have this dirty act that we did dirty, it was fair and in those days bawdy comedy wasn't there was no market for it at all and there we were how naive but how wonderful when I'm in that age period to just get on to my newly purchased Dodge Dart Pioneer with tinted windows on the am/fm radio and drive to Los Angeles on spec.

You know, according to speculation, we had about $300 and we were lucky. We had luck. I was lucky every time I turned around, well, when you came out, you got a job in a club, yeah, well, no, what happened was this first, we went out and we were looking for how we could get into show business, we knew that We had this act that we had written during the day, we would write things and learn with a terrible, so we would go places and watch other people and even hang around Dino's on the Strip and think Frank Sinatra might walk in. the Brown Derby on the right and Rock Hudson floated in, you know, we were using our money and one day we came back to the apartment and the rest of our money had been stolen from a sock drawer, a good hiding place for George and we had no money, so we thought, well, we hadn't counted on that and we had promised not to work just to go straight into show business.

We didn't want jobs, none of that bellhop stuff, none of that car jumping, none of that. We wouldn't get into radio, but what happened was that the only thing we knew was radio. The only thing we really felt like we deserved was radio, the biggest, second-largest market in the country. I mean, it was crazy to expect it. to just get into that market, but we went to Iraq, we turned around, we went first to KFWB number one top 40 station in the market and we didn't have tapes or anything, they didn't want us, you know, so we kept walking.

We see this radio station ke da And right near Hollywood on Vine it's actually in Selma on Vine between Sunset and Vine and Hollywood and Vine we go in there and that's where my star is on the walk now in Hollywood. I did not do it. I didn't play it for another radio station. It is nice. We went there and they were looking for a morning comedy team. I mean, it's all luck. You know, you're lucky and you're on a good streak. They were looking for boys. like we made a tape for them they loved us they called us the Wright brothers instead of our real names they called us the Wright brothers but they did a big advertising campaign ads and variety full color ads and everything and they put us on the air and here we are in the air about "let's see", it would have only been about two months after we got there and it was pure madness, you know, there we were, that wasn't good enough for you, no, no, what we did, what we did.

What I did was keep working on the act, we're going to work on the act, this is just a stepping stone, you know, and now we're making about 500 a week each, you know, that's good and we're great, but we're practicing . This after-hours act, by the way, was also a daytime station, although it was a 50,000 water station and had a great signal on the west coast, it was a daytimer and we would go off the air at dusk and in the studio we would work. In these routines we were getting serious now and nearby, about two blocks away, there was a coffee shop that was the way in, now they were coffee shops, it was the era of the beatniks and coffee shops liked unconventional entertainment and we knew that we could. go in there and do our thing for the owner, maybe and have one chance, just have one chance hootenanny, have one chance, you know, and we went there, he liked us and he hired us for two weeks and we're still rehearsing our act . and a guy walked through the studio because it was an office building and you could see the studios on your left and there were little offices here he was a songwriter, he was a guy who used to do PR for songwriters and stuff like that at labels record labels. and he saw us and he used to be Rowan and Martin's road manager and he said, "I think you guys could do it, you know, so we gave him more, we became Matt, he became our manager, we went to this little coffee shop and They held us back." For six weeks, Lenny Bruce came and saw Mort Sahl come in and sauce and based on that, we and Lenny Bruce got a contract with GAC, one of the largest agencies in the country, they had offices in New York, offices in Chicago and offices in Beverly Hills, and we went into nightclubs where we left the radio again, we left the radio recently, I'm sorry, we have something to do and we went on and started a career that worked out very well, two years together we were on The Tonight Show with Jack Parr, That October we left. from Shreveport in March we left Shreveport in March and that October we were on NBC television at night on the biggest comedy show, it's just stupid you know, but man it can happen.

I have heard this term, luck of the Irish, yes it started with You, I know it well, I believe luck comes from heredity. You know, that's the first draw you have of luck, good or bad luck. Jack Byrnes, by the way, if you don't always remember, went on to do Burns and Shriver, who you may have. seen on that show Sullivan doing his taxi taxi Jack why that's what they put in the back and he she a version II was too much taxi taxi taxi yeah well you know these communists out there for the communists you know that he played that character very beautifully and He had a good grandmother, he played Warren when Don Knotts retired from Mayberry RFD, he played Warren, he was the new deputy and he's had a good career writing and producing things, now you've become an act alone, yes, each of us wanted. he eventually became a solo artist, Ed Sullivan, yeah, how did that happen?

Well that's part of the process as you become known, this was the era of variety television and there were two major syndicated television shows at the time, Merv Griffin and he had had a show. it was a 90 minute late night show and it was syndicated rather than being on a network, just like Mike Douglas Mike Douglas had a daytime show that was syndicated from both Westinghouse Radio Westinghouse television and I did about 15 Merv Griffin's and I did about 15 Mike Douglass by the time the network realized that the network producers, the guy who produced the James Jimmy Dean show, took me there and did a monologue there and then kept me and I did another monologue the next week and there.

It was on ABC television and from there I learned that those same producers did a summer show the next year, it took Andy Williams' place at the Kraft Summer Music Hall, it was the Andy Andy appeared all year round, not all year round, but everything except the summer the television season and we took its place during some they call it the summer musical with John Davidson and I was the comedian and writer of the house and from then on that's when Ed Sullivan notices you or the people of Carson notices you or the Hollywood Palace or whatever other variety show you were going to be on that was old, there were a lot of variety shows, so Carol Burnett, you know Jimmy Rogers 11, do you remember meeting Ed Sullivan? first?

Oh yeah, sure, tell me he wasn't saying it's something like that. it was him it was exactly what it seemed it was you but he took a I stuck it out, they wanted me on that show. Here I am, you know, still in my early stage of development, although I was on national television a lot and they loved me. The Ed Sullivan Show and I resisted because I had heard that they were very brutal with comedians about cutting their time at the last minute, you have six minutes, they come and tell you to cut a minute because the monkeys were late, you know, they sorry, but the baboon.

It was long, you're going to have to cut, so I didn't want that because I did it. I did still scenes. I didn't make a series of jokes that I could cut five of them to take away one minute. I did a piece that required him to memorize it, that was six minutes long and that was it, and he couldn't get anything out of it, so he didn't want them going around doing that to me, that usually happens. You know, you have dress rehearsal in the afternoon and then. you would have the broadcast at night live at 8 and it would go between dress and air they would tell you to maybe cut a minute and then air when they started at 8:00 and the time you left on tour T or something maybe they would come and tell you to do 30 more awesome seconds so I didn't want it to be and it was scary enough doing live TV so I finally gave in and ended up doing 11 Ed Sullivan shows and I was done.

I really wrote very poor material. I mean, my standard really dropped because you're offering two more Sullivan takes and the money is great and you know exposure is important and you want to know, do it so you know. You go ahead and write an article and it's not exactly what, yeah, but I was surprised to list again that you did the hair poem at one point, the one that's a lunch at the end of the show, yeah, the hair foam and it from the ecology yes, I was surprised that they criticized me for that, I mean, did you have - no, no, it was by then that I already had a beard and I had started to grow my hair and I had stopped wearing a jacket, it was more of a style vest, you know, it wasn't like street clothes, they were a little nicer, but nonetheless they were a shirt and a vest, you know, and at that time they had, you know, he always adapted, they always adapted to change , which Elvis Presley was. there and the Beatles and in the Stones and always at least they still made an opera singer, they still made people juggling, so G Joe, but what I did was, uh, you know, I do, they told me I could choose between two jokes a dress rehearsal that I did, among other jokes, I made two jokes that were topical and one of them was about Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who was running for president, he was a racist and a segregationist and he had a favorite saying that he would always talk about the liberals referring to the pointy intellectuals, he called them pointy intellectuals back in Washington, you know, he was a popular, he appealed to populist and racist things, so he called them poor and I said in this routine I said torment George Wallace I said you were talking about pointy heads have you ever seen the sheets those people covered their heads so that was a joke that was a joke in the monologue another joke in the monologue was about Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali was the champion at the time his name is still Cassius Clay and he was the world champion and they took the championship away from him because he didn't want to go to Vietnam, he refused to go and of course he was right to do that.

I think now what I think he said about this was this they they told him you don't know anymore I'm sorry you can't anymore but no more boxing you know why you're not going to do your thing in Vietnam so I said it this way I said Muhammad Ali his job was hit people that was his job hit people they wanted him to go abroad and kill people and he said no I don't want to kill people I'd rather just beat him up and they said okay well if not we'll go kill people , we're not going to let you beat them up, which was and they told me between the dress and the hair, they told me they said you can take the artist censorship that I ever experienced, they say you can I have one or two of one of those jokes or the other, but not both, the volume was shaking, that's the strangest thing, so obviously I chose Muhammad Ali's work, which is a much smarter joke, you know, than the point, so the deaths were my memory of the last show I did and then it went off the air, in fact I did the second to last broadcast of Ed Sullivan, although we didn't know it at the time, we found out moreMerv Griffin come and see me?

Make the Carson Show give up and watch me. That is what I need. So I did it and took a stand. I found a place called Cafe or Gogo. I spent two years there on and off. I could work and leave there for two months. I could go back for a week. I could go away for two weeks. Return for three days. I could work whatever I wanted because sometimes they would give me five dollars. one night sometimes just a burger sometimes on a weekend $65 if you worked with Bill Evans or someone like that so I did that for two years and I got Merv Griffin and that's what got me my start at the place that I'm talking. the cafe au go go Richard Pryor was in the same state as me Richard Pryor was still an unknown comedian who hadn't done any television and was doing it he was in his harmless period listen his harmless period he was in his doing Rumplestiltskin made a little bug there was a famous early piece by Richard Pryor called Rumpelstiltskin which is what got him on the Merv Griffin Show he was there working, we smoked some joints up there on the high stairs in the basement of this place and we did our parts occasionally being on stage together , I don't remember much about it, but people came to see Richard Pryor one Merv Griffin night and they gave him an interview the next week, so he got his interview and then I'm still working on the phone. working working there and he gets a show from them and he goes and does the show right at the time he got the show between his interview and the show.

I had gotten my interview, but then he had his show, so I was one step behind him. So he got his second show, then I had a plague in my interview and I got my first show, so the two of us grew from that room to this syndicated television exposure that was national and was always seen by the networks and that's how We both emerge and come to life. One of the good things about the '70s: he released those albums with the most people. here here at ice clown yeah yeah that's Good to know those were for gold albums.

I had four gold dogs in a row, seventy-two, three, four and five, and then I had a couple after they weren't gold, it was what I call the little David years, little David Records, owned by Flip Wilson and his manager, who later became my manager and I signed to the label and yeah, that's what you see, you need a weight if you're going to make quote-unquote material that shouldn't be censored, you know, I hate this designation. adult, you know, x-rays or something, but if you're going to make realistic spoken word art, if you're going to get a mass audience, you need a medium and the medium at the time was records which I certainly couldn't. do it on television which was commercial and they didn't allow that kind of language or those ideas if they were, if it was just the ideas that were dangerous for them, so I got my mass audience through the records, the records fed the box office in college concerts college constants fueled record sales and all that, plus you do some TV and talk about both I'll be in Buffalo I'll be in Toronto and I'll be at Agra Falls Agra and that, by the way, fm Lo I am, but you did it with a little more grace than that, so it all worked out, then my recording career was over, you know, you can't be the hot new kid in town forever, right, you can't be The Faster Gun because a faster gun is coming to town in a few years, so my recording career started to decline in the '70s, just like the counterculture, disco music came into play and the people who are the real deal hippies and true radicals. they retired to the hills and the others went and got MBAs and stuff like that and and there I was like not knowing who I was and who I should become, you know, to be honest with myself, so I just kind of drifted for a while. and That's when cable started, that's when HBO started around '75 or '76 and I got there in '77 and now I've done 13 of them.

That's my way of reaching the mass audience. Who was the first? George Carlin 77 George Carlin again 78 Carlin at Carnegie Hall 82 Carlin on campus 84 playing with your head 86 what am I doing in Jersey? 88 doing it again 1990 playing in New York was 92 did that 40 year old comedy special in 96 back in town you're all a disease that 99 complaints that received a lot of complaints and grievances in 2001 in life is worth losing in 2005 true, I'm told that improvisation in New York was special for you, well, it was one of the big turning points, you know how? I am an artist because I do it.

I work in an entertainment circuit, but there is also an artist at work. Not all artists are artists. Some are just artists and they can experience life, their creative lives in a static way, they arrive at a certain place and somehow stay there other people who have an artistic element or component grow because artists always grow and go somewhere artists on a journey who don't know where they are going, no, no, they don't want to know. I just know that there is something more there is something more there is more in me there is more to talk about there is more to look at a painter a composer they grow they live they grow it is something continuous so that is true for me as a writer that is the artistic part of me As a writer, well, what am I answering?

You know I'll get to it just tell me you were talking about the HBO special, yeah that's right he did it socially so the artist goes through the phases and the changes and I found my comic. voice as a younger person in coffee shops to find my comedic voice and then that comedic voice lasted until the late '60s and early '70s when I made that shift into countercultural type material that was a paradigm shift and that was a change. in the voice, the comedic voice and the writer's voice and then in my nineteens and then during the '70s I developed that and then I said I lost track of what was coming next.

I didn't know I got sidetracked and was grabbing then in '92, even though I did these HBO shows and they were pretty good, I like it, I would still back every word of them, but there wasn't a new voice yet, there was an improved voice which was ongoing in 1992. I discovered silence on stage I discovered that you could have long periods of silence the show I did in New York had a long more or less serious piece called the planet is fine the people are and and it was about the fact that that the planet will survive we don't care about the planet people who tell you they are worried about the planet or not, they are worried about themselves and their habitat, they want a clean place to live and that's fine, but don't talk about how you're doing You're not going to save the planet, the planet will outlive you and heal itself and that piece was very thoughtful and very interesting and I loved it, but I had to learn that there were times in the show when it was okay not to do it. make people laugh because one of the jobs I have besides making people laugh is to engage the imagination in general, to engage the person's imagination, if I make them laugh along the way, that's part of the deal for me, but then I learned that I had a kind of a more serious writer's voice in me and that's when another change happened and the shows that followed in the '90s are representative of there being more social commentators in them, there's more of a quote-unquote philosophy starting to emerge. and that was another important change for me that is still developing plus it was the first live concert it was the first concert in New York City it was the first one done in New York City for me I did it at Madison Square Garden no in the big stadium but in the theater that seats 6,500 people, so there was a big audience, it was live and it was my hometown and I was the king of that city for one night, you know, it really felt good.

I looked out the window of my hotel. night and I thought, yeah, yeah, you know this is my town, one of those scenes you'd see in a movie, kind of a cheesy scene, kind of an adult version of when your mom's friends used to pat you on the head, No. It was absolutely just a graded version. uh, I haven't covered books or movies yet, but I promise to let people ask questions. Is there anyone here who would like to step forward and have a question? Does anyone see this? I'm probably in awe of you, okay, yeah, say your name please, and hi, my name is Alan, hi, um, first of all, it's very rare that you meet someone who is an idol of yours, you know, and thank you, thirty years ago, they introduced me now.

That first HBO special you talked about and I just thank you for 30 years of thanks for making me laugh is really I'm curious about some of the comics you've worked with, who's the funniest you remember and think man, that guy you are You, you knew when you saw it that it was going to be as good as you know, have you ever seen it well, the only one that comes to mind, I'm sure if I searched my memory or if I had a better memory. I would have other examples, but Lewis Black was someone I saw at the beginning of his show and knew that he was a unique and strong guy, good to say the least, Lewis Black.

He loved him. I loved that that kind of theatrical eyes go and the things he talks about he has a good mind I like good minds he's someone I think about I never dated comics I still don't I'm a loner I'm a real kind of loner and Like an outsider, I was never in comedy clubs and of course I never worked in them, so I didn't need to be in them, but I also wasn't attracted to comic culture, comedians and we like to be in them. together, so I don't have much knowledge. I didn't have many occurrences of being able to look at someone early and say that, but Lewis Black was one that definitely came to mind.

Lewis tells a great story. Oh, CBS is willing to make a show based on him and he had to audition for the role of himself and didn't get it haha ​​that's cool, luckily it never aired so everything I remember I remember, Is anyone else sure why not, duh, the ultimate don. Don't wait to get your ass handed to you, just walk up to the microphone, wait. Hello, my name is Chris. You've had the opportunity to see the entertainment industry evolve tremendously throughout your career, and one thing I've heard people say, whether it's true or not, is. that if you saw a lot of people who are icons today, like you, if you started today with the way the system is set up, you might not have the opportunity, you might never have had the opportunity to become who you are, That's true, right?

I think it's a fair assessment to either think the entertainment industry as a whole has gotten better or just changed or gotten worse over the course of your career, depending on the individual. That's true and not true, I would say with user-generated and viral content. quality of the Internet that a self-made person let's use that for short a person who wants to be a self-made person has some avenues that I certainly didn't have, but on the other hand life and the world and the world of the show were simpler. So it was easier to see where the path should be.

I mean, there was only one way to start and that was to walk into a radio station and, in the middle of that run, look around. places where I could have the opportunity to learn how to do stand-up, you know, there were some nightclubs and some coffee shops, so the world and the options were limited, which was probably good for me, but I think if I had had the same tools genetically and I reinforced them as they were for me in this era and I had these impulses to show off. I think I could have found a way, but God knows how different it could have been and how much longer it could have taken.

It is a much more complicated place, no, I am not envious, I would not like to come of age at this time, although I see many advantages in that that we did not have, I see it and I understand it, but I am very happy to have reached majority. old in the period when I did it because it was you, you could grab it, you could put your hands on all that without much effort, you know? And now he's a pretty elusive pretty fragmented rich guy now you mentioned you said I'm not giving up is the word but you didn't take the movie idea of ​​being a movie star as seriously as an actor and you've done movies here and there and I've done the voices and the animated films and you were the Volkswagen bus in the cars, the cars for the helm are what you did in Albury, so you played Ben Affleck's father and the girl from Jersey.

I was like the center that was written for me and I could show my sweet Side I, Lana Rhett, a little addressable, but there was a sweetness to the role, it was a grandfather role, it was not written on a model of his father, so it was more suitable for who I was at the time. The other thing I'm proud of doing was a Haul Mark miniseries called Streets of Laredo, which was a sequel to Lonesome Dove and it was the true sequel, it's a continuation of the business that was a little fake, but this was the authentic and I played a part of an old Scout and I really felt good aboutthat and then Prince of Tides I played Gain Aber Eddy and I was very happy with the way it came out, but I wasn't really born to be an actor. true, if I had trained my whole life, it would have been a different story if I had learned technique in training, yes, but no, I didn't have the tools.

I'm Michael, hello, my mr. Carlin, we know that a lot of your comedy comes from things that really piss you off, what are some things that really piss you off that you haven't talked about on stage lately? Well, you catch me short because I don't have my computer at hand and I can't search for many things. I'm lucky to have some pretty deep archives. I don't suffer from writer's block, believe me, I have this current show I'm doing. Between. there and I dug the hole for 75 minutes at a time and for a week I took it all out and started doing what you know, those 75 minutes from scratch, so I'm very proud of that productivity record, but I think it's not so much about than I am because it implies that you have a stake in the outcome that matters to you and I don't really care.

I don't mind. Phi, I mean it looks like anger. You know, obviously, there's a. It's a theatrical kind of heightened theatrical anger that you need to convey these thoughts, but I'm not personally an angry man. I'm not personally angry about these things. I think they are wonderful because I am against the species. It finally finally dawned on me and this freed me as a writer. This was part of that transformation in the '90s. I realized that I really didn't care about this outcome on this planet. I didn't care what happened to the species. I think this is a species that was given great gifts and had great potential and squandered them.

I think this vichy squandered them. I think it shows bad ways of organizing socially and politically. I think it was wrong when it came to buying the okey doke that the spiritual leaders gave to the high priests, we gave to the high priests and to the merchants their trade and religion who have ruined and spoiled the potential of this ofIn this species and in this country the same two things are true, but this country It is written big and this country is the leader in the decay of the soul. If you want, I'll use it metaphorically, it's fair and I don't care what it is.

I don't care what happens to this country, it doesn't matter, and you know what anger is, the only anger there is, so I recognize one in my voice, there you know what that is, it's really a reflection of disappointment and disappointment and of being disappointed. for my species, you know that we had great possibilities and they are not being realized, you know, they talk, you know, about poets and philosophers, and well, they are not there, but yes, there is, how much influence do they have?, none, there are more people writing poetry in American that there is online reading, well, I guess that's true in many fields, but it's just that I think it's anger, it's a frustration, it's a disappointment, you know, it comes from, you know, how could you do it, it's that's why he usually always uses the second person, you know, I talk about the audience and I say, how can you know what you did, you know, I don't say, you know, what we did here in this country, I say, you know what you did, I put it to them.

It's not my problem, you know, anyway, that's just a taste of what eats at me around the edges and if you don't know if you want more of George's philosophy, the books, brain excrement, napalm, silly putty , when will Jesus bring the pork chops? and sometimes a little brain damage can help. Actually, it was originally a promotional item. It was actually a magazine-sized item that was sold at concerts, but I didn't do it. I wanted to post some stuff there, so I also take pictures because you have to have them. The images in it is a kind of pseudo-book, almost a book, so if you want to know more, the philosophy was just to spill some of that is there, yeah, okay, just read those books because I would like to end on that note, but There are a couple more questions, one of them that you don't like to be asked is: have you ever thought about when this will end?

Are you going to retire? Oh no I don't mind being asked no it's like say the artist is never satisfied if you're going to be satisfied you know something's wrong with you if you're part of this high-sounding you know terminology I'm talking about the artist part you know Pablo Casals the great cello master of the cello of the last century one of the outstanding musicians of the last century was about 90 years old and he still did some recitals and practiced three hours a day he practiced his cello three hours a day and someone told him at some point they said maestro Casals you know that you are a past master you are the master why at your age do you bother to practice three times a day that is three hours a day and he said well I am starting to notice some improvement and that is the answer.

I want to say why stop you know only if nature stops me if I lose the ability to write or speak speak some alteration and plans will be necessary but I have already imagined it because if they have this for people who are totally paralyzed that the movement of their eyes, you can look at a keyboard that is projected and you can type by moving your eyes to the letters and you will have perfected it when you are paralyzed, show me, I assume, well, to quote George Carlin, art does not. have a finish line right now, yes it's just a race, but against yourself with no reward except yourself, you know, it's sad the satisfaction of explaining yourself in some symbolic or direct way, in my case painting is more symbolic, Would you leave us with what you would put? on your tombstone what is your epithet was the reading was here just a minute ago George Carly thank you very much