Jon Stewart Interviews George Carlin

When you were a kid, yeah, you wanted to be Danny Kaye, him and Bob Hope, so look, how do you think this is working out for so long? Well I knew I wanted to get up and you know it would be silly and I would have people say that Nick you're cute and smart and that's it, it's a reward, a psychic reward, you know when you and your kid find out that you can get the attention of adults and approval and a little bit of respect and you're just hungry to keep coming back for it and luckily I have genetics, you know, my little tool kit, my genetic tool kit that they gave me included a mother and a father who were very fun, people could do accents and dialects and tell funny stories about what happened on the bus that tomorrow and have a joke so you don't lick it off the rocks, they say in Ireland, so I think I thanked my grandmother's milkman, act like me, you never know where these things go, reach out, it's interesting, you know, as I look now. and through all the years of listening to your abs of things, your fascination with language is so evident that watching your work is almost like watching a musician, you know the way you weave words together and use language for emphasis and everything that was always a fascination for you even when you were a child, well, go back with the question, don't forget that what we do is oratory, its rhetoric, it's not just comedy, it's a form of rhetoric and with rhetoric you look for and listen to rhythms, you look for ways to sing at the same time you're talking and go away better don't do it oh don't do it don't do it and don't do it don't do it don't do it better don't do it Doo doo doo doo and it's natural.

My grandfather, whom I never met, was a police officer in New York at the turn of the century and he was an uneducated, self-taught man and over the course of his adult life he wrote his works. of Shakespeare at hand for the joy it gave him, he is an obsessive young man, yes, and, and, and almost everything is genetic and my mother cared a lot about language, my father was a champion public speaker in 1935, he won the gavel of mahogany in over 800 other public speakers from the Dale Carnegie Institute of Public Speaking and he was great.

I didn't know him either. Your parents were discouraged by the direction you took when you started doing counterculture. Was it a difficult transition for them to see? Well, he was out of the picture, he was brilliant and he was a great salesman at advertising, but he couldn't metabolize ethanol efficiently, so they gave him his hat, my mother was very brave, she left, she left him, I had 2 months, my brother. I was 5 5 years old and she left a fire escape so he left she my mother was very controlling she wanted to control my life and it broke her heart when I started using foul language and the horrible things she says about business she was a little She was an executive advertising secretary.

She loved the business world. She thought it was the best thing that ever happened. So when I went in that direction at first, it was very opposite until one day we lived on the same street I grew up on. I thought I went to school and I went to school on the same block I lived in something like that school in Corpus Christi and the nuns were great it wasn't a typical Catholic school it was an experimental progressive school that didn't have grades didn't have any kind of Corporal punishment was just a very wonderful school and the nun would see the nuns on the street and they would say oh we saw, we saw George on The Tonight Show and she, because she was a bit of an actress, would say oh, it's horrible language sister, the horrible language and one of them told him no, no, your honors, he is using it for other purposes, he is not only doing it for that, it is like part of what he does, don't you understand?, it is this and that and that. so she said oh well, oh and from that day on she was okay with it because the church had approved it, that was it and so people who deal with content that is borderline often live a life that is similar on an edge mm-hmm and a lot of those people go off the rails, yeah, and we lose them and their talent, and you've been able to not do that and be able to get it back and another stroke of luck, you know you have to be lucky. in this world part of your genetic makeup is luck and then what you do with it is also partly genetic because hard work is genetic the desire to work hard the will to work hard and be determined and not be led astray, that's the whole Genetics can be modified and strengthened a little, but some of the people who promised so much that they died young, I mean Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison, Andy Kaufman, in their own way they share our Freddie Prinze, John Belushi, Bill Hicks, and it's just No I know, of course, Bill had a natural disorder of his own, I think Andy did too, but it's not always a behavior, sometimes it's just genetic, but I think there's a degree of luck and intellect involved in giving up things that hurt you that The drug and alcohol thing, it seems to me, comes down to these drugs and these things are wonderful, they are wonderful when you see them for the first time, they have not existed for all these millennia for no reason, the first time is mainly pleasure, very little pain perhaps. a hangover and as you build up and keep using whatever it is, the pleasure part decreases in the pain part, the price you pay increases until the balance is completely reversed and it's almost all pain and almost no pleasure at that point What would you expect then? the intellect says oh oh this doesn't work anymore I'm going to die of something but you need people around you who can help you and you need something to live for you have to have something to look forward to to get you out, you know?

There are many people who don't have much to live for and are trapped inside. There is some fear that by giving up drugs you lose a bit of genius by giving up the wild lifestyle, sanity and well-being. It's been a delusion for a long time that most of this creativity comes from being eccentric and I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that as far as just being eccentric when it comes to drugs and alcohol, they seem to open a window they seem to expand the views at first what you have to do is learn when you know that it is like all these great writers who became drinkers you have to order leave as I encounter with as with marijuana I am I am no longer a big drug user, but I always have a joint somewhere near me.

I'm not kidding, it may be hidden, it may be hidden what I do and I barely touch it, maybe once a month, that would be frequent for me, but when I'm writing something and I write perfectly straight, perfectly sovereign. I write a lot of things. Six seven, eight, nine pages. I really dedicate it to the next day. One hit, that's all I need now. One hit and it's time to close haha, time to get this. going and you find that with that kind of judicious use I think there's some value in it, but most of the things we use don't let you leave them alone, no boat does, thank God for that, well, that's excellent , I'm sorry.

I'm going to fall in several ways more than fair, you can, yeah, why do you still care? Why do you still care enough to support yourself? You are at a point in your life where you could go back. You could spend your month in Las Vegas and Florence Henderson. it could open up and you could go and hit a couple balls and then some pinball, why are you still worrying so much? I'm not comparing myself to any of these people, believe me, but you wouldn't say to Picasso, why are you going to put down those brushes, get rid of the canvas, you've done it, not you.

I am an artist first and foremost, but there is art involved here and an artist has an obligation to be on the road to go somewhere, there is a journey involved here and you. I don't know where it is and that's the fun of it, so you're always going to be searching, looking, going and trying to challenge yourself, so without sitting down and thinking about it too much, that drives you and keeps you trying to stay fresh. trying to be new, trying to call yourself, calling yourself a little more, you know, and willing to put up with the grueling promotional schedule, yeah, and everything, that's the only way Picasso never had to do morning shows and in Albuquerque, you know, and the only way I can do this is go where the people are I can't they won't come to my house the bus rides and everything won't come I have to go to Stevens Point Wisconsin or wherever and the public It's great and they buy the tickets in advance and really wait for you to come and see you in the theaters and concert halls.

It's special because the public does it in advance and you spend the whole night in Las Vegas. You're an afterthought. and also well, we could go gambling, we could go prostitute, we could get drunk, we could go to the convention, no, let's go see this guy and if they like you, they like you, but they're not committed fans, so the tone is different, but it still works, you can still do some things there that you might feel good about, you know? Do you feel your place in comedy now? Do you feel the? Know? Because I've spent a lot of time with the festival and with everyone I wanted.

Mention that you know, hey, I'm going to do this. George Carlin should be there. His face lights up and one person brings Lee Carlin and what can I know? Is he close? Do you feel like that place is that? And well, that's growing on me. I think you know that longevity is a wonderful thing. Sometimes they applaud you just for not being dead when you say ha ha ha, when you say I'm going to be 60, they applaud that wonderful 60 dance, uh, so, but, it's me. I'm already realizing, you know, when you're on 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 I have people I have wonderful people I love people 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 and bracelets and fight songs and a list of people they are going to visit at 3:00 a.m. m., so I don't like and despise groups of people. but I love people, every person you look at you can see the universe in their eyes if you really look and they're great, and cumulatively I feel like I'm in this big family, a family life that I never had. by the way, this is, so to speak, an extended family of people who feel like you're their cousin, you know, I say Georgie's 1961.

I show you, hey, do you remember, yeah, oh, and you know what you said and I said, oh yes, then it's you. not just great and so cumulative you say well I guess I'm family I guess it's okay yeah here do you think it doesn't shrink after 10 hours of HBO after a multitude of best-selling houses after Grammy nominations after Grammy nominations Emmy? after the cable ACE awards it all comes down to what you originally said which is hey look me up and hey look at me and I'm cute that implies it's just a call from Dobby to show off and if you can get it to not only stop and listen.

But tell me, isn't it cute? It's real. They will kill you if you can get the school approved. We didn't have grades, so we didn't have Bs and Cs. Indies, the only A's I got and this is kind of cheesy. I got his attention his approval his admiration his approval and his applause and those are the only A's I wanted and I was sad. I just want to say that I can't tell you enough what a pleasure it has been for me. to spend some time with you and be part of this show and thank you very much for everything wonderful about getting to know you a little and you are going to show us a lot and I look forward to it, thank you very much.